The Weekly Standard's Peter Bergen and Emily Jashinsky and Eliana Johnson join host Meghan Kelly to discuss the latest numbers on Biden and how old he is, and why he's not running for re-election. Plus, a new studio, Gone Red.
00:01:56.680We're happy about the fact that we're not.
00:01:59.560You know, I was just talking with a friend of mine last night about how frustrating it is watching cable news, which I don't really do a lot of these days.
00:02:08.060But like the conversations are so surface level.
00:03:01.520Wall Street Journal poll coming out, released over the weekend, shows that Trump is the top choice for nearly 60 percent of Republican voters.
00:04:01.440But he went through the states saying it's Biden's going to beat Donald Trump in these critical swing states.
00:04:07.560And DeSantis needs this money immediately.
00:04:10.660Five million dollars a month just to sustain Iowa.
00:04:14.500And we need it within the next 60 days because he needs to beat Donald Trump in that time frame in two months.
00:04:21.080And he needs to separate from his other rivals right now.
00:04:24.580So let's start with that, Emily, on the state of the race for DeSantis and Trump on the GOP side.
00:04:32.180Yeah, it's really interesting because in campaign world, the number one thing you want to avoid is the stench of backsliding.
00:04:40.880You absolutely if your numbers start going down after being on an upward trajectory, which DeSantis's were before he started running, basically.
00:04:48.620The stench of losing is or the stench of failure is the one thing that turns off donors and it turns off voters.
00:04:55.760If we think back to 2012, when we had that sort of carousel of candidates popping in and out in the Republican primary, what was helpful to a lot of them is getting these like sugar highs.
00:05:05.280And the sugar highs were helped along by the fact that they had, you know, not big baselines so they could jump up really quickly, really easily.
00:05:12.700And that's what made it, you know, pretty simple for them to get their names out there, sort of maybe in a Vivek type way.
00:05:20.380But with DeSantis, it's sort of the opposite problem here.
00:05:23.680And so that's going to make fundraising a really uphill battle.
00:05:26.300It's going to make convincing donors a really uphill battle.
00:05:29.640And it just honestly, the fact of the matter is it looks like Republican voters are consolidating around Trump because he's been hit with all of these indictments.
00:05:36.460They might he might not be their favorite guy in the world, but they're consolidating around him now.
00:05:40.400And the DeSantis strategy to put all of the eggs in the Iowa basket is making a potential comeback even more difficult because he's still down like 25 points in Iowa.
00:05:51.100And even if you won Iowa, if you're down that big nationally, you're going to make it that much harder in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
00:05:57.100I mean, Eliana, these are terrible numbers, not just for DeSantis.
00:06:01.620I don't mean to pick on him, but for the rest of the GOP field, anyone not named Trump who's running for president.
00:06:08.880DeSantis has not been able to get anything going, notwithstanding several relaunches, the skinnying of his campaign staff trying to save money, the super rich super PAC that's backing him, trying to generate interest with the bus campaign in Iowa and the nonstop door knocking.
00:06:28.000They can't that the numbers persistently going in the wrong direction for him.
00:06:33.440The Wall Street Journal poll contained a lot of really interesting information.
00:06:37.040The first piece of interesting information is that it was conducted in part by Trump's pollster, which I think we should keep in mind because that factors into the way questions are formulated.
00:06:47.560And it may be a little bit more favorable to Donald Trump than it otherwise would have been.
00:06:52.160But nonetheless, Trump, of course, it's obvious, remains in the commanding position to win this nomination right now.
00:07:01.940And Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are right on his heels, which is not where he wanted to be.
00:07:07.700And the DeSantis campaign has been plagued by the series of leaks from his super PAC.
00:07:12.600You mentioned Jeff Rowe, the DeSantis consultant running the super PAC by name.
00:07:17.440You know, consultants are supposed to exist in the background.
00:07:20.220Do you know any of the other consultants running the super PACs or the campaigns?
00:07:24.560Are they names in the news in the way that Jeff Rowe is?
00:07:28.200I think that's a bad sign for the DeSantis campaign.
00:07:31.100And then there's the content of what he said.
00:07:33.260He, on the eve of the first debate, told donors that super PAC has already spent over one hundred and thirty million dollars.
00:07:41.120He told those donors, I need fifty million dollars from you guys now.
00:07:45.360The good news is that we have the money.
00:07:47.480The bad news is that it's all in your pockets.
00:07:49.940So for one hundred and thirty million dollars, plus the fifty he's asking for, that's one hundred and eighty million dollars.
00:07:57.460And they don't have a whole lot to show for it.
00:08:00.640Granted, DeSantis has been hit by an enormous amount of attack ads from Trump that the likes of Nikki Haley and particularly Vivek Ramaswamy have not been the subject of.
00:08:11.300But the second thing I would say was Jeff Rowe also said all of the stories you've seen from Vivek Ramaswamy, they came from us.
00:08:22.180And it's just sort of a gross thing to say.
00:08:25.400And if I were DeSantis, it's not the type of thing that you want your guy out there making headlines for.
00:08:36.040You don't want your consultant out there making headlines that way.
00:08:39.300And I think it's just a symptom of a camp of it's a symptom of the issues the campaign is having more broadly.
00:08:45.880Right. Definitely reveals that DeSantis, that his team sees Ramaswamy as a serious threat.
00:08:52.880And they should because Ramaswamy's numbers are going up and DeSantis aren't the just a little more color on the DeSantis problems in New Hampshire.
00:09:03.280Now, the latest poll, this is via the messenger.
00:09:07.620Trump currently holds 47 percent support.
00:09:11.520Haley and Ron DeSantis are behind at 10 percent each.
00:09:15.340So they're tied for second place at 10 percent.
00:09:17.580As recently as June in New Hampshire, DeSantis had 37 percent.
00:10:48.640But, yes, it's it's almost enviable from the other candidates because the trend has been the opposite of what a lot of people wanted to see.
00:10:56.900And my understanding is that there's the frustration in DeSantis world is that there's maybe an insulation that the candidate is sort of insulated from maybe fair criticisms and is listening to all of the wrong people.
00:11:10.060Because, you know, about a month ago, we were talking about how his the head of his campaign had been replaced.
00:11:17.940But he had been in the race for about two months, had burned through a ton of cash and was replacing the person at the top of his campaign a month later.
00:11:26.200And the cash problem is arguably worse.
00:11:28.980And the leadership problem is clearly, clearly still just as bad.
00:11:33.100So it's going in the wrong direction, not just numbers wise, but it's going in the wrong direction in terms of what the campaign looks like, too.
00:11:40.080So it's not as though there are signs of hope on the horizon.
00:11:43.640If anything, it looks like things just can't be turned around right now.
00:11:48.860If what if what the super PAC guy Jeff Rose says is true, Eliana, and they have 60 days in their estimation and they're the ones who have the deep pockets.
00:11:58.780It's not the DeSantis campaign that has them.
00:12:00.680It's the super PAC and he's not supposed to be coordinating with super PAC, but they are funding these buses that Ron DeSantis is riding around Iowa and going door to door and so on.
00:12:09.540So there's it's not that there's coordination.
00:12:11.120It's just that there's definitely support that he needs.
00:12:13.360So if they're saying they've got 60 days or effectively he's done, if 60 days for him to surpass Donald Trump.
00:12:46.460What's what's even scheduled for the next 60 days that could completely change the game here?
00:12:52.080There are two more presidential debates that you have to think they're looking at, one at the end of September and one at the end of October that they have to be eyeing.
00:12:59.600But those are those are just two more inflection points.
00:13:02.680And we didn't see the numbers move enough in DeSantis's direction after the first presidential debate, I think, to make their case.
00:13:12.000What's not clear to me is how they're laying out.
00:13:15.200What exactly are they going to do with the money that's going to move the numbers in the way they need?
00:13:19.580And this poll also showed that the indictments have Republican voters say they're more likely to support Donald Trump, given the indictments rather than less, which is also concerning.
00:13:30.680I think what Republican voters aren't quite realizing is that Trump is free to be out in camp and to campaign now.
00:13:37.960But by the time he secures the nomination a year from now, he's going to be tied up in court dealing with these things and be unable to campaign.
00:13:47.100And in 2020, we had Donald Trump out campaigning and Joe Biden in his basement.
00:13:52.840This time around, it may be, you know, Joe Biden campaigning with a walker and Donald Trump not in his basement, but in the courtroom.
00:13:59.260And I'm not sure that's a reality that Republican voters have fully metabolized.
00:14:04.400I mean, you've got the Fox Business debate at the end of September.
00:14:09.140Then you have the third presidential debate in Alabama at the end of October.
00:14:14.740And we don't know whether Trump is going to be it.
00:14:17.540We know he's not going to the Fox Business debate.
00:14:25.640Then NBC News found him and said, no, no debates.
00:14:30.380And someone close to Trump was cited in NBC News reports saying not definitely not the first two, but left the door open to ones that may come after.
00:14:41.280But this now really does make you question.
00:14:43.480How many debates are there going to be?
00:14:46.160Because if this like if we get to Iowa and Trump wins it by, you know, 25 points or whatever, I don't even like if he runs away with Iowa and then New Hampshire comes right after and he runs away with it's done like super Tuesday in March.
00:15:00.120Are we really going to be looking at like it's done, Emily?
00:15:02.320So I just it's all happening a lot faster than I expected it to than maybe the DeSantis campaign expected it to.
00:15:09.940It's just the momentum behind Trump that very much feels unstoppable.
00:15:15.220And there's one thing in my mind that could prolong this, and it's the sort of silver lining for DeSantis potentially.
00:15:21.560And maybe there's an argument that Nikki Haley or Vivek sees this as something that could happen to them as well.
00:15:26.840But if you look at those numbers in Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Trump is not over the 50 percent hurdle, which is important because it calls to mind how Biden ended up winning, you know, for instance, South Carolina and some of those early states back in 2020, which is that the establishment despised kind of the kind of Bernie Sanders, actually.
00:15:46.640In fact, it was Bernie Sanders so much that they said, Pete, Amy, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, you're getting out of the race.
00:15:53.240This is important enough that you need to sacrifice and rally behind Joe Biden so that Bernie Sanders can be wiped off the face of the electoral earth at this point.
00:16:02.460And that is potentially something that a Ron DeSantis or a Nikki Haley can maybe bank on going into Iowa and South Carolina if they can say, listen, we pull all of our stuff together.
00:17:23.280OK, so we'll see what happens on the GOP side.
00:17:26.040But yes, if that's the only possible way, it seems at this point, is for the other candidates to get behind one candidate, the non-Trump alternative, and put all their might behind him.
00:17:35.820I mean, good, good luck. Take it up with Vivek Ramaswamy, who does not seem in a mind to get behind anybody other than Trump and maybe himself.
00:17:44.800I don't know. By the way, this same article is saying this.
00:17:47.460Jeff Rowe is saying Trump is a, quote, surefire loser who cannot win the four states that he says this race will come down to Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
00:18:00.600And he said to the donors, we have Senate races there that also cannot overcome Trump on the ballot.
00:18:08.340I mean, those are the states, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
00:18:12.040He's not raising bad questions, Eliana.
00:18:14.080I mean, those really this is really the question for GOP voters right now, as much as they love Trump.
00:18:19.360And and sure, he's well on his way to becoming the nominee.
00:18:22.300But can he get over the hump in those critical states when he's against?
00:18:27.400Yes, an unpopular guy. Is he as unpopular as Hillary Clinton was Joe Biden?
00:18:32.180You know, people are upset about his age, but do they loathe him as much as they loathe Hillary Clinton?
00:18:39.020And can Republican voters take that for granted?
00:18:42.040A couple of things on that, Megan. You know, it's great for Jeff Rowe to make that case.
00:18:45.240It would be even better for Governor Ron DeSantis to be out on the campaign trail and on a debate stage making that case against Donald Trump.
00:18:55.160If you want to win, Republicans, if you want to win, you have to support somebody other than Donald Trump who sandbagged Republican senatorial prospects in Georgia,
00:19:05.780who lost the 2020 election, who lost the popular vote in in 2020 and so on and so forth.
00:19:13.440But they need to be out there making that case.
00:19:17.200The other thing I would say is that in the polls and in this Wall Street Journal poll,
00:19:22.260their poll on the general election moving away from what it shows in the Republican primary was really interesting.
00:19:27.860It actually showed Trump in a stronger position going into the 2024 general election than in the 2020 general election.
00:19:34.760He is in a dead heat with Joe Biden, which he never really was in 2020.
00:19:40.120And by an 11 point margin, more voters see Trump rather than Biden as having a record of accomplishment of as president.
00:20:05.060But if it's about accomplishment and vision, voters support Trump on that.
00:20:10.100So in a general election, I think it's hard.
00:20:13.300You know, Barack Obama is there warning Joe Biden and Democrats that they need to take the prospect of a Trump victory very, very seriously.
00:20:21.220Biden and the Democrats are angling for a Trump nomination.
00:20:24.060That's why they're hitting him with indictment after indictment.
00:20:26.640They know it helps his prospects, but it is very possible that he will win reelection.
00:20:33.020Republicans need to be making the case that he's a surefire loser if they want to defeat him.
00:20:37.660I didn't hear that a lot on the stage in the first debate.
00:20:50.160The numbers are interesting to me because, of course, in 2016, there really was a secret Trump vote that was not accounted for in the poll.
00:20:56.640I mean, just go back and look at Google general election polls 2016 and you'll see everybody had it wrong.
00:21:02.440I mean, it was like Trafalgar had it right and nobody else had it right.
00:21:07.460They completely expected Hillary Clinton to win.
00:21:09.880I think The Washington Post or The New York Times said she had a 98 percent chance of winning that night as we went into the, you know, counting the numbers.
00:21:16.580And, of course, we know that's not what happened.
00:21:19.860And there was a secret Trump vote of people who were afraid to tell pollsters or speak publicly about their support for this person who was very controversial and who was in the news every day from every publication saying he was a racist and a misogynist and a bigot and all the terrible things.
00:21:52.380You know, it's really not that controversial.
00:21:54.340Virtually all Republicans voted for Trump back in 2017.
00:21:57.860You know, he didn't get or 20, sorry, 2020.
00:22:00.280He didn't get the, you know, 17,000 that he needed to put him over the top.
00:22:04.180But, you know, the point is it's not as bad to say it.
00:22:06.740So I don't know about these polls, whether there's a hidden Trump vote or not, because some people say the numbers for Trump are even more inflated than polls like the Journal are showing.
00:22:14.900Um, the Journal poll that you just referenced shows now that, um, stand by the negative views of Biden's age and performance in office help explain why only 39% of voters have a favorable view of him.
00:23:25.360And I hadn't even thought about it that way because, uh, that, that is the, the line the White House is going to use more and more.
00:23:30.800But, uh, there's just an obvious difference between, you know, people, and, and we've all seen this in our own personal lives.
00:23:36.360Uh, one person who's 85, one person who's even 90 could be dramatically different than somebody who's, uh, 70 or somebody who's 60.
00:23:45.340I mean, these, these things are just a case by case basis.
00:23:48.560And another really interesting point that you also just raised, I think, is the secret Trump voter, the, the, perhaps the decline of the secret Trump voter.
00:23:54.760Another thing Republicans in Washington, D.C. are really worried about is that you just have Trump voters who don't even believe their votes are counted.
00:24:02.540They believe that, for instance, uh, the situation in some of these key swing states is going to be, uh, rigged by vote counters.
00:24:09.680So what's the point in going out to vote if you're so disenchanted and disillusioned by the process and distrustful of the process, you could actually lose key segments of Trump votes in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because people are just like, what the hell?
00:24:25.980But then at the same time, you have, you know, this huge problem for Joe Biden, especially with young voters.
00:24:31.180Um, and I think it's just shameful, shameful to have numbers like that and not debate.
00:24:36.200I get that incumbent presidents don't debate.
00:24:38.240It's not the norm, but to have numbers like that thing, the saying the country, uh, even your own party thinks you're too old, thinks that you should debate, thinks that, you know, they should have another option on the table.
00:24:48.160Basically, they're just opening this giant hole for, uh, Joe Manchin to step into and play like Ross Perot spoiler, which is becoming a bigger possibility every single week.
00:24:58.620And especially the more that Biden's numbers look like this.
00:25:32.620Well, there's really, there isn't a Marianne Williamson.
00:25:34.360But anyway, he's not going to, I mean, he's, he's not going to pay any attention to any up and comers.
00:25:40.080I do think there's a broad concern in the Democratic Party that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump once.
00:25:47.880Barack Obama dissuaded him from running in 2016 and Hillary Clinton lost to Trump.
00:25:52.280Biden then ran in 2020 and beat Trump.
00:25:55.520And I think Biden thinks he's the only person who can beat Trump in 2024.
00:25:59.780I don't think he thinks Kamala Harris can do it.
00:26:01.940And I don't think the Democratic Party thinks Kamala Harris can do it.
00:26:04.620And I think that's why you see the reluctance from Biden to cede the stage and, um, and open a primary.
00:26:12.340I think Democrats really worry that they don't have somebody ready to go on the sidelines, um, partially because there would be deference to Kamala Harris.
00:26:19.940They feel pressure to defer to her as the vice president, uh, know that she would lose.
00:26:24.440But I do think that Biden, um, Biden is selling himself as the only person who can defeat Trump.
00:26:31.140And, uh, and Barack Obama, um, the only person who could make him, um, leave exit stage left is Barack Obama intervening, um, and telling him, you know, I'm going to come out and say, you got to go publicly unless you do it privately.
00:26:48.900And we'll arrange for a graceful exit and everyone will celebrate you and your record.
00:26:52.480And, you know, we'll arrange in the background for somebody to, um, become the nominee.
00:26:58.120But I do think that his record of having defeated Trump once is, uh, is what he's running on this time.
00:27:07.280It's you pointed it out a second ago that, um, the Republican voters don't care at all about the indictments.
00:27:16.960The Democrats are banking on them in, if he, if Trump gets to the general, the numbers are as follows.
00:27:23.720This is again from the wall street journal poll, more than 60% of Republican primary voters said the indictments are politically motivated and without merit.
00:27:32.340Each one, some 78% say Trump's actions after the 2020 election were legitimate efforts to ensure an accurate vote.
00:27:43.380They are not moved by the January 6th stories, period.
00:27:49.140Uh, 16% said Trump had illegally tried to block Congress from certifying an election that he had lost 16.
00:27:56.820And that consists of Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney.
00:29:00.600Your hand shot up pretty fast at the debate when you were asked whether you would vote for Donald Trump in the general election, even if he was a convicted felon.
00:29:08.580Can you just explain why you would vote for a convicted felon for president?
00:29:12.140I'm asking you why you made the promise.
00:29:14.240Why do you think it's okay for a convicted felon to be president?
00:29:16.940And you find his actions abhorrent around January 6th.
00:29:19.560You said he was wrong to take the classified information.
00:29:22.120You said you would not do that yourself.
00:29:23.600Yet you still say you would vote for him for president.
00:30:01.840It's amazing to me that exchange from George Stephanopoulos has to happen on air between him and Vivek Ramaswamy and not voters like as you were pointing out, like millions of voters around the country who could give you a very articulate explanation of why that is a much lower level priority for them.
00:30:18.960Why Donald Trump's, you know, whatever he did after the election in January 6th is a much lower level priority for them than the fact that it's being weaponized by his political opponents to potentially put him in prison, not to mention levels of inflation that create real material concerns for them.
00:30:37.520The health care situation that create real material concerns for them, all of these higher level priorities that voters have that make it perfectly easy for them to reconcile in their own head voting for Donald Trump, even though he did some bad stuff in their minds after the election and on January 6th and maybe even since versus voting for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or back in 2016 Hillary Clinton.
00:31:01.960And it is so easy for the average voter who is, you know, maybe they're not even Republicans, but independents or Democrats in certain states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who pulled the lever for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
00:31:12.920This is this makes perfect sense to them.
00:31:14.940They see what happened, what's happening with gender ideology.
00:31:17.900They see what's happening with maybe their pro-life voters and they see what the Biden administration wants to do with abortion.
00:31:24.060These things are totally not mutually exclusive to them.
00:31:27.440And all you need to do is sit down with a voter to understand that Vivek Ramaswamy is hardly crazy for echoing the exact same thing on the debate stage.
00:31:35.440And I think it's been a problem for the other candidates, DeSantis included, who I thought was going to be really good about this, to make that case on the debate stage as well in a way that resonated with those millions of Republican voters.
00:31:45.340The 58 percent, as Emily's ticking off the issues, Eliana, 58 percent of voters in the same journal poll saying the economy's gotten worse over the past two years.
00:31:56.060Only 28 percent say it's gotten better.
00:31:58.460Nearly three in four, three out of four people say inflation is headed in the wrong direction.
00:32:04.100They don't give a shit about Trump's indictments.
00:32:08.660They think that it's been a political weaponization of the DOJ.
00:32:12.240They're not persuaded that he did anything wrong.
00:32:14.520And to me, it almost reminds me, Eliana, of the the E.
00:32:17.720Jean Carroll moment at the CNN town hall where Caitlin Collins was like, you know, this woman, she's won this verdict against you in a civil courtroom for, you know, sexual battery.
00:32:31.280And then the CNN panel panel after the fact and a bunch of Democrat writers in the press were like, oh, they left at a rape victim.
00:32:40.420And we sat back here saying, hello, they don't believe she's a rape victim.
00:32:46.000Why is everyone just jumping to the conclusion that because she got a 51 percent verdict in New York, a civil verdict, which is just a 51 to 49 percent standard?
00:32:55.300Is it more likely than not that he assaulted her in some way that everybody must believe?
00:32:59.720As a matter of fact, this woman was raped in a Bergdorf Goodman.
00:33:09.540OK, the journal poll shows that by basically by a factor of by a margin of two to one voters disapprove of his handling of inflation, of the border and of the economy.
00:33:46.680But the election is not going to be won or lost based on those voters and their feeling.
00:33:50.500It's going to be won or lost by a handful of independents.
00:33:53.560We saw that in 2020 and we saw that in 2016.
00:33:57.780Those swing voters need to hear from a candidate who's going to be able to aggressively prosecute the case against Biden, not somebody who's going to be tied up in court from Super Tuesday on.
00:35:38.680And I have one point of disagreement with Eliana and then one point of disagreement with Jeff Rowe, which is that it's it will come down to a handful of independents.
00:35:47.160But then also what has to factor into that as a variable is turnout.
00:35:51.300And that's where Jeff Rowe looks at a state like Wisconsin and says, you know, Trump is going to drag the Republican ballot down in Wisconsin.
00:35:59.420And at the same time, I think that's, you know, sort of stale beltway conventional wisdom.
00:36:05.120And I look at what Donald Trump did to electrify voters who may not have come out in a presidential election in 2016.
00:36:11.660And he lost the state in 2020, but still put up decent numbers.
00:36:14.400There are people, especially in the Rust Belt, that just plainly don't vote.
00:36:18.680And then you have to balance that with young people who are not going to come out and vote for Joe Biden unless the Democratic Party is really able to successfully message the election as, for instance, abortion in a way as a referendum on abortion policy that gets young voters, suburban people in those like suburban.
00:36:35.680And let's just say suburban Milwaukee counties, the Wow counties in Wisconsin to come out.
00:36:39.700And so I don't think it's surefire at all, because what you need is a candidate like Jeff Rowe's own candidate who on a state level was able to bridge these two disparate factions of Republican voters, the hardcore MAGA base and the sort of suburban people who are averse to Trump, but would vote Republican if given a different option.
00:37:02.180That is almost an impossible balancing act to pull off. Ron DeSantis did it in Florida, which is why exactly why everyone thought he would be able to do it on the national stage.
00:37:11.280Strong economy, great policies there, was competent as a governor and also sort of aggressively pushed back on ideological excesses of the left.
00:37:19.260And that Ron DeSantis has not been the one that's been campaigning.
00:37:22.520And none of the other candidates, none of the other candidates, with the possible exception of Avake, are showing that they can talk to those two disparate groups of Republican voters that are absolutely essential to have both turnout and suburban voters.
00:37:35.940And this was DeSantis' attempt. This was DeSantis' opportunity to prove that it could be done nationally. And he hasn't made that case.
00:37:43.020I just keep going back to that. He had 37% in New Hampshire in June. DeSantis did. 37% in June. It's now September 5th and he's at 10%. That is not the stuff of a winning campaign.
00:37:58.800According to his people, he's got 60 days to turn it around. We'll see. More with Emily and Eliana right after this quick break.
00:38:05.380Okay, so it turns out that, you know, we knew that Joe Biden had a pseudonym that he was using.
00:38:15.720And now it turns out that Hunter Biden's firm, like while he was sitting vice president, Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, traded more than 1,000 emails with Joe Biden's office during his time as vice president.
00:38:30.900And hundreds, quoting here from the New York Post, remain hidden because the executive, because the White House is asserting executive privilege.
00:38:41.060861 emails referencing Rosemont Seneca sent or received by the office of the vice president.
00:38:46.980Again, while he was the sitting vice president, America First Legal got this trove of documents and requested them in the first place.
00:38:54.240That's Stephen Miller's legal organization.
00:38:55.940And now they've gotten some of them, but have been stiff-armed on some 1,000 of them, citing executive privilege.
00:39:04.400So is this a story, Emily, or is this a nothing burger?
00:39:08.700This sounds like emails in the virtual garage by the virtual Corvette.
00:39:13.120I mean, again, it's like echoes of Hillary Clinton in an almost precise fashion.
00:39:18.180It's not a private server, that's true, but if this is government business, which in all likelihood a lot of it is, that's why you can't just assert executive privilege willy-nilly.
00:39:29.420You shouldn't be able to because it's true that a lot of these emails could have been potentially were private back and forths, but now we have to have the American people just trusting that's the case.
00:39:39.400Given everything they know about both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's involvement in these foreign businesses, Joe Biden showing up at Cafe Milano with Hunter Biden's clients, going on the golf course with Hunter Biden's clients, allegedly profiting from Hunter Biden's own profits based on what Hunter told his daughter Naomi in that text message from the laptop about, you know, supporting pop, something to that extent.
00:40:04.440So we're asking the American people simply to trust that executive privilege was invoked reasonably here.
00:40:12.420But again, there's this like really serious question about whether government business was being handled respectfully, responsibly, and it's another drop in the bucket when it comes to the broader Hunter Biden question.
00:40:23.820But it is a serious one for Joe Biden, given what it did to, for instance, Hillary Clinton, that she seemed to be hiding things on private email accounts that wouldn't necessarily have been foiable or accessible to the public.
00:40:35.660So it's not it's not a perfect one to one. It's not perfect apples to apples.
00:40:38.800But in principle, there's some some serious similarities that the public is going to want answers to.
00:40:44.220Yeah, Eliana, I mean, he's he looks like he and his cronies, Hunter and his cronies were regularly emailing the office of the vice president to get invitations for various events to find out guests, guest lists for various events.
00:40:57.060Who exactly is going to be at this state dinner or that state luncheon involving countries like Turkey and the U.K., the 2012 U.K. state dinner, the 2013 Turkey state luncheon, the 2014 France state dinner, the bios of the guests all shared with Rosemont Seneca employees like what.
00:41:18.140But this really was Hunter Biden's little breeding ground, his hunting ground for future liners of his own pockets is the way that this is coming across.
00:41:29.400Never mind Joe Biden's. And yet what you get repeatedly from the press, from Joe Biden's defenders is one, nothing to see here.
00:41:37.800And two, absolutely no proof that Joe Biden did anything wrong or benefited from any of these relationships in any way.
00:41:45.840These emails and there were three pseudonymous email addresses that Joe Biden used, used to evade FOIA, are now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the Southwestern Legal Foundation, I believe.
00:42:02.300I hope I'm getting that right. And the White House is citing executive privilege over them, which means they were discussing something substantive that the vice president's office wants to keep private.
00:42:15.320Given the salience of this issue now and the vice president's repeated denials about what he discussed with his son and when, I do think the public deserves to see these emails.
00:42:28.320And by the way, if the vice president, given the salience of this issue in the Biden presidency now, if he really, truly, there was nothing to see here, if I were him, I would release all the emails and say, look, here are all the emails we traded while I was in office.
00:42:46.600Go through them, go through them and surely you'll see. There was nothing of substance that we talked about.
00:42:52.260There was no impropriety. But it does raise the question, why was Hunter Biden simply not emailing Joe Biden's normal email address?
00:43:01.720He was emailing these alias emails. Some of them were gmails and not government email addresses.
00:43:06.660We, of course, the public, of course, deserves to see these emails.
00:43:09.260It's a serious question as to why they're asserting executive privilege over them.
00:43:14.140And by now, we, of course, cannot believe the White House's denials about them as they Biden himself and his aides have shown to have lied about this.
00:43:25.580They lied when they said that Hunter Biden had never taken money from China.
00:43:29.700They lied when they said that Joe Biden had never discussed business with his son.
00:43:34.320And what we know, you know, who knows if we'll ever find out that Joe Biden got money or was in on this.
00:43:40.080But I think it's obvious that any father is interested in the success, including the financial success of his child,
00:43:50.520and that he allowed new and allowed his child to profit from his government position for his own success and that Biden had an interest in that.
00:44:00.860We all want our kids to do well and that that was wrong, given his position in government.
00:44:06.980If that's all we ever find out, it's it's like Trump, whether he broke the law or not, what he did was wrong.
00:44:14.820Um, I don't have a problem passing judgment on Trump about it, even though there may not have been a law that was broken.
00:44:21.040And I don't have a problem passing judgment on Biden about it, whether or not there's a law that was broken.
00:44:26.200He abused his office and the trust the American people put in him.
00:44:30.560Yeah, I agree with you. It's it's quite simple.
00:44:33.060You don't need to go to the did he get a five million dollar bribe from Burisma in order to condemn Joe Biden and what he's done, Emily.
00:44:39.800But that like I want to get into what happened with the the guy who runs the Comedy Cellar.
00:44:45.700His name is Noam Dorman, and he's amazing.
00:44:50.720I met Coleman Hughes through this guy right after I left NBC and I was still licking my wounds.
00:44:57.780And the wonderful Coleman Hughes was at the Comedy Cellar.
00:45:00.000And so was I. And Noam introduced the two of us and a beautiful friendship was formed and everything was great.
00:45:04.500But I love this guy. So he's started his own podcast.
00:45:06.980And like a lot of people in the comedy world, he's a genius.
00:45:10.180You know, like people who are attracted to this world tend to be extremely clever, high level thinkers, usually somewhat damaged, but awesome.
00:46:10.240She's she's the demon. It goes perfectly with my devil may care media approach.
00:46:14.860So what do you think? It's kind of see, I've got like the cocktails over there in the corner.
00:46:18.780So when you guys come in person, we can sit, we can drink together.
00:46:22.080I got the lady. I got my devil may care red.
00:46:25.600What are you thinking? How are you liking it?
00:46:27.360I was actually going to say it looks like a like a super cool cocktail lounge where you could just like drink and have amazing conversations for hours.
00:46:34.440It's like a perfect look, especially what you're talking about earlier in the show for a new media platform that really wants to like have nuance and open conversations.
00:46:42.600Yes. See, she gets me. Eliana, you feel it? Are you are you picking up what I'm feeling it?
00:46:47.740Megan, you need a signature cocktail to go with the studio.
00:46:50.680So I do. Abby, how do we not think of that? My God, we got to drink.
00:46:56.940She's a teetotaler. Oh, we got it. I'm not.
00:47:00.360We got to come in. We'll inaugurate it. It'll be great.
00:47:04.060Yes. OK, awesome. It's a date on the zoom out shot.
00:47:08.260You can see we've got a little golden M in the desk.
00:47:11.840Had to pay extra for that. Not going to lie. It was worth it.
00:47:14.720OK, stand by. We're going to get to that gnome doorman sought with Philip Bump.
00:47:18.980Wait until you hear. This is like the most amazing expression of cluelessness from somebody who's running political coverage.
00:47:24.980I mean, he's like at the forefront of political coverage for one of our major publications, The Washington Post.
00:47:30.120This is living proof of why you don't trust the mainstream media.
00:47:35.180OK, so back to our friend Gnome, who runs the Comedy Cellar and does a great podcast and somehow managed to get Philip Bump of The Washington Post.
00:47:47.320He's the writer, quote, focused largely on the numbers behind the politics, according to his bio.
00:47:53.820But he loses all ability to analyze anything when it reflects poorly on Joe Biden, his potential corruption.
00:48:01.180So we have a couple of soundbites from the interview, including where he had gone on.
00:48:07.520I think Noam had openly said, I want somebody to come on and debate with me whether there's evidence that Joe Biden is potentially corrupt.
00:48:16.000And, you know, how high this Hunter Biden scandal goes, he was looking for somebody who would disagree with him.
00:48:21.260I think Noam sees corruption and he's troubled and he was looking for somebody in the press who would disagree with him.
00:48:26.580And Philip went on and it didn't go very well.
00:48:50.460OK, if you want to nitpick and pick out specific isolated snippets of conversation between Devin Archer and Tucker Carlson, who's the least good faith actor in the history of human journalism.
00:49:27.780That's not what people are not on behalf of Brisma, but on behalf of his own self interests and those of his son in pushing for the firing of this prosecutor.
00:49:37.020Not that he was working for Brisma, but that he was influenced by what would benefit his son and what would benefit himself potentially in pushing out this prosecutor in Ukraine who was going after Brisma for corruption.
00:49:49.480And his son was sitting on the board of Brisma at the time.
00:50:17.880Like, that's not generally the way corruption works.
00:50:21.280But if you look through the actual evidence of what led up to the firing of that prosecutor, you will see very clearly.
00:50:27.440We went through it just last week on the show that it was not State Department policy nor the plan to call for the firing of that prosecutor.
00:50:35.440And as recently as like one month before Joe Biden had determined he was going to do it, it came to us as a surprise by anybody in the Obama administration that Joe Biden was about to make this guy's termination a deal term, a requirement for our giving aid to Ukraine.
00:50:52.300It seems to be the vice president's office that turned it that said, you know what else we need that guy gone.
00:50:57.960And what was happening just as the vice president turned it, he had phone calls with his son, Hunter, who was on the Brisma board.
00:51:04.320And then in December of twenty nineteen, they had a meeting that he he's personally spoke with the head of Brisma, who we understand said, I get this guy off my back or said something to that effect.
00:51:17.240So this is what we've been learning so far.
00:51:19.640You know, it's not smoking gun right there pointing at the dead body, but it's getting pretty close.
00:51:26.180And that's the thing with influence peddling is that it's strategic.
00:51:28.720It's set up this way so that there never is a smoking gun, for instance, unless there is literally a recording of Joe Biden at Cafe Milano or on the golf course with the Burisma executives.
00:51:38.800Everyone has plausible deniability and can just say, we were just golfing.
00:51:43.660We were just having martinis at Cafe Milano.
00:51:46.500So, you know, nothing to see here, which is exactly what Philip Bump is doing, because as much as you can tie this to Hunter and he does concede, he's like, you know what?
00:51:54.300I think Hunter was doing some stuff that was improper.
00:51:56.300So unless you can take that further step and go to Joe Biden, the media can continue to say nothing burger, nothing much to see here.
00:52:03.940And it's actually I mean, the way Noam sets this up, which I think is brilliant, is he's just like casually destroying Philip Bump.
00:52:10.800And there's something in the media called nut picking where, you know, you go to the Iowa State Fair, find the craziest person and have some like Harvard educated journalists debate them on economic policy, whatever it is.
00:52:21.740This is the exact opposite of that, because Noam starts the podcast by saying, I asked around, I asked my friend, who was the smartest person who disagrees with me on Joe and Hunter Biden?
00:52:32.380And they said it was you, Philip Bump. And he just casually destroys Philip Bump's argument and shows where he's wrong calmly, casually throughout the entire like one hour of this podcast.
00:52:44.460And Philip Bump is an absolutely like precious commodity in Washington, D.C. media circles.
00:52:50.420He's seen as somebody who is at the top of his field, somebody who is really smart.
00:52:54.400And he is not willing to say that there is evidence that Joe Biden is tied to the scheme, despite the fact that, again, we all know there's not going to be a check from Burisma to Joe Biden.
00:53:06.620And the memo line is going to say firing Victor Shokin. Nobody thinks that's what's going to happen.
00:53:11.540Right. It's the optics, which is the entire route of influence peddling in the first place.
00:53:17.720It's just being able to get, as we were talking about in the last segment, those White House visitor logs, the guest list for these parties that you can't do if you're Joe Schmo.
00:53:26.660You can't monetize that if you're Joe Schmo because you can't get your dad's Gmail, which who knows if that's even secure, to say, hey, look who's coming and look what do they do.
00:53:34.540You don't get that if you're Joe Schmo, but you get it if you're Hunter Biden.
00:53:37.020It's so true. And Eliana, he he known had Philip Bump on the ropes the whole time it ended with Bump getting up and walking out, which is pretty spectacular because I have to say the questioning while smart was not aggressive.
00:53:54.500It wasn't you know, he made a fool out of himself by getting up and walking out.
00:53:58.540It just showed how thin skinned and eggshelled this guy is.
00:54:03.220He's not used to having to answer any questions of his sweeping defenses of the Bidens.
00:54:10.440Here's a little bit of that moment in thought three.
00:54:13.840What do you take from the text message to his adult daughter?
00:54:17.740Hunter's text message, I have to give 50 percent of my income to Pop.
00:54:20.640I have no idea what that means. I don't. I have no idea what that means.
00:54:23.480Well, it's it's it's I know it's circumstantial evidence and you prefer that.
00:54:26.960What could I have no idea? I don't know.
00:54:29.360Well, I appreciate your has anybody has anybody asked her?
01:23:44.240They're actually anti-immigrant because sanctuary cities are a giant handout to cartels.
01:23:48.500I went to Mexico last year to actually talk to migrants themselves.
01:23:51.480And it's the same thing over and over again.
01:23:53.560They know that they can come to the United States.
01:23:55.240And it's actually similar to what was happening.
01:23:56.780What's happening with the CBP1 app is similar to what was happening with Title 42, which is that Eliana points out families coming to the border.
01:24:03.200You have patchwork policies in different places of Texas, Arizona, California, different things being imposed in different places or being enforced in different places.
01:24:13.940And in general, people found out with the CBP1 app, as they did with Title 42, that there are all kinds of exceptions being made because it's so overwhelming.
01:24:21.960So you go up, you turn yourself in, and then you know that if you can make it to New York and if you can make it to New Jersey, if you can make it to San Francisco,
01:24:31.960then you can survive in the United States without possibly ever showing up in an asylum hearing.
01:24:37.740You can make money, send it back in the form of remittances, which are a huge part of the Central American and Mexican economies.
01:24:44.600So there's a lot on the line for these places.
01:24:46.920There's a lot on the line for cartels.
01:24:48.400They could camp out in these sanctuary cities and send the money back home and then just leave before their asylum hearing, having made a bunch of money to sort of stabilize their lives back there.
01:24:57.540Or they could just continue to stay and hope that they're protected by these sanctuary cities legally, which they are.
01:25:07.380It's just so disgusting when you're looking and you can remember the eyes of a little girl from Venezuela or Nicaragua who was kidnapped by a cartel because their parents had to pay the cartel money to get up there.
01:25:19.240And they were planning to get into the United States and have freedom.
01:25:22.920And they sacrificed so much they'll be scarred for it by life because of these allegedly pro-immigrant policies.
01:25:28.520That is, it's just a game for Democrats to virtue signal on them.
01:25:31.520Not to mention all these children who are in classrooms in places like New York City right now, Eliana, American children who now have twice the number of children in their class, half of whom don't speak any English whatsoever, who are being told the kids are.
01:25:44.460They have to go to school with these kids.
01:25:45.860They have to somehow find Spanish language speaking teachers to come in and supply.
01:25:50.060They're already struggling post-pandemic to learn.
01:25:53.720We've had 100,000 immigrants, migrants come into New York in the past year alone.
01:25:57.860Now the mayor of New York is warring with the governor of New York because everybody wants more money to deal with this problem.
01:26:04.380They're trying to ship them off to New Jersey.
01:26:06.380You heard the governor there saying, we're not taking them.
01:26:08.900They're looking at the federal government, Joe Biden saying, help us out.
01:26:11.800And the solution, of course, because they're Democrats, is help us make it easier for them to get work permits.
01:26:18.620Some 60,000 of them are of adult working age, Eliana, and they're the Democrat mayor of New York and the Democrat governor of New York want to waive the requirement that doesn't allow migrants like this who are here illegally and haven't applied for asylum, haven't gone through the process.
01:27:06.480I mean, the reason that we're in this problem, which became a problem when Biden was inaugurated and on his first day in office, first of all, he campaigned on reversing Trump immigration policies that he called inhumane and said that on day one in office, he was going to begin dismantling those.
01:27:23.360And on January 20th, 2021, he did start dismantling those.
01:27:27.240And those amounted to, and analysts across the political spectrum have said this, a green light to migrants on the other side of the border, that they were going to be treated very differently than they were in the Trump administration.
01:27:38.640And as a result, we've seen huge increases in the number of migrants across the southern border.
01:27:43.320And I think until until the president of the United States signals that there's going to be a change in policy and a move back towards the Trump administration's policy and make it clear that migrants, that these migrants are not welcome and that there's going to be more strict treatment akin to the policies of the Trump administration, we're not going to see any kind of downturn.
01:28:07.820Certainly, doling out work permits is not the solution to this.
01:30:15.320And I've got to tell you, if I were a parent in the new school, I would still, and maybe even more so, be jumping up and down saying, get him the hell out.
01:30:29.880It's an admission that it was a sexual fetish before.
01:30:33.580The guy is very sick, Emily, and yet has ongoing access to children and no one's doing anything about it.
01:30:43.320Incredible progress, level of progress to go from one to the other.
01:30:49.600This is a sickness, obviously, obviously, obviously a sickness, and it reflects a sickness in our society that everyone couldn't come out and comfortably say this person belongs nowhere around children until, just for saying those boobs are real alone.
01:31:04.280This person belongs nowhere near children because that's a level of delusion that exists, that should exist and not exist in any professional, let alone like public atmosphere where they're getting taxpayer dollars or, you know, tuition dollars for their work for being around children because they're clearly out of touch with reality and have no business teaching other people to function in reality, serving as role models as teachers often do.
01:31:28.780Now, I'm curious how this situation unfolds because today's the first day of school.
01:31:33.080Is there going to be a turnaround where this person says, listen, I was in the throes of a deep mental illness, the humiliating level of public media attention to this, of backlash to this made me realize it.
01:31:46.840And, you know, maybe this person will end up having a story, given what happened before.
01:31:51.100I'm not super hopeful of that, but it is something that is going to happen to a whole lot of people who got sucked into this insanity over the last five years, doubled down on it.
01:32:00.060And then 10 years from now, whatever, they'll look back and say, wow, the society really, really exacerbated my sickness.
01:32:11.320I mean, today's the first day of school for a lot of kids out there, Eliana, including my own.
01:32:15.580Can you imagine going in for a parent-teacher conference and seeing this guy?
01:32:19.400And it's like, and, you know, a week ago, he's lying in the New York Post saying he had gynomastia and grew breasts that were larger than any woman's breasts in the history of womankind.
01:32:30.100And he decided to show off big fake fake nipples at the end of them with his weird blonde wig.
01:32:34.880Like, can you imagine having to sit across from this guy like, hey, where are your boobs?
01:32:41.980I don't think you want your kid's teacher in the New York Post for anything.
01:32:46.780I got to say, this is probably on the milder side of what your kid's teacher could be in the New York Post for.
01:32:53.840But speaking of things you didn't, rules you didn't think you'd have to, like, write down in the rulebook, you know, no enormous fake breastplates allowed for teachers in the schools.