Hunter Biden, crack addict, former crack addict. But it appears something is still ripping through his system because he just did a wild three hour interview. What does that say about the Democratic Party? Plus, we ll get to Stephen Colbert, the fallout from his firing, and a couple of actually quite important criminal cases.
00:00:00.000Alrighty, folks, a lot coming up on today's show.
00:00:02.000Hunter Biden, crack addict, former crack addict, but it appears something is still ripping through his system because he just did a wild three-hour interview.
00:00:10.000What does that say about the Democratic Party?
00:00:12.000Plus, we'll get to Stephen Colbert, the fallout from his firing, and a couple of actually quite important criminal cases.
00:00:18.000But first, we are celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire, 10 years of fighting the culture war and building something real.
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00:00:59.000There are a couple of reasons it matters.
00:01:00.000One is that Hunter Biden is a stand-in for his father.
00:01:03.000When Hunter talks, Hunter is speaking for Joe Biden.
00:01:06.000And when he speaks for Joe Biden, he is speaking for, believe it or not, the establishment wing of the Democratic Party in some interesting and weird ways.
00:01:13.000And so what he has to say about politics is sort of relevant.
00:01:16.000Also, Hunter Biden's exposure of the entire left for the fraud that it is because of his father is quite incredible.
00:01:25.000And it is worthwhile to remember that Hunter Biden, along with Joe Biden, was part of that inner coterie of people surrounding Joe who knew that Joe was unhealthy, mentally unwell, and all the rest, and who left him in place because they were essentially playing at the presidency.
00:01:37.000This is something that Jake Tapper and Alex Thampson have reported in their book Original Sin, talking about who was the actual president of the United States for several years.
00:01:46.000When you listen to Hunter, you should understand Hunter Biden was at least partially the actual president of the United States for several years, and so that makes this interview important.
00:01:56.000So we begin this interview, discussing this interview, with his thoughts on the election.
00:02:00.000So first he says, the reason that his dad completely collapsed as a human during that debate with Donald Trump, the most famous debate now in modern American history, the reason for that is because he says that his father was on ambient.
00:02:14.000I know exactly what happened in that debate.
00:02:16.000He flew around the world, basically, the mileage that he could have flown around the world three times.
00:02:35.000It was not that his father was not sentient.
00:02:38.000So first of all, who gives an 81-year-old man ambient on a flight knowing what the predictable results of that will be hours later?
00:02:45.000I mean, there's just certain materials that you take when you fly.
00:02:48.000If you take too much melatonin, you can be zonked the next day.
00:02:51.000Ambient will absolutely, so they gave him to that like the day before or the night before the debate.
00:02:56.000First of all, if that's true, it shows that his advisors were in some way sandbagging him.
00:03:00.000But beyond that, it's obviously not true that that is the reason why Joe Biden has been in a state of collapse for several years at this point.
00:03:06.000Hunter admits that Nancy Pelosi is the person who drove Biden out of the race.
00:03:28.000They wanted a, I don't know what the hell they wanted, but they wanted to be the ones to anoint whoever they were going to anoint to become the next president of the United States.
00:03:36.000Who do you think that would have been?
00:03:40.000All I know is that they definitely did not want Kamala Harris.
00:03:44.000And again, which undermined her, which undermined the campaign.
00:03:49.000I think Hunter trying to defend Kamala right there, saying it wasn't her fault that she lost.
00:03:52.000It was Pelosi who drove Biden out of the race.
00:03:54.000He also took some side swipes at people like George Clooney and David Axelrod and the Pods of America bros, basically saying all of these people, they threw Joe Biden out of the race.
00:04:04.000Okay, so a lot of this is defensive play from Hunter, who, again, was the actual president, along with Jill probably, of the country for several years.
00:04:11.000And predictably, he's pissed about it.
00:04:16.000Because he sat down, I guess, because he was given the blessing by the Obama team or the Obama people and whoever else and David Axelrod and whoever the f ⁇ else is to go, okay, yeah, you know what?
00:04:29.000We are going to insert our judgment over yours.
00:04:34.000We, me, and James Carville, who hasn't run a race in 40 years, and David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama.
00:04:44.000And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of David Axelrod.
00:04:47.000And David Plough, and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, who were junior speechwriters on Barack Obama's Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars.
00:05:01.000The Anita Dunns of the world, who's made $40, $50 million off of the Democratic Party.
00:05:35.000What right do you have to step on a man who's given 52 years of his life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the New York Times to undermine the president at a time in which, by the way, what do people care about the most?
00:05:54.000So I'm just going to point out here that Hunter Biden would make a better 2028 candidate than Joe Biden made a 2024 candidate.
00:06:01.000I'm here for him dunking on all of his erstwhile Democratic friends.
00:06:04.000Hunter, of course, took the opportunity also to defend himself against charges that, for example, his art business was a scam on behalf of the Biden family, which it pretty clearly was.
00:06:13.000No one buys Hunter Biden finger paintings these days for 500 grand a pop.
00:06:18.000Do you know how many stories the New York Times wrote about my art?
00:06:29.000I mean, at the time that They were writing about my art.
00:06:31.000Jared Kushner was in Saudi Arabia after being the head of the Middle Eastern policy group for the White House and covering for the leader of Saudi Arabia in the murder of Khashoggi, collecting $2.1 billion investment.
00:06:48.000When he was doing that, and they were selling golden sneakers and Bibles to people off their donor list, the New York Times was still writing stories about the legitimacy of me deciding that I wanted to be a painter or not.
00:07:04.000Well, I mean, there was an election going on, as you may have noticed.
00:07:07.000And the fact is that the president of the United States, many people suspected, was the beneficiary of these sort of strange coincidences around the sales of your pseudo-art.
00:07:16.000More from this insane interview with Hunter Biden in just a moment.
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00:09:37.000Hunter Biden also suggested that he was totally qualified to be on Burisma's board.
00:09:40.000Again, one of the kind of seamy realities about the last election cycle is some of it was about Joe Biden's age.
00:09:45.000A lot of it was about a widespread perception, correct, of the Biden family's absolutely deep and abiding corruption.
00:09:52.000Here is Hunter now denying that he had been put on the board of Burisma for any political reason, which of course is absolutely ridiculous.
00:09:59.000He had no experience in the energy sector.
00:10:01.000He couldn't point out Ukraine on a map, and suddenly he was on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.
00:10:18.000I served on dozens of boards before this.
00:10:20.000I was an expert in corporate governance.
00:10:24.000I have an encyclopedia knowledge of the region.
00:10:28.000I had served on a major infrastructure company's board and had done work in global aid relief throughout the entire world and had an enormous list of connections of my own.
00:10:39.000And I was qualified to be on that board.
00:10:42.000So actually, he was doing it, you know, because he was really good at it.
00:10:45.000It had nothing to do with his last name being Biden.
00:10:46.000By the way, that's a reversal for Hunter, who openly admitted a few years ago that he would not have been on the Burisma board except for the fact that his last name was Biden.
00:10:53.000The last part of this particular interview, the sort of Hunter Biden defending himself, that got amusing when he started making the argument that crack is somehow safer than alcohol, which is a hell of an argument here.
00:11:05.000Does crack cocaine make you act any differently?
00:11:16.000When you make crack, what you're doing is you're burning off all the impurities so that it could bind with the sodium bicarbonate, which makes it smokable.
00:11:26.000I think this is the prelude to Hunter Biden's version of Breaking Bad, where he actually goes and starts distributing.
00:11:32.000Again, I love that he's making this argument.
00:11:36.000Put the Biden administration aside for a second and put aside the inherent corruption, the fact that Joe Biden was dead for several years and that his family was essentially running the government.
00:11:45.000If you see Hunter as a stand-in for the sort of Joe Biden moderate wing of the Democratic Party, things start to get kind of interesting because Hunter Biden also spoke here about policy.
00:11:55.000And there are two particular issues where Hunter Biden put specific focus.
00:11:59.000And those two issues were on illegal immigration and Israel.
00:12:02.000And these are the issues where Democrats are completely at odds with the American people, but they will not let it go.
00:12:09.000They are more likely to let go of the trans issue than they are to let go of illegal immigration, open borders, as well as the sort of new thing of the moment, which is the idea that Israel is the great victimizer in the Middle East and the Palestinians are the great victims in the Middle East, including Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, and all the rest.
00:12:26.000And this is sort of fascinating because if you're trying to figure out the direction of the Democratic Party, if you're trying to get out the divining rod and determine which direction the Democratic Party is going to move into, the sort of more moderate side or the more radical side, you have to understand the moderates are already caving to the radicals.
00:12:42.000They're already caving to the radicals.
00:12:44.000They may separate off from the trans stuff because it's been so wildly unsuccessful for them.
00:12:48.000But the root cause of the Democratic Party is a belief that America is a great victimizer in the world.
00:12:53.000America's allies are great victimizers in the world.
00:12:56.000And therefore, America ought not have borders.
00:12:59.000And also, America, her foreign policy should essentially be to abandon any strong ally as long as it is beneficial to the Democratic Party to do so.
00:13:09.000There's a sort of third worldism that is set in the Democratic Party.
00:13:12.000I don't mean in the radical wing of the Democratic Party, I mean in the mainstream Joe Biden wing, because Hunter Biden, remember, was Joe Biden's brain, at least the part of it that was semifunctional.
00:13:21.000So here was Hunter Biden going off on President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
00:13:25.000You might be like all these Democrats say, you have to talk about and realize that people are really upset about illegal immigration.
00:13:45.000Who do you think is here by the sheer just grit and will that they figured out a way to get here because they thought that they could give themselves and their family a better chance?
00:13:58.000And he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are criminals.
00:14:03.000White men in America are 45 more times likely to commit a violent crime than an immigrant.
00:14:12.000So he actually concludes that statement that white men are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants by suggesting that we should actually force El Salvador to send back illegal immigrants, which is funny since the ones we're sending to El Salvador are by and large people with actual criminal records.
00:14:27.000These guys think that we need to run away from all values in order for us to lead.
00:14:33.000How are we getting those people back from El Salvador?
00:14:36.000Because I'll tell you what, if I became president in two years from now or four years from now or three years from now, I would pick up the phone and call the president of El Salvador and say, you either send them back or I'm going to invade.
00:14:49.000It's a fucking crime what they're doing.
00:14:59.000Now, again, the reason this is important is because Hunter was Joe Biden's partially functioning brain during the administration.
00:15:05.000This is the Democratic Party perspective on illegal immigration.
00:15:07.000America ought to be an open borders country because unfettered immigration without any sort of real security, without any sort of concern about cultural assimilation, is an effective good.
00:15:19.000That is something the Democratic Party deeply believes.
00:15:21.000And as we start discussing 2028 candidates, understand there will not be a Democrat on the stage who significantly calls for border security.
00:15:30.000It's not just with regard to immigration.
00:15:32.000The Democratic Party also realizes that the energy in its party is very much on the side of third worldism, the sort of Zoran Mamdani belief that the third world has been victimized by America and her allies, and therefore the third world must have her revenge.
00:15:49.000So for example, Hunter Biden was talking about the dramatic increase in anti-Semitism under his father's administration, which is certainly a thing that happened.
00:15:57.000And he says the real reason for that is because of the Israelis.
00:16:00.000The Israelis created the anti-Semitism.
00:16:01.000So in other words, after Hamas murdered 1,200 Jews in Israel and took 250 hostage, a couple of dozen of whom are still being held hostage after a year and a half, that it's Israel's fault that the anti-Semitism broke out.
00:16:16.000I think it's probably the most prescient thing that's been written about this in at least many months.
00:16:22.000Tom Friedman wrote a thing is that the worst thing that's happened to the Jewish people is the Israeli government, Jewish people globally, the threats to their lives, the anti-Semitism that it has generated.
00:16:37.000The worst thing that's happened to the Jewish people is the Israeli government, according to Hunter Biden.
00:16:42.000And then he brags about how his father tried to hamstring Israel in its pursuit of getting back its hostages and ending Hamas, an actual, honest to God, American State Department-designated terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
00:16:53.000He took away the bunker-busting bombs from the Israelis.
00:16:55.000He tried to curtail Netanyahu's thing.
00:16:57.000He forced Netanyahu to open up shipping lanes and aid lanes at the Robot Crossing to be able to get food aid in.
00:17:07.000He put pressure over and over and over again.
00:17:09.000And now, by the way, that is not even remotely happening.
00:17:12.000What is happening is they were bombing food lines.
00:17:14.000There's no one in there to be able to record it.
00:17:16.000The World Food Program, the UNHCR, none of the aid organizations are able to make it in.
00:17:21.000Doctors Without Borders no longer can make it in.
00:17:23.000There have been more journalists killed at this war in Gaza than in any other war combined.
00:17:30.000I mean, this is propaganda on behalf of Hamas, we should point out here, because the reality is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, which has been actually facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza, as we'll discuss a little later on in the show, has been denying Hamas access to the food, which is why Hamas is shooting people and then attempting to insinuate itself among the population in order to shoot at Israeli soldiers who then respond.
00:17:51.000That is the real thing that's been happening in the Gaza Strip.
00:17:53.000But again, these are the parts of the Democratic base that the Democrats are trying to woo.
00:17:58.000It is very important to them, illegal immigration and third worldism.
00:18:03.000There is no systemic immunity for the Democratic Party against their radical base.
00:18:14.000This is a party that is an empty vessel that has no direction forward.
00:18:19.000The supposed moderates in its own coalition are completely unable to argue their way out of a paper bag against the so-called progressives in their coalition.
00:18:29.000So James Carville, his solution, James Carville, is basically that the Democratic Party ought to ignore its own agenda and simply just rip on Trump.
00:18:38.000That's the only way to somehow appeal to moderates in America, according to James Carville.
00:18:42.000Quote, constipated, leaderless, confused, a cracked out clown car, divided.
00:18:47.000These are words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late.
00:18:53.000Zorin Mamdani's victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary wasn't an isolated event.
00:18:58.000It represents an undeniable fissure in our political soul.
00:19:01.000We are divided along generational lines.
00:19:03.000Candidates like Mr. Mamdani are impatient for an economic future that folks my age are skeptical can be delivered.
00:19:08.000We are divided along ideological lines.
00:19:10.000A party that is historically allegiance to the state of Israel is at odds with a growing faction that will not look past the abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
00:19:17.000From Medicare for all purists to Affordable Care Act reformists, the list goes on and on.
00:19:21.000The Democratic Party is steamrolling toward a civilized civil war.
00:20:40.000They just voted for a budget the Republicans did that added $3.5 trillion to the debt.
00:20:45.000The Democratic Party, again, has no systemic immunity to any of this.
00:20:48.000And this is why, for example, AOC is actually in quite good shape to be a Democratic nominee in 2028.
00:20:53.000I'm telling you, they're selling her short.
00:20:55.000Anybody who's telling you AOC is not a serious candidate is just wrong about this.
00:20:59.000Now, again, she is going to continue to stump for open borders.
00:21:01.000The biggest question for Democrats is not a question of candidates.
00:21:04.000It's a question of how well the country is doing.
00:21:07.000If the economy continues to do really well under President Trump, Democrats are going to have a very difficult time going forward.
00:21:13.000If the economy were to sink, AOC is incredibly well placed.
00:21:16.000And even her insane open borders perspective is going to be swallowed by a large percentage of the population seeking revenge against a Trump Republican party if the economy goes the other way.
00:21:25.000And that's just the way economics works in the United States.
00:21:28.000Whichever is the party in power, if the economy goes south, gets blamed for it.
00:21:31.000Here is AOC, who is mirroring exactly what you heard Hunter Biden saying about illegal immigration just a moment ago.
00:21:39.000There are consequences to ripping up law-abiding, dutiful, undocumented people from their country.
00:21:51.000Now, AOC has been attempting, as you can see from her policy, to moderate in certain particular ways to keep one foot in sort of every camp.
00:21:58.000She doesn't want to be labeled with the full-scale Zorin Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, anti-Semite brush.
00:22:03.000And so instead, what she's doing is one time she cried when they refunded Iron Dome in Israel.
00:22:08.000This week, she voted against cutting U.S. funding for Israel completely.
00:22:12.000There was a bill that was on the floor to completely cut the funding.
00:22:16.000And her office in Westchester Square in the East Bronx was splattered in red paint and adorned with a sign reading AOC funds genocide in Gaza.
00:22:23.000But this, again, is a problem for the Democratic Party, is that in the end, they are not going to be able to repel the far left.
00:22:29.000They're turning into a far left party.
00:22:32.000And Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are a perfect example of this.
00:22:35.000They were the decaying brand of a supposedly moderate Democratic Party that will not and does not have the stones to actually fend off the far left brand of the Democratic Party that is the direction the Democratic Party is going to move.
00:22:46.000And that's the most interesting thing about what Hunter Biden has to say.
00:22:49.000All of these sort of revenge tactics on former Democrats and Democratic advisors.
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00:25:47.000And the only way you're going to hear about it is on this show because no one actually watches Stephen Colbert's show.
00:25:51.000And he launched into the person who's been paying him $15, $20 million a year.
00:25:57.000Over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak saying, They pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year.
00:26:51.000There's no laugh anywhere inside anywhere there.
00:26:53.000And they're still wondering why Stephen Colbert was canceled.
00:26:55.000I love the fact that he can't even deny that his show lost that much money.
00:26:58.000He has to somehow just yell at his employer for paying a settlement with President Trump over the 60 minutes botchery with Kamala Harris.
00:27:06.000Colbert then spends some time telling President Trump to go F himself, which of course is exactly how Stephen Colbert brought himself to this point.
00:27:11.000He turned into late night televangelism for left-wing nonsense.
00:29:08.000And if you believe as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king's radar, A, why will anyone watch you and you are wrong?
00:29:30.000And the answer is you became hectoring scolds.
00:29:32.000That is the reason why the failure is occurring is the hectoring scolding.
00:29:36.000There's nothing funny or interesting about any of this.
00:29:38.000You can blame that on Donald Trump, but the reality is you guys got in your own heads over Donald Trump and there was nothing you could do about it.
00:29:45.000And all the humor left your body the minute that that happened.
00:29:47.000Okay, meanwhile, with the Democrats in disarray, they are trying to hone in again on the Epstein case.
00:29:54.000They just keep honing in on the Epstein case as though there is tons more to find.
00:29:58.000And so Democrats have been trying to force votes on Epstein in the House.
00:30:03.000The House Republicans keep saying, listen, just give the DOJ time or the AG time to release what it is that they can.
00:30:08.000This idea that Congress has to pass some sort of resolution to pry the Epstein files free.
00:30:12.000First of all, an enormous number of the Epstein files are under court seal.
00:30:16.000So you actually have to apply for a court release.
00:30:19.000Second of all, there are FBI procedures and protocols before you simply release stuff into the public arena.
00:30:41.000Again, the reason that Speaker Johnson is doing this is basically he is saying that the administration is going to release what it is going to release.
00:30:47.000The idea there's some sort of massive cover-up is a botchery.
00:30:50.000Again, that botchery should be laid at the hands of Pam Bondi, the attorney general, who went out there and claimed that there was all this material that led to a particular conclusion and then dropped the news that actually that conclusion was wrong and the material did not lead there in the first place.
00:31:02.000Representative Ralph Norman, a members of the House Rules Committee, is accusing Democrats of grandstanding and says Republicans refuse to give the minority party an endless microphone.
00:31:12.000Steve Scalise, who is the House majority whip, he says at the end of the day, Democrats are yelling and screaming.
00:31:17.000They spent four years covering up for Epstein.
00:31:19.000And you know, at least President Trump in the court is right now trying to get documents released.
00:31:22.000I really think you're going to see hopefully a lot unsealed from that.
00:31:24.000And then we've got some other options as well.
00:31:27.000In fact, if you're worried about the Trump administration not taking the Epstein file stuff seriously, then why is the Deputy AG seeking a meeting with Ghelain Maxwell, according to Axios?
00:31:36.000Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced today he is seeking a meeting with Ghelaine Maxwell.
00:31:42.000Blanche said in a social media post, Pamboni instructed him to contact Maxwell's team, which he has done.
00:31:50.000Now, remember, the FBI and the DOJ, they have already reviewed all of this material.
00:31:56.000It is highly unlikely that Ghelaine Maxwell is going to say anything now that she hasn't said before, at least that has any sort of credibility.
00:32:05.000And so it is quite plausible that she is now going to start offering all sorts of unspecified or unverifiable allegations in order to muddy the waters.
00:32:13.000This is one of the problems with talking to criminals.
00:32:19.000I mean, first of all, I assume there were many interviews with Ghalain Maxwell before her trial.
00:32:24.000Blanche said in a statement, the Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice Wherever the fact may lead.
00:32:31.000Blanche added that the FBI and DOJ's joint statement sent earlier this month regarding Epstein, quote, remains as accurate today as when it was written.
00:32:38.000He said, President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence.
00:32:42.000If Ghelaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and DOJ will hear what she has to say.
00:32:49.000Her attorney, of course, has said that the discussions are underway and that Ghelane will always testify truthfully and added, we are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.
00:32:59.000Now, again, Maxwell is trying to wiggle her way free of all of the charges that were filed against her.
00:33:04.000She was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking and other charges.
00:33:07.000Is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the state of Florida.
00:33:12.000There have even been calls to free her.
00:33:15.000Glae Maxwell for sure knows that if she can offer enough sort of bait, it's possible that there will be people who call for her release, that she will be the great heroine of the story somehow, despite having been Epstein's girlfriend who was convicted of sex trafficking on behalf of Epstein.
00:33:34.000And criminals are very good at succoring people, and this is just another example of that.
00:33:38.000Okay, so Democrats, of course, are pushing this incredibly hard.
00:33:40.000What's fascinating is which Republicans are also pushing this incredibly hard?
00:33:44.000Because the question there is, what is the agenda?
00:33:45.000Do they actually believe Trump is complicit in a cover-up?
00:33:48.000If so, they should just say so out loud.
00:33:49.000This is the part that nobody will ask them.
00:33:51.000Do they think Donald Trump is covering the Epstein stuff up?
00:33:55.000If they think Donald Trump is covering the Epstein stuff up, will someone not ask them?
00:34:00.000I'm asking Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey, if you think Donald Trump is covering up the Epstein stuff, what is it that you think he is covering up and why?
00:34:09.000Seriously, you're the ones making the claim a cover-up is going on of such utter epic proportions that there must be a congressional resolution to pry the files out of these hands.
00:34:22.000Thomas Massey was walking onto the House floor with a binder labeled the Epstein files phase two and the bill number of a resolution he is co-sponsoring with Gadfly Rokana, who's attempting to get in from he's attempting to get attention, obviously, for a 2028 run.
00:34:35.000Massey said the Epstein bill resolution is non-binding, so it's kind of fake.
00:34:38.000The resolution I have with Kana would be binding on the president.
00:34:41.000So what is it that he thinks that Trump is hiding?
00:34:45.000And why, if you are a loyal Trumpist Republican, somebody who believes the president ought to succeed, are you doing this?
00:34:51.000Why are you fostering a conspiracy theory about Trump?
00:34:54.000Forget about Epstein, a conspiracy theory about a Trump cover-up that Democrats are currently pushing for political gain.
00:35:00.000That is the thing that is happening right now.
00:35:02.000Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing the same thing.
00:35:07.000If you tell the base of people who support you of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich, powerful, elite, evil cabals, you must take down every enemy of the people.
00:35:14.000If not, the base will turn and there's no going back.
00:35:16.000Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfied.
00:35:18.000They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.
00:35:39.000Pseudo-MAGA are people who claim to speak on behalf of the MAGA movement, who represent a tiny sliver of the people who voted for Donald Trump.
00:35:46.000What are they actually attempting to do?
00:35:48.000What they are actually attempting to do, again, is seize control of the supposed MAGA movement from the only person who founded it and created it, Donald J. Trump.
00:35:57.000They don't like Trump's policy in the Middle East.
00:35:59.000They don't like Trump's policy on Ukraine.
00:36:01.000They don't like some of Trump's domestic policy.
00:36:03.000And so what they are attempting to do is shift allegiances away from Trump and to some sort of bizarre agglomeration of isolationism and gigantic government subsidization scheme.
00:36:18.000I mean, Massey is on the isolationist side.
00:36:20.000He's not on the giant government spending side.
00:36:22.000Green seems to be on the side of both.
00:36:24.000But whatever the case is, there's clearly an attempt to attack Trump here.
00:36:35.000So if you're accusing Trump of a cover-up, the question is, why are you, what's the theory?
00:36:39.000Or is it a cynical play to attempt to drive down Trump's favorables and seize control of the movement that he built?
00:36:45.000Because that's what it looks a lot like.
00:36:48.000That's my theory of why you are doing what you are doing.
00:36:51.000Because I don't believe you that you are doing this in the name of quote unquote transparency.
00:36:55.000Because if you were doing this in the name of quote unquote transparency, then presumably when House Republicans were in control, because they've been in control of the House for a bit here, you would have been fostering resolutions on the release of Epstein files under Joe Biden, which I don't recall you doing.
00:37:10.000Beyond that, again, why are you, the argument you're making is that Trump and team are covering up the Epstein stuff.
00:37:16.000If you are joining, if you find yourself on the same side as Rokana on this issue, I'm just wondering why exactly we should consider you loyal members of MAGA, if this is indeed about supposed loyalty to MAGA, which is what Taylor Green is making it all about.
00:37:32.000All righty, in just one second, I want to get into a couple of major criminal cases that are actually quite fascinating because they underscore why MAGA is popular and why there is a feeling abroad in the United States that there's a movement to free criminals from prison.
00:37:46.000Alrighty, meanwhile, a couple of stories about criminal cases that really underscore why the MAGA movement exists.
00:37:52.000So a federal judge has now sentenced former Louisville, Kentucky police detective Brett Hankison to nearly three years in prison for his role in the botched 2020 raid during which Breonna Taylor was fatally shot.
00:38:03.000This is according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:38:04.000Hankison was convicted in 2024 of civil rights abuse after blindly firing 10 shots through Taylor's home during the raid.
00:38:12.000They did not strike any of the neighbors.
00:38:15.000He had faced a maximum of life in prison.
00:38:18.000Okay, so the Justice Department under President Trump asked for a one-day prison sentence, basically saying this conviction is bull and he never should have been convicted in the first place.
00:38:26.000Instead, the U.S. District Court Judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, sentenced him to 33 months.
00:38:32.000Now, again, that is less than the guidelines sentencing range, but it is a reflection of how insane, insane our criminal justice system became in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter summer that Hankison was ever convicted in the first place.
00:38:44.000For those who don't remember the Breonna Taylor case, basically the Breonna Taylor case was about a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was in an apartment with her boyfriend.
00:38:55.000And her boyfriend believed the police were intruders because there was a no-knock warrant that was issued.
00:39:01.000They did, in fact, knock at the door because there was suspicion that drug activity was going on from this apartment.
00:39:22.000So what was the conviction on the basis of?
00:39:24.000Well, actually, he was indicted on state charges for felony, want, and endangerment in 2020 and was acquitted.
00:39:30.000And the federal government, under Joe Biden, brought a civil rights violation case against this police officer, Brett Hankin, under Section 242 of Title 18, which is depriving a person of their rights under the color of law.
00:39:45.000Okay, now, typically you have to willfully do that.
00:39:48.000That is like if you arrest somebody while you're a cop and you know that that person is innocent and you arrest them and then you abuse them, that is a civil rights violation under section 242 of Title 18.
00:39:57.000There has to be a willfulness component here.
00:40:00.000The DOJ's original statements on the conviction of Brett Hankin suggested, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, today, Brett Hankison was found guilty by a jury of his peers for willfully depriving Breonna Taylor of her constitutional rights.
00:40:13.000His use of deadly force was unlawful and put Ms. Taylor in harm's way.
00:40:16.000This verdict is an important step toward accountability for the violation of Breonna Taylor's civil rights, but justice for the loss of Ms. Taylor is a task that exceeds human capacity.
00:40:25.000So I asked our friends over at Perplexity, our friends and sponsors, aside from Brett Hankin, are there any other prior cases of 18 USD 242 being used to convict a police officer for recklessly firing at a suspect during a situation in which officers were lawfully present and being fired upon at the time?
00:40:42.000And Perplexity notes that courts have recognized reckless disregard of a constitutional right, which is the question here, can meet the willingness requirement in some context, but this is not always uniformly applied.
00:40:52.000And then it cites several cases, Perplexity, in which there was no actual use of 18 U.S. Code 242 to prosecute.
00:41:01.000And that includes, for example, the Amadou Diallo case, in which officers fired 41 shots at an unarmed individual believing he was threat.
00:41:08.000Prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence of specific intent to violate rights.
00:41:25.000Bradley, an officer fired at a fleeing suspect after a misunderstood traffic incident.
00:41:30.000And a conviction under 242 was upheld on the theory of reckless disregard of rights.
00:41:33.000But that situation did not include the officers being fired upon.
00:41:37.000In fact, says Perplexity, a review of available legal analyses and commentaries reveal that prior to cases like Brett Hankinson's, it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for federal prosecutors to secure a 242 conviction against an officer for recklessly firing at a suspect during an incident where officers were lawfully president, officers were themselves under fire, and the conviction was based on reckless gunfire, not sexual misconduct, theft, or anything else.
00:42:01.000There appeared to be no documented cases, none, before Brett Hankin, where an officer was convicted under 18 U.S. Code 242, specifically for recklessly firing at a suspect during a lawful police operation where officers were actively being fired upon.
00:42:16.000Okay, that's how insane this case was.
00:42:19.000So again, according to the evidence at the trial, officers knocked on Taylor's doors.
00:42:22.000There's a no-knock warrant, but they knocked.
00:42:24.000There's a major contention at the trial originally that there was no knock.
00:42:37.000Taylor's boyfriend, believing that there were intruders, even though they had clearly announced themselves, fired his handgun at the officers and then they fired back.
00:42:44.000And when they fired back, he had put Breonna Taylor in harm's way and Breonna Taylor was killed.
00:42:48.000Hankison, who was convicted, was not one of the officers who fired from the doorway.
00:42:52.000He fired separately from the side of the building through a sliding glass door and a bedroom window, both of which were covered with closed blinds and curtains.
00:43:00.000Evidence shows that many of the shots passed through Taylor's apartment and didn't hit anybody else.
00:43:05.000So this person ended up being convicted by the Joe Biden DOJ.
00:43:10.000I've never even heard of a case in which an officer was convicted of a civil rights violation for firing during an actual firefight with a suspect in which officers were lawfully present and the alleged victims in the neighboring apartments were not hit.
00:43:23.000Where is the willfulness component of this?
00:43:24.000And the answer is it didn't exist, but it reminds you of exactly how insane our entire law enforcement system went in the aftermath of Black Lives Summer, which is why MAGA existed.
00:43:35.000It is why the second phase of MAGA existed.
00:43:40.000Meanwhile, the left's dedication to letting truly awful criminals out of prison continues apace.
00:43:47.000One of the big stories that is breaking today is that a man who was convicted in the murder of a six-year-old first grader named Eton Pats is now going to have to be retried or released according to an appeals court.
00:44:00.000According to the Wall Street Journal, a New York federal appellate court overturned the conviction of the man found guilty in the 1979 kidnapping and killing of six-year-old Eton Pats, bringing back to the spotlight a case that drew national attention and changed the way missing children cases are handled.
00:44:13.000Pedro Hernandez, the former Bodega store worker, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
00:44:19.000Well, in 2017, he confessed to police.
00:44:21.000He lured Eton into the store's basement, strangled him, and disposed of the body back in 1979.
00:44:26.000The reason this was such a big case at the time is because this is the first child ever to appear on those missing milk cartons.
00:44:33.000On Monday, a three-judge panel for the second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the jury from Hernandez's child received instructions that would have unquestionably impacted its deliberations.
00:44:46.000Eton, a first grader, disappeared while walking alone for the first time to his school bus stop in the Manhattan neighborhood of Soho on the morning of May 25th, 1979, and he was never found.
00:44:54.000He became one of the first missing kids to appear on a mill carton.
00:44:58.000May 25th, which is when he was abducted, is now known as National Missing Children's Day.
00:45:02.000Three decades later, in 2012, police arrived at the New Jersey home of Hernandez following a tip from his own brother-in-law.
00:45:07.000Hernandez confessed to police after about seven hours of questioning without being given his Miranda warnings, which informed suspects about their rights, such as the right to a lawyer.
00:45:15.000According to Monday's ruling, immediately afterwards, Hernandez signed a Miranda waiver and detectives asked him to, quote, tell us again exactly what you just told us before.
00:45:22.000So Hernandez's defense lawyers argued he had given a false confession and it was because of the police, his mental illness, his low IQ.
00:45:30.000During questioning, he took his medication, including a fentanyl patch.
00:45:33.000He told the police he'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, other mental illnesses.
00:45:37.000His first trial was in 2015, mistrial.
00:45:40.000Second trial ended in February 2017 with unanimous guilty verdict on charges of murder and kidnapping.
00:45:48.000Well, the issue was that during the second trial, the jury sent the judge a few different notes focused on the confessions.
00:45:53.000In the third one, the jury asked, if it found Hernandez's confession without the Miranda warning was not voluntary, would later confessions have to be disregarded?
00:46:00.000The judge told the jury the answer is no.
00:46:05.000However, the basic question here is whether Hernandez was pressured into his original confession or whether he was just talking to the cops.
00:46:13.000This has happened in prior cases and the Supreme Court has ruled on this.
00:46:16.000If the cops come to your house and you confess to a crime and they haven't read you your Miranda rights yet, and then they read you your Miranda rights and then you reconfess to the crime.
00:46:24.000If you did the original confession voluntarily, that's not a problem.
00:46:28.000So that was the question in this particular case.
00:46:31.000The notion that he was compelled to testify to the cops without his Miranda warnings, and then later they read him the Miranda warnings and had him re-up.
00:46:38.000And that was one of the issues in the trial, but it's not clear that the jury actually found that that's what was going on.
00:46:45.000Beyond that, we should point out that the original Miranda ruling is deeply flawed.
00:46:49.000The original Miranda ruling, which suggests that the only way to enforce the Fifth Amendment is to let criminals out of prison for having done crimes, is wrong.
00:46:57.000There are many other ways you can punish officers for failing to take account of the rights of suspects, but letting criminals wander the streets because the officers did a bad job questioning the suspect turns out is a terrible idea.
00:47:08.000One way that you could do this would be to, for example, fire officers who are found to have committed violations of the law in their questioning, to fine police departments.
00:47:16.000There are lots of things you could do.
00:47:17.000Miranda is a very, very badly decided decision by the Supreme Court.
00:47:20.000But even putting that aside, the bottom line is that it is this sort of case that leads people to believe in the law and order aspect of the MAGA platform, which is very real.
00:47:31.000Again, it's insane this person is going to be released onto the streets, presumably, barring some sort of serious retrial.
00:47:37.000Meanwhile, another law enforcement news, the Trump administration on Monday released more than 230,000 pages of documents on the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
00:47:46.000This had been one of the pledges of President Trump during the campaign was to release a lot of information on, for example, the RFK assassination, the JFK assassination, MLK, and also Epstein.
00:47:55.000And the big issue with Epstein is that there are still people who are alive and kicking who are presumably mentioned in the Epstein files without criminal evidence that they actually did anything criminally wrong.
00:48:05.000That is one of the things the FBI has to go through in determining what it can release, what it should release, and all the rest.
00:48:09.000The same thing really does not apply to the MLK assassination.
00:48:13.000Apparently, the family of MLK actually did not want some of the files released because they make MLK look not wonderful because a lot of those files are not specifically about the assassination.
00:48:22.000They're about MLK's personal life, which, as biographers have noted, was quite troubled.
00:48:27.000Attorney General Pambondi said the American people deserve answers after the horrific assassination of one of our nation's great leaders.
00:48:34.000President Trump signed an executive order in January to release the documents.
00:48:37.000Unlike the JFK documents, Dr. King's files had never been digitized, and they sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades, according to Tulsi Gabbard's office.
00:48:46.000Among the files, the office said, were pages related to King's assassin, James Earl Ray, including that Ray's former cellmate stated he discussed an alleged assassination plot with Ray.
00:48:55.000King's two surviving children, Martin Luther King Jr.
00:48:58.000III and Bernice A. King, asked those looking through the documents to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continued grief.
00:49:05.000Again, the thing they're concerned about is that the FBI, which again was being run by J. Edgar Hoover at the time, had, quote, worked to discredit, dismantle, and destroy their father's reputation.
00:49:15.000Again, they have a theory that Ray was not the person who shot their father.
00:49:18.000All the evidence suggests that Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr.
00:49:24.000The administration clearly is attempting to release as much as it can.
00:49:28.000And yes, of course, this has to do with a recommitment to transparency from the Trump administration in the aftermath of the Epstein hubbub.
00:49:35.000There's no question that that's one of the things that is happening here.
00:49:37.000But to suggest that this is some sort of fundamental failure by the Trump administration, that they don't have to go through different procedures and protocols with regard to a half-century old file as opposed to stuff that is currently ongoing with living people, that, of course, is incredibly silly.
00:49:54.000And meanwhile, remember that time that we were told that the Trump administration was going to leech the military in L.A. fascists to take over President Trump declaring himself emperor and all the rest?
00:50:03.000Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of Marines who were deployed to L.A. last month during protests over immigration enforcement will now withdraw from the city, according to the Pentagon.
00:50:11.000Defense Secretary Pete Hegset has directed the redeployment of around 700 Marines from L.A., according to Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
00:50:20.000So, so much for the idea that the federal government is taking over L.A., which was, of course, the big complaint of everybody ranging from Governor Gavin Newsom to Senator Alex Padilla of Los Angeles and California.
00:50:31.000The federal government said it deployed hundreds of Marines to L.A. to protect federal buildings in June.
00:50:36.000They have now withdrawn those Marines.
00:50:39.000Karen Bass then declared victory as though she was some sort of guerrilla insurgent, quote, L.A. stands with our troops, which is why we are glad they are leaving.
00:50:50.000The Pentagon estimated their deployment would cost at least $134 million.
00:50:53.000And again, they were put there in order to defend ICE facilities from outside attack from rioters, which wouldn't have been necessary except for all of the insanity of a left wing dedicated to the proposition that open borders are the way America ought to do business.
00:51:07.000And meanwhile, in the Senate, John Thune is sort of stuck because Congress would like to adjourn.
00:51:14.000They would like to get to their summer recess.
00:51:16.000They want to go back, talk with their constituents, and also, yes, go on summer vacation.
00:51:19.000President Trump is saying you guys should stay in session until you actually approve some of my nominees.
00:51:24.000Senate Majority Leader Thune presumably would like to push that forward.
00:52:08.000Aside from being a gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where he wasn't particularly good at his job, then running for president where he got shellacked, and then becoming a terrible Secretary of Transportation, what are his sterling credentials that make people so interested in Pete Budigej?
00:52:22.000Well, now there's a story from the New York Post that certainly throws a crimp into his plans for a presidential run in 2028.
00:52:30.000According to the New York Post, former Transportation Secretary Pete Budigej failed to replace outdated air traffic control systems while in office.
00:52:37.000Instead, his agency shelled out tens of billions of dollars on a DEI agenda, according to federal spending records and airline industry insiders.
00:52:45.000In one meeting, Budijej told industry executives air traffic control upgrades would just allow them to fly more planes.
00:52:51.000And so why would that be in his interest?
00:53:01.000But apparently, Buttigej didn't think that was the job.
00:53:03.000What his department was really interested in was handing out hundreds of diversity, equity, and inclusion grants, totaling more than $80 billion over four years, at least half of the DOT's entire budget for a typical fiscal year.
00:53:20.000He was definitely pushing an agenda, an air industry official said, noting that the transportation secretary had little to no interest and took definitely zero action toward air traffic control modernization.
00:53:30.000So basically, instead of spending any money on the stuff that you're supposed to do at the DOT, he yelled at the airlines, didn't visit rec sites, and spent all of the money on DEI nonsense.
00:53:43.000The air industry official said at first, the DOT and he were reluctant to say there was an air traffic controller shortage or that the shortage had anything to do with flight delays or flight cancellations.
00:53:53.000Now, spokesperson for Butigej rejects the claims and points to increased air traffic controller hiring and software changes.
00:54:00.000But as everyone knows, things did not get markedly better under Secretary Budijej.
00:54:06.000The DOT's Bureau of Transportation statistics show most flight cancellations, 54.3% were caused by weather.
00:54:13.000One-third, 34.7%, were attributable to air carriers.
00:54:16.00010% were due to failures in the national aviation system.
00:54:30.000So, you know, he's trying to argue that actually he spent the money correctly, that it actually went to facilitate the hiring at the FAA and all of the rest.
00:54:38.000However, in an urgent letter to Butigej's DOT in April 2024, according to the Post, Air Industry Trade Association officials warned at the current rate of their hiring, it could take as long as 90 years for the FAA to reach its targeted staffing levels in some of the critical New York air traffic control centers.
00:54:54.000At the same time, the focus of the department under Budijej also shifted, with roughly 400 DEI-related grants approved, according to review of federal spending between 2021 and 2024.
00:55:04.000Just 60 grants for diversity, equity, or inclusion initiatives were approved during the previous administration.
00:55:09.000So 60 grants compared to 400 grants under Budijej.
00:55:15.000Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure law in 2021 provided a lot of the funding.
00:55:20.000But again, the spending was out of control.
00:55:23.000So Budijedge would yell at the airlines while simultaneously spending billions of dollars on DEI initiatives.
00:55:29.000This is what you're going to run, Democrats, this right here?