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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This

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Speaker 1: is a special Countdown bulletin podcast. I'm Keith Olderman. It

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Speaker 1: began in February. They were already trying to overthrow the

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Speaker 1: president in February, first rumors that this member of his cabinet,

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Speaker 1: or that one might be a better nominee, that the

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Speaker 1: peril to the nation was too great to let him

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Speaker 1: run again. Then the admirers of one of his departmental

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Speaker 1: secretaries went public and quickly got widely and publicly flattened,

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Speaker 1: while the President made a speech that doubled or tripled

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Speaker 1: his public standing in one fell swoop. Still, before spring

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Speaker 1: was over, breakaways and radicals had formed their own third

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Speaker 1: party and nominated their own candidate with a famous name.

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Speaker 1: And by summer there were new crises and new calls

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Speaker 1: for a new nominee, and new panic, a new stridency

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Speaker 1: in the columnists and the editorial pages of the major newspapers,

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Speaker 1: and even from a famous New York editor to extract

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Speaker 1: the president who was thought to be mentally unfit. And

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Speaker 1: even this late, so late, too late to reconvene the

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Speaker 1: party at a new convention and start from scratch and

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Speaker 1: nominate somebody else, how who nobody had the faintest idea

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Speaker 1: nor the veguest of plants. It was panic, and panic

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Speaker 1: does not need any ideas, and panic certainly does not

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Speaker 1: need a plan, And so they wanted to unnominate the

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Speaker 1: incumbent President of the United States in the midst of

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Speaker 1: the greatest crisis the nation had ever seen, Joe Biden. No,

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about Abraham Lincoln. I'm not making any undue

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Speaker 1: comparisons here except about the crises and accept about the

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Speaker 1: efforts to throw Biden under the bus this year and

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Speaker 1: Lincoln under the horse drawn bus in the year of

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Speaker 1: our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty four. It is absolute

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Speaker 1: historical fact. The leaders of the Republican Party spent most

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Speaker 1: of the first eight months of the year eighteen sixty

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Speaker 1: four trying to undermine, to sabotage, to purge and bury

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Speaker 1: President Lincoln because everybody knew he was a little off

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Speaker 1: in the head, and he was damaged goods, and he

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Speaker 1: could never get re elected. And the cabinet member they

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Speaker 1: liked was not obviously Secretary of Transportation Pete Budagedge, but

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Speaker 1: rather Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Chase's supporters

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Speaker 1: proposed that Lincoln step aside so their friend sal could

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Speaker 1: replace him. Party regulars rallied around the president. The third

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Speaker 1: party that the anti Lincolnists formed was called the Radical

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Speaker 1: Democracy Party, and at Cleveland in May of that year,

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Speaker 1: it nominated one of the most famous names in American

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Speaker 1: political history, John C. Fremont. And when the first anniversary

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Speaker 1: of Gettysburg came and went, and Union soldiers were still

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Speaker 1: dying by the thousands, and there was no hint of

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Speaker 1: when or if the Civil War would ever end, and

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Speaker 1: according to every Republican leader in every city, in every state,

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Speaker 1: Lincoln was too far behind the Democrats to win the election.

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Speaker 1: The influential founder of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley,

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Speaker 1: began to make plans for a second Republican convention in

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Speaker 1: September in Cincinnati to officially nominate a presidential candidate other

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Speaker 1: than the one they already had named Abe Lincoln. Fremont

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Speaker 1: was a possibility, so was Senator Ben Wade of Ohio.

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Speaker 1: And if these Republicans had gotten their way, they might

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Speaker 1: have tried to talk Ulysses ask Grant into replacing Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: On the eighteen sixty four ballot, or at least supporting

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Speaker 1: the new nominee. And things were so dire that on Tuesday,

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Speaker 1: August twenty third, eighteen sixty four, Lincoln wrote a note

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Speaker 1: in his own hand, wrote at its top executive mansion

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Speaker 1: Washington City, signed the note, sealed the note in an envelope,

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Speaker 1: took it to the meeting of his cabinet, and had

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Speaker 1: all its members signed the envelope without ever seeing the note.

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Speaker 1: Secretary of State Seward, Secretary of War Stanton Gideon Wells, Bates, Blair,

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Speaker 1: Usher Fessenden, all of them. Lincoln himself was convinced he

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Speaker 1: was going to lose, and he was secretly and unilaterally

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Speaker 1: pledging himself and his government to mitigate the disaster of

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Speaker 1: an electoral loss and some kind of deal with the rebels,

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Speaker 1: allowing the Confederacy to continue, or slavery to continue, or

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Speaker 1: both to continue. And Lincoln wrote this morning, as for

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Speaker 1: some days past it seems exceedingly probable that this administration

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Speaker 1: will not be re elected, then it will be my

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Speaker 1: duty to so cooperate with the President elect as to

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Speaker 1: save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as

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Speaker 1: he will have secured its election on such ground that

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Speaker 1: he cannot possibly save it afterwards a Lincoln. Eleven days later,

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Speaker 1: General Sherman and his Army of the Tennessee took Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: the rebels fled, the Confederacy began a collapse that would

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Speaker 1: take only six more months. The Horace Greeley internal revolt vanished,

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Speaker 1: the Radical Democracy Party made itself scarce. Lincoln won reelection

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Speaker 1: fifty five percent to forty five percent and two hundred

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Speaker 1: and twelve electoral votes to twenty one, and between his

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Speaker 1: management of the war and his management of the earliest

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Speaker 1: moments of the peace, and of course his martyrdom, he

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Speaker 1: would soon belong to the ages as the greatest president

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Speaker 1: this nation has ever known. Again, I'm not saying Joe

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Speaker 1: Biden is abe Lincoln. Just wanted to remind you that

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty years ago, right now, people surrounding

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Speaker 1: the first term president of the United States, as the

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Speaker 1: nation future hung in the balance, we're desperate to get

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Speaker 1: rid of Abraham Lincoln at any cost. Get rid of

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Speaker 1: Lincoln because he was considered feeble minded. Get rid of

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Speaker 1: Lincoln because he couldn't possibly win reelection. Get rid of

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Speaker 1: Lincoln because even though the election was just months away.

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Speaker 1: It would be better to start from scratch, even this late,

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Speaker 1: because why would you want Abraham Lincoln as your candidate

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Speaker 1: when you could have Ben Wade or John Fremont or

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Speaker 1: maybe even if you were really lucky, Salmon p. Chase.

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Speaker 1: When the matter of trying to replace Joe Biden came

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Speaker 1: up in February, I said, I was agnostic that I

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Speaker 1: would carry him to his second inaugural on my back

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Speaker 1: if he were the one who could again beat Trump,

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Speaker 1: or I would personally throw him under the bus myself

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Speaker 1: if it had to be somebody else, but that the

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Speaker 1: real issue was that there was and is no procedure

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Speaker 1: and no legal process to remove him from the ticket

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Speaker 1: against his will. None. And oh, by the way, that

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Speaker 1: there was also no alternate candidate who polled better against

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Speaker 1: Trump than Biden did Biden at his worst moment, And

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Speaker 1: that was true as the debate started Thursday night, and

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Speaker 1: it is still true right now. And oh, by the way,

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Speaker 1: by the way, if you somehow succeeded in forcing him

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Speaker 1: out and you did not replace him with Vice President Harris,

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Speaker 1: you would have to force her out too, And in

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Speaker 1: a best case scenario, you'd have a lame duck president

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Speaker 1: and a lame duck vice president and two other new

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Speaker 1: guys on the ticket, and an opponent just crazy enough

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Speaker 1: to try to take over the government right now. And

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Speaker 1: you would be giving up not just the greatest advantage

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Speaker 1: any presidential candidate can have, the guy is currently president already,

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Speaker 1: but you also be throwing away the man who beat Trump.

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Speaker 1: And all of this is still true, and all of

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Speaker 1: it still means, well, yes, maybe you need a younger replacement.

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Speaker 1: What are you going to do? Go and build one somewhere,

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Speaker 1: and are you prepared for the outcome just in case

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Speaker 1: it really could be something like eighteen sixty four all

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Speaker 1: over again. And what you're actually doing is you're swapping

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Speaker 1: in salmon. P Chaseer Abraham Lincoln Now he thought JB.

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Speaker 1: Pritzker was the answer, and the impact of Thursday's disastrous

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Speaker 1: debate in the initial polling has been negligible. As I

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Speaker 1: sat and watched and looked at how small Joe Biden's

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Speaker 1: eyes appeared, especially since my monitor was about one hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty inches in size, I thought this could cost

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Speaker 1: him twenty points. Now wrong. Keith CBSU GOV polling released

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Speaker 1: yesterday says even in the wake of the understandable blunt

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Speaker 1: force trauma we all went through as we watched, fifty

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Speaker 1: five percent of Democrats have absolutely no interest in changing horses,

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Speaker 1: while after the same debate, fifty four percent of all

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Speaker 1: voters say Trump should drop out. Trump not Biden. Trump

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Speaker 1: should drop out because the one silver lining of that

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Speaker 1: debacle is Biden's virtual non participation in the debate and

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Speaker 1: the other headline CNN's utter journalistic failure in not fact

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Speaker 1: checking him. They combined to permit the nation to hear

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Speaker 1: Trump lie and lie and lie, and the nation's react

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Speaker 1: was that same jaw dropping look that Biden gave Trump

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Speaker 1: after line number whatever it was, twenty seven in a

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Speaker 1: series of two hundred. Collect them all. It is foolish

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Speaker 1: to absolutely commit to anything until the swelling goes down

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Speaker 1: and until the polling gets more extensive. But the early

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Speaker 1: polling all suggests that the best thing to do right

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Speaker 1: now is take as much of this July fourth week

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Speaker 1: off as you can and have a good time and

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Speaker 1: think I am finishing my second battleground state poll post debate,

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Speaker 1: writes the Democratic pollster Jeff garn And both surveys show

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Speaker 1: the same thing. The debate had no effect on the

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Speaker 1: vote choice. The election was extremely close and competitive before

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Speaker 1: the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.

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Speaker 1: Morning consult and Data for Progress pollsters polled right after

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Speaker 1: the debate. The percentages of those who think Biden should

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Speaker 1: drop out went up like four points, but the Biden

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Speaker 1: versus Trump matchup, Biden went up a point. In Survey USA,

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Speaker 1: he went up three points. Translation, yeah, maybe he should

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Speaker 1: drop out, but Trump is an MFNG liar and crazier

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Speaker 1: than imagined. So if Biden doesn't drop out, I'm still

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Speaker 1: going to vote for him. That's what's happening. The almost

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Speaker 1: negligible impact on Biden's poll numbers may be as transitory

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Speaker 1: as whatever it was that impaired the president during the debate,

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Speaker 1: because his health and his age are baked in to

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Speaker 1: the voter's perceptions of him and this race. There was

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Speaker 1: nothing before the debate, nothing in his gruel international travels

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Speaker 1: to the G seven and Normandy for D Day and

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Speaker 1: elsewhere and other events in the last six weeks, No

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Speaker 1: problems in front of a microphone or a camera that

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Speaker 1: were as bad as what happened during the debate. He

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Speaker 1: was clear the day before he was clear the next

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Speaker 1: morning and every day since. And there is a plausible

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Speaker 1: and intuitively satisfactory possible explanation for what causes a sequence

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Speaker 1: a timeline like that in an eighty one year old man.

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Speaker 1: If the president had a cold, I don't know about you,

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Speaker 1: but I'll admit to it. I've had colds in my life,

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Speaker 1: and his hoarseness that sounded to me like a cold.

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Speaker 1: If he had a cold, the next question should be

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Speaker 1: not shouldn't he drop out immediately? The next question should

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Speaker 1: be did he take cold medicine? You know, over the

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Speaker 1: countercraft just like tail and all or something cold medicine?

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Speaker 1: The Yale School of Medicine Professor cardiologist and head of

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Speaker 1: Outcomes Evaluation at Yale New Haven Hospital Center, doctor Harlan Crumbholtz,

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Speaker 1: wrote a piece for Newsweek. Biden's symptoms, he writes, are

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Speaker 1: consistent with someone suffering from temporary drug induced cognitive impairment.

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Speaker 1: Most people believe common over the counter cold medications such

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Speaker 1: as day quill, tile and al or advil to be harmless.

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Speaker 1: While generally well tolerated, these medications have well documented side

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Speaker 1: effects and can cause reduced alertness, diminished attention, poor memory,

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Speaker 1: and reduced reaction time, especially in older individuals. He continues,

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Speaker 1: These impairments are transitory but can appear consequential and alarming.

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Speaker 1: Every experience clinician has seen this effect thousands of times.

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Speaker 1: The more likely reason for Biden's continued improvement during the

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Speaker 1: debate was that the cold medications started wearing off. Trump

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Speaker 1: misleads the American public in many areas, the doctor concludes,

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Speaker 1: but one area where he may have inadvertently been correct

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Speaker 1: was the role drugs played in Biden's debate performance. We

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Speaker 1: need to know if President Biden took cold medications before

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Speaker 1: the debate end quote. Thank you, Doctor Crumholtz. And yes,

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Speaker 1: somebody there any White House correspondence listening, and you know

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Speaker 1: who you are, maybe you could ask the Press secretary

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Speaker 1: about cold medication. I believe it was my friend Dennis Leary,

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Speaker 1: who you occasionally hear on this podcast, who once observed

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Speaker 1: that they put the giant letter Q on the bottle

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Speaker 1: of Niquil cold medicine to give you something to read

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Speaker 1: in the three seconds between the time you take it

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Speaker 1: and the time you fall into a semi coma. The

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Speaker 1: point is, if that doesn't happen again, what happened in

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Speaker 1: the debate is not likely to be decisive and not

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Speaker 1: likely to be burned in remembered. That, of course, is

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Speaker 1: not what you are going to think if you read

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Speaker 1: The New York Times, which almost immediately ran out half

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Speaker 1: a dozen different columns by different columnists, and then a

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Speaker 1: really poorly written official editorial calling for Biden to drop

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Speaker 1: out on behalf of the nation, completely missing the point

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Speaker 1: of the debate, the one that was captured by the

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Speaker 1: Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial calling for Trump to drop for lying

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Speaker 1: without pause or remorse. The Times, which will not and

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Speaker 1: has not, called Trump's lies lies, has had no problem

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Speaker 1: since Thursday calling in its news reporting the debate a

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Speaker 1: car crash and Biden's distress the result of the lack

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Speaker 1: of a teleprompter and other age related issues, and the

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Speaker 1: reaction of the party to what happened panic. Moreover, the

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Speaker 1: Times has given away its actual motive for this demand

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Speaker 1: that Biden drop out, and its actual motive is its

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Speaker 1: own extraordinary pettiness and egotism, the chip on its arrogant,

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Speaker 1: condescending shoulder. On Friday, the Times reporter Jonathan Swan let

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Speaker 1: the cat out of the bag. He wrote, Biden allies

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Speaker 1: spent three point five years saying the reason voters have

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Speaker 1: such deep concerns about Biden's age is because The New

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Speaker 1: York Times writes too often about Biden's age. Instead of

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Speaker 1: say the magical power of sight and sound, Times promptly

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Speaker 1: wrote its own editorial calling for Biden to drop out,

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Speaker 1: and it blew the horn to start the legacy media

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Speaker 1: group think charge of the light Brigade. And it was

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Speaker 1: followed in that charge by exactly one other big paper,

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Speaker 1: and off they went, at full speed, right over the

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Speaker 1: edge of the cliff, the Horris Greeley, Let's dump Lincoln cliff.

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Speaker 1: The Times doesn't give a good goddamn about Joe Biden

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Speaker 1: or America. The Times wants Joe Biden to be too

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Speaker 1: old because it will validate its previous guesswork and bullshit

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Speaker 1: reporting that he's too old. NBC, which has done a

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Speaker 1: lot of the same stuff, then scooped that there would

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Speaker 1: be a Biden family summit, an intervention of sorts at

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Speaker 1: Camp David, a solemn gathering Sunday of what those morons

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Speaker 1: Mike Allen and Jim Vandehi at Axio so pompously referred

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Speaker 1: to as the Biden Oligarchy turned out it was an

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Speaker 1: intervention with makeup and a photographer. In fact, it was

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Speaker 1: not an intervention. It was just makeup and photographer Annie Leibovitz.

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Speaker 1: Annie Leibovitz was taking shots of the entire Biden family

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Speaker 1: on Sunday, the solemn history changing conclave of the Oligarchy.

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Speaker 1: The intervention was a photo shoot. He didn't look at

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Speaker 1: in the photo shoot. He should drop out. You know

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Speaker 1: what Mike Allen and Jim Vandehi and NBC News and

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Speaker 1: The New York Times need, They all need to chug

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Speaker 1: a few bottles of Nike will one more thing? Data

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Speaker 1: for Progress also polled possible replacements for the president. CNN,

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Speaker 1: following up on the debate night abrogation of every tenet

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Speaker 1: of responsible journalism, inaccurately called this internal polling, when while

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Speaker 1: obviously Data for Progress is a liberal company, it's got

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Speaker 1: progress in its name, after all, it is not internal polling.

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Speaker 1: Where did they get that wrong info? From Dana Bash

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Speaker 1: and Jake Tapper as of Friday asking respondents how would

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Speaker 1: you vote for president if the election had been tomorrow Saturday?

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Speaker 1: Biden and Vice President Harris as of that point Friday,

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Speaker 1: right after the debates. Both would have trailed Trump forty

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Speaker 1: eight forty five, buddhaj Edge loses forty seven, forty four,

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Speaker 1: Corey Booker's at forty four, Newsom forty four, Whitmer, klobashar

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Speaker 1: at forty three, Shapiro forty three, Pritzker forty three. So

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Speaker 1: you want to try Biden and the value of being

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Speaker 1: the incumbent president that Biden brings and of not having Trump,

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Speaker 1: an ex president, going against a rookie candidate, you want

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Speaker 1: to throw that out to get at best the same

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Speaker 1: result with the vice president or something worse with the others.

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Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, you want to open up

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Speaker 1: the chance to be president to a bunch of politicians,

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Speaker 1: and you expect they will all sit there calmly and

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Speaker 1: wait for their number to be called, and they'll just

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Speaker 1: talk it out among themselves to see which one of

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Speaker 1: them gets it, rather than say, hitting each other over

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Speaker 1: the heads with baseball bats, so that they will be

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Speaker 1: the only candidate left. On the other hand, if there

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Speaker 1: is something wrong with president and it was not a

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Speaker 1: cold and it was not cold medication syndrome, and you

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Speaker 1: wind up with no other choice but to do a

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Speaker 1: Lincoln Greeley Salmon p Chase, and you wind up having

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Speaker 1: no other choice because the president decides for himself he's

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Speaker 1: not well enough to continue. There's eight other options that

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Speaker 1: would start off at pretty good against Trump and might

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Speaker 1: be built up to victorious over the span of a

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Speaker 1: couple of months. But until and unless Joe Biden chooses

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Speaker 1: to go all things considered. If he were to say

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Speaker 1: to me, you know, Pal, I'm thinking maybe I should

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Speaker 1: bow out for safety's sake and party unity, and at

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Speaker 1: that point, I'm going to interrupt Joe Biden, and I'm

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Speaker 1: going to at this point try to talk him out

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Speaker 1: of it. As a PostScript, I will note that I

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Speaker 1: think an interaction I had with the now president while

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Speaker 1: I was moderating the Democratic primary debate in Chicago in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven and he was still a senator,

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Speaker 1: underscores that he is just stubborn enough to have been

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Speaker 1: told whatever you do, do not take any day, quill

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Speaker 1: or anything in the hours before the debate, and he

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Speaker 1: do it anyway. But I'll tell that in tomorrow's full

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Speaker 1: edition of the Countdown podcast. It's just an element of verisimilitude.

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Speaker 1: When I heard maybe he had a bad reaction to

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Speaker 1: daytime cold medication. I went, oh, God, of course, I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you the story tomorrow, by which time we will

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Speaker 1: also have the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, which can,

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Speaker 1: of course make this entire debate academic, since if Alito

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Speaker 1: and the other scum actually invent presidential immunity on Monday,

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Speaker 1: Biden can turn around and arrest them, then he can

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Speaker 1: arrest Trump and nobody could touch him. Oh, and he

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Speaker 1: could arrest those weasels at the Times too. And while

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Speaker 1: you're at it, go back and arrest Haris Greeley. Keith Olderman,

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Speaker 1: I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,

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Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts