Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is a Countdown podcast special. And to anybody listening who
Speaker 1: thinks President Biden pardoning his son Hunter was a bad idea,
Speaker 1: and I suspect that includes nobody in this audience. But
Speaker 1: if you happen to run into somebody who believes this,
Speaker 1: you can use this explanation. And by the way, my
Speaker 1: condolence is that you ran into somebody who thinks it
Speaker 1: was a bad idea. Let me explain this to them.
Speaker 1: One they cannot find their political ass from their political elbow.
Speaker 1: Two that is probably because all they have is political ass.
Speaker 1: And three President Biden didn't pardon his son to keep
Speaker 1: him out of jail for this literally trumped up gun
Speaker 1: and drug prosecution. He pardoned him to protect him from
Speaker 1: further persecution by Trump next year. In this continuing hysterical
Speaker 1: ringing of pearls and clutching of hands reaction to the pardon,
Speaker 1: we are reminded that we are in this transcendent mess
Speaker 1: because Trump is an evil psychopath. First of all, obviously,
Speaker 1: but also because all of our guard rails against evil psychopaths,
Speaker 1: the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the laws, the media, patriotism.
Speaker 1: They all turned out to be made out of paper machet.
Speaker 1: And we are reminded that perhaps the most disturbingly diaphanous
Speaker 1: of these butter solid protections was the assumption that eventually
Speaker 1: Democrats and liberals would actually, you know, fight back. Some
Speaker 1: time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket, the light bulb finally went
Speaker 1: off over Joe Biden's head, and he realized that no,
Speaker 1: the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and
Speaker 1: most of the rest of us had dedicated most of
Speaker 1: our lives did not miraculously regrow after Trump's relentless assault
Speaker 1: on them. They did not suddenly spring fully restored and
Speaker 1: intact from the ground. Biden saw that not only was
Speaker 1: his last son about to go to prison because he
Speaker 1: was his son, and because he the President bent over
Speaker 1: backwards to not interfere with the Department of Justice that
Speaker 1: thought by partisanship meant bending over backwards to do nothing
Speaker 1: against Trump while bending over backwards to do everything against Democrats.
Speaker 1: The President not only saw that was true, but he
Speaker 1: also finally, at nearly the last minute, as if this
Speaker 1: were a Shakespearean tragedy like Othello, that Trump's Department of
Speaker 1: Quote Justice unquote, will at minimum try to initiate further
Speaker 1: prosecution against Hunter Biden next year, and through him against
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, and through him against Jill Biden, and through
Speaker 1: them against anybody else they could get their hands on.
Speaker 1: The President figured this out and went over and pulled
Speaker 1: his son out of harm's way, and then much of
Speaker 1: left attacked President Biden morons. I don't care about Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden particularly. I care about the fact that we are
Speaker 1: forty eight days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking
Speaker 1: over our government, supported by an unknown percentage of the
Speaker 1: population that actually wants to see Hunter Biden and Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and maybe me and maybe hanging from construction cranes
Speaker 1: parading through the streets of Washington and wants to see
Speaker 1: Trump in power for life. We just got one more
Speaker 1: good person out of their sights, and we just shoved
Speaker 1: one more plotline up Trump's ass and up the asses
Speaker 1: of Cash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Steven Miller and
Speaker 1: whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylums,
Speaker 1: and countless liberals and anti Trump conservatives think this will
Speaker 1: actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January sixth insurrectionists,
Speaker 1: because apparently for the last ten years these people have
Speaker 1: been hallucinating and thinking that Trump has ever once bothered
Speaker 1: to seek cover for anything, or they think we should
Speaker 1: be better than them. They are planning to put us
Speaker 1: in camps. I do not care if we are seen
Speaker 1: as better than them, or worse than them, or monstrous
Speaker 1: in comparison to them, because if somebody's going to wind
Speaker 1: up in camps, it ain't going to be me, It's
Speaker 1: going to be them. End of discussion. Also, where did
Speaker 1: this idea come from, considering that he ran on pardoning
Speaker 1: the January sixth insurrectionists that now he would be provided
Speaker 1: cover for doing so. You people really need to take
Speaker 1: the weekends and do a little work on them and
Speaker 1: not half ass your jobs. Never trumpers and faint hearted liberals,
Speaker 1: that's the generic you. I am not talking to you,
Speaker 1: dear listener, since you agree with me. As I said yesterday,
Speaker 1: I cheer the pardon of Hunter Biden. My loan complaint
Speaker 1: is that the president should pardon another ten million potential
Speaker 1: Trump targets. I want Trump waiting in the White House
Speaker 1: neck high through biden issued pardons. I want him to
Speaker 1: find that every prosecutor, every Democratic politician, every reporter, every critic,
Speaker 1: every cartoonist has been pardoned. I want their families pardoned,
Speaker 1: I want their pets pardoned. I want every barricade thrown
Speaker 1: up against Trump on every street Biden can get to
Speaker 1: in time. The serious host and human rights lawyer Cassim
Speaker 1: Rashid adds, quote, My only issue with Biden pardoning Hunter
Speaker 1: is if he stops there. Biden should commute death penal
Speaker 1: for forty Americans on federal death Row, cancel student debt
Speaker 1: via EO executive order, and force Trump to revive it,
Speaker 1: and protect abortion nationwide. Ya EO, get bold, take action,
Speaker 1: slow down maga fascism unquote exactly, just get in Trump's way.
Speaker 1: You don't have to get run over by the tank
Speaker 1: in TN and Men's Square. Just get into TN and
Speaker 1: Men's Square. Every step Trump takes for the rest of
Speaker 1: his god damned life should be into quicksand or at
Speaker 1: least make him go through a pool filled with oatmeal.
Speaker 1: Eric Holder cheered the pardon. Ellie Mistahal cheered the pardon.
Speaker 1: My friend John Dene cheered the pardon and further urge
Speaker 1: that it be extended to anybody on Trump's enemies list,
Speaker 1: and John dene is one man who knows about presidential
Speaker 1: enemies lists. But also to all anti Trump commentators, I'll
Speaker 1: take the pardon. But then there are the idiots. Then
Speaker 1: there are the reasons we are in this mess. Then
Speaker 1: there are the dilettants. Rick Pearlstein's Nixon Land is a
Speaker 1: classic of recent American history. It's up there with Gibbons
Speaker 1: decline and fall of the Roman Empire, as far as
Speaker 1: I am concerned, only it's better written. I read it
Speaker 1: to my father out loud as he lay dying in
Speaker 1: the hospital. And yet Pearlstein and I had this exchange yesterday.
Speaker 1: He wrote, I think the Hunter pardon is dumb, instantating
Speaker 1: Joe's political tragic flaw of selfishness with the worst possible timing.
Speaker 1: It chisels the narrative of democratic deep state cronyism into stone.
Speaker 1: For anyone on the fence about whether to surrender to
Speaker 1: Maggie is or not, I replied, firstly, there is no
Speaker 1: longer a fence, and nobody still on it him. No,
Speaker 1: this is the most crucial time. Millions of people poise
Speaker 1: between Trump is right and Trump is bullshit, between being
Speaker 1: on the cop side of the line when the roundups
Speaker 1: come or the Jews, I mean Mexicans. We have to
Speaker 1: think inside the fascist, anti fascist frame, right Rick, I
Speaker 1: hadn't been doing that me. The first step is to
Speaker 1: block all efforts to put people in camps. The intended
Speaker 1: further persecution of the bidens is part of the process.
Speaker 1: Biden should pardon everybody. We are already at the barricade
Speaker 1: the streets stage. Rick, fewer will join if they're given
Speaker 1: own goal, excuses to sigh and say both sides are
Speaker 1: the same. This helps depopulate the barricades. Me all caps.
Speaker 1: They said that on November fifth, you are fighting the
Speaker 1: last war, and I mean that of all people. Rick
Speaker 1: should know that the Republicans have spent literally every day
Speaker 1: since Watergate, which he wrote about in nixon Land, insisting
Speaker 1: that both sides are the same. That is the whole point.
Speaker 1: That is how they have gotten away with this. That
Speaker 1: is how they tried to get away with Watergate. That
Speaker 1: was the whole first line of defense in Watergate. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody does this. Nixon just got caught. They have insisted
Speaker 1: for more than half a century that both sides are
Speaker 1: the same, and they have convinced at least half the
Speaker 1: country that this is true, and Perlstein and other liberals
Speaker 1: are wondering if something like the pardoning of Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: might make the undecided waiver. The undecided decided they elected
Speaker 1: Trump twice, and part of the reason that they decided
Speaker 1: that way was the fact that the Democrats didn't fight this.
Speaker 1: We are perceived as cowards. It's not an incorrect perception.
Speaker 1: Some other samples of cowardice Matt Gertz from Media Matters
Speaker 1: for America, the guy who always gets the angry missives
Speaker 1: directed towards Matt Gates. My Hunter Biden take is that
Speaker 1: if you make your whole stick the other guys put
Speaker 1: themselves above the country, undermine the rule of law, and
Speaker 1: lie constantly, then you need to have a much higher
Speaker 1: standard for yourself than pardoning your son after saying you wouldn't.
Speaker 1: It's Gavin Newsome getting caught at French laundry, just an
Speaker 1: obvious example of not honoring the standard you said people
Speaker 1: should follow when it affects you personally, that's idiotic. If
Speaker 1: you vow you are not going to use a gun
Speaker 1: against the people who are running after you on the streets,
Speaker 1: pursuing you by foot, on the street, and then they
Speaker 1: double their speed and their threats, and instead of running,
Speaker 1: they get into tanks. You are allowed to change your
Speaker 1: mind and use your gun up on the high horse,
Speaker 1: Matt Gertz, you still don't see the difference between corruption
Speaker 1: and self defense. Shame on you. Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: formerly of New York Magazine, which we now understand to
Speaker 1: have been one of the great fraudulent operations of our
Speaker 1: time politically now writes with this headline Biden's unpardonable hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: The President vowed not to pardon his son Hunter and
Speaker 1: then did so anyway. Charlie Sykes, an ex Republican supposed
Speaker 1: non Trumper smart person, texts me Joe Biden has just
Speaker 1: removed the issue of pardons from the political arena for
Speaker 1: the next four years, and Trump probably once again camp
Speaker 1: leave his own dumb effing luck at this point. Sadly,
Speaker 1: I think he's right. Well, I got the word sadly
Speaker 1: right in there. Yeah, Because Charlie Sykes, you and the
Speaker 1: other writers made sure that Trump's pardons, including pardoning his
Speaker 1: son in law's father for having hired a prostitute to
Speaker 1: help him blackmail his brother in law, so he wouldn't
Speaker 1: go to the authorities about the crimes, blackmail his brother
Speaker 1: in law with a sex tape of his brother in law,
Speaker 1: a tape he showed his own sister that of course,
Speaker 1: was front of mind in the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. Nobody mentioned it until Trump just appointed
Speaker 1: this scumbag who he then pardoned as envoy to the
Speaker 1: Middle East, the Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, who
Speaker 1: just last week had been sucking up to RFK Junior
Speaker 1: to side show Bob about vaccines. While as a father,
Speaker 1: I certainly understand President Biden's natural desire to help his
Speaker 1: son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put
Speaker 1: his family ahead of the country. This is a bad
Speaker 1: president that could be abused by later presidents and will
Speaker 1: sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become president, your role
Speaker 1: is pater familius of the nation. Anyway, I'm going to
Speaker 1: interrupt a note that anybody who uses the phrase pater
Speaker 1: familius non ironically is trying to pretend that he's smart
Speaker 1: when he's not. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced
Speaker 1: on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while
Speaker 1: also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not
Speaker 1: a president and not a president's son. Jared, that ship sailed.
Speaker 1: Everybody in trump Land is now above the law. In fact,
Speaker 1: there is no more law. Maybe you missed it while
Speaker 1: you were busily sucking up to RFK Junior about vaccines.
Speaker 1: If the governor will not resign, mister Polish should be
Speaker 1: expelled from the Democratic Party. We have enough cowards, two
Speaker 1: more that border on the hilarious Nate Silver. You can
Speaker 1: always depend on Nate. He'll always let you down. I
Speaker 1: discussed here how I voted for Harris despite feeling like
Speaker 1: Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters
Speaker 1: were rational to publish. He meant punish. But Nate has
Speaker 1: a little problem publish after the White House lying about
Speaker 1: the Hunter pardon. I'm not sure how much more I
Speaker 1: can tolerate. Move to Brazil. Don't vote, he says, don't
Speaker 1: vote for any Democrat in twenty twenty eight who doesn't
Speaker 1: repudiate the pardon within forty eight hours. Nate forgets that,
Speaker 1: thanks in part to his previous attempts to pinocchio himself
Speaker 1: from his real form a calculator with bad haircut into
Speaker 1: an actual living boy. We may not have any elections
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty eight in which to not vote for
Speaker 1: any Democrat who doesn't repudiate the Hunter pardon because of
Speaker 1: all that bad democratic behavior. Oh yeah, Attila, the hunt
Speaker 1: is over here, and over here is somebody who changed
Speaker 1: his mind about pardoning his own son. I think we
Speaker 1: should give Attila another chance. And lastly, not a liberal obviously,
Speaker 1: but I like to try to give you something to
Speaker 1: laugh at it the way out. Also not a liberal
Speaker 1: and not a smart person, just plain old Denesh Desuza.
Speaker 1: He retweeted my insistence that Biden should give out ten
Speaker 1: million more pardons and then added, Olberman proves once again
Speaker 1: he is the reductio ad absurdum of the left. The
Speaker 1: punchline to this, of course, is that convicted of vice
Speaker 1: relations of campaign law, Denesh Desuza was sentenced to eight
Speaker 1: months in a criminal halfway house, but then on May
Speaker 1: thirty first, twenty eighteen, he was pardoned by Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: By the bye, Desuz's all time great moment of self
Speaker 1: unawareness about pardons yesterday came on the same day he
Speaker 1: had to retract under thread of lawsuit, the entire propaganda
Speaker 1: movie two Thousand Mules, which, to my great surprise, two
Speaker 1: thousand Mules that turned out not to be about his
Speaker 1: love life. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Follow me for the podcast promos
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Speaker 1: Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and mister Ray,
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Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments.
Speaker 1: You're by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music, although there wasn't any in this edition,
Speaker 1: is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and
Speaker 1: performed by the group No Horns Allowed. That's Countdown for Today,
Speaker 1: an abbreviated edition, but an extra one just and twelve
Speaker 1: days until the scheduled end of the Lane Duck presidency
Speaker 1: of Trump. The next scheduled Countdown is Thursday. As always,
Speaker 1: as this evidence is, bulletins is the news warrants. Until
Speaker 1: next time, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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