Speaker 1: Cool media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here, the show about things
Speaker 2: falling apart.
Speaker 3: One thing falling apart last year.
Speaker 2: I guess the president's mental health seemingly so, and we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about that today and some possible ramifications
Speaker 2: that the current president may be trying to exploit to
Speaker 2: help him out. Robert Evans, Hello, how are you?
Speaker 4: I'm fine? Is something wrong with the president?
Speaker 3: The current one or the old one?
Speaker 4: Any president ever? Has a president ever done wrong?
Speaker 3: I heard some nasty things about mister Clinton.
Speaker 4: Interesting. I woke up today for the first time, so
Speaker 4: this is all new to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just don't look on like the news or the internet
Speaker 2: or anything, and it should be.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's good. I'm just going to start reading Wikipedia
Speaker 4: at the A section and see if I get to
Speaker 4: anything bad about a president.
Speaker 2: So since taking office, Trump is actually sort of been
Speaker 2: going soft on old sleepy Joe, not out of the
Speaker 2: goodness of his own heart, right, but to possibly explore
Speaker 2: legal options to get around some of the roadblocks Trump's
Speaker 2: been facing in the judicial branch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Trump's been arguing that Biden himself was mostly absent, especially
Speaker 2: during the later half of his presidency, and a sort
Speaker 2: of like secret cabal of cabinet members, DNC consultants, white
Speaker 2: House staff, and aids were running a shadow presidency.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and one of my constant takes is there are
Speaker 4: no secret cabals. There's a lot of cabals. They're all
Speaker 4: very obvious, very public, very public cabals.
Speaker 2: But this secret cabal of like DNC interns, we're using
Speaker 2: Biden's signature via auto pen to set policy, make judicial appointments,
Speaker 2: and sign orders, all with little to zero awareness from
Speaker 2: poor old six b Joe. In fact, people around Biden
Speaker 2: intentionally covered up his declining health to continue using his
Speaker 2: presidential power for their own progressive agenda.
Speaker 4: If only they'd used it for that, and not just
Speaker 4: to keep getting.
Speaker 6: Paychecks or sending bombs to Israel, or sending bombs to
Speaker 6: Israel many of the other, many of the other things
Speaker 6: that Biden seem to preoccupied with. I would have play
Speaker 6: a clip from a month and a half ago Donald Trump,
Speaker 6: current president, explaining this conspiracy of the secret Joe Biden cabal.
Speaker 7: I'm sure that he didn't know many of the things. Look,
Speaker 7: he was never for open borders, he was never for
Speaker 7: transgender for everybody, he was never for men playing in
Speaker 7: women's sports. I mean he changed, I mean all of
Speaker 7: these things that changed so radically. I don't think he
Speaker 7: had any idea that what was Frankly, I said it
Speaker 7: during the debate and I say it now. He didn't
Speaker 7: have much of an idea what was going on.
Speaker 5: He shouldn't be.
Speaker 7: I mean, essentially, whoever used the auto was the president, and.
Speaker 1: That is wrong.
Speaker 7: It's illegal, it's so bad, and it's so disrespectful to
Speaker 7: our country.
Speaker 2: Transgender for everybody. The defining legacy of the Biden era,
Speaker 2: sure is his core policy platform.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, I don't know, Like, what do you even
Speaker 4: say at this point? Right, Like, honestly, he's sending troops
Speaker 4: into the second major city, this one the capital, and
Speaker 4: taking over control of the police force. How much is
Speaker 4: it worth just being like oh and he said another
Speaker 4: thing that's not true, Like I know it's important to
Speaker 4: cover all this, but also like, man, I'm tired.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, it's it's it's incredibly frustrating because they
Speaker 2: get to deploy these these absurd little lines every once
Speaker 2: in a while and it captures media attention, and the
Speaker 2: physical things that they're doing do not get as much,
Speaker 2: like awareness.
Speaker 4: And there's this constant I think misinterpretation as to like
Speaker 4: this is alid distraction from this and this and this,
Speaker 4: and it does sometimes function that way, but this isn't.
Speaker 4: They're not doing this because it's a distraction. They're doing
Speaker 4: this because they also hate this group of people. When
Speaker 4: I hurt this group of people, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people they want to hurt, and they want to do
Speaker 4: it in different ways.
Speaker 2: And they're kind of playing a longer game with the
Speaker 2: focus on this quote unquote autopen and it remains to
Speaker 2: be seen if it's going to be successful or you know,
Speaker 2: pay off for them. But I do want to talk
Speaker 2: about it now since this is on like you know,
Speaker 2: a month, like four of them slowly seeding this into
Speaker 2: popular discourse. It's like a new thing because every once
Speaker 2: in a while they have to decide what the new
Speaker 2: thing is. Right a few years ago, they decided it
Speaker 2: was trans people. They decided it was DEI, they decided
Speaker 2: it was how the twenty twenty lecture was stolen. They
Speaker 2: just decide that there's like some major problem, and then
Speaker 2: they repeat it often enough that it becomes like something
Speaker 2: that seemingly a share of voters actually care about. And
Speaker 2: they're trying to make autopen be a thing. And there
Speaker 2: is actual, like possible results of them focusing on this
Speaker 2: as we as we will see. But the autopen fixation
Speaker 2: started this past March when Trump posted a truth on
Speaker 2: truth Social claiming that Biden's preemptive partons of members of
Speaker 2: the January sixth Investigation House Committee are quote hereby declared void, vacant,
Speaker 2: and of no further force of effect because of the
Speaker 2: fact that they were done by autopen unquote. Great, this
Speaker 2: is not real. This is not this is not like
Speaker 2: a real thing that he can disclaim on on truth Social.
Speaker 4: But what's real?
Speaker 2: You know, there is no requirement that pardons even be signed,
Speaker 2: only that they're accepted by a subject. In nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 2: the Uslister General concluded in a memo that quotes, neither
Speaker 2: the Constitution nor any statute prescribes the method by which
Speaker 2: executive clemency shall be exercised or evidenced. So he can't
Speaker 2: just do this here. But this was kind of the
Speaker 2: opening of the door for the rest of what we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about this episode. And I guess before
Speaker 2: we get into that, I should talk about what an
Speaker 2: autopen is not a bad one. Is a tool to
Speaker 2: automate the signing of documents by replicating a signature. And
Speaker 2: this is a machine or a type of machine that's
Speaker 2: long been used in the White House, like Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 2: bought and used an early iteration of such a device
Speaker 2: shortly after was patented. In eighteen oh three, Lennon B.
Speaker 2: Johnson's auto pen was photographed in the White House for
Speaker 2: a National Inquiry or recover story titled the Robot that
Speaker 2: Sits in for the President. And it's funny that now
Speaker 2: you get Fox News headlines that are basically written very
Speaker 2: similarly talking about how actually a robot for the autopen
Speaker 2: itself was acting as president. And that's like a controversy,
Speaker 2: okay Versus it was just like a fun news story
Speaker 2: back in the fifties.
Speaker 4: How many of the guys angry about this literally want
Speaker 4: an LLM to be the president? Yes, exactly, that's that's
Speaker 4: my question.
Speaker 2: No, at least at least half, at least half the
Speaker 2: other half don't know what an ll is.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Now, Obama was the first president to openly sign legislation
Speaker 2: with an autopen, including the extension of the Patriot Act
Speaker 2: in twenty eleven while at the G eight summit in France,
Speaker 2: and though the constitutionality of the autopen has never been
Speaker 2: tested or explicitly determined in court, in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: President George W. Bush asked the Justice Department for its
Speaker 2: opinion on the validity of the autopen for signing legislation
Speaker 2: and other official policy documents. The Office of Legal Council
Speaker 2: found that, quote, the President need not personally perform the
Speaker 2: physical act of fixing his signature to a bill he
Speaker 2: approves and decides to sign in order for the bill
Speaker 2: to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill
Speaker 2: by directing a subordinate to affix the president's signature to
Speaker 2: such a bill, for example, by autopen unquote, though there
Speaker 2: still is debate whether the President needs to be physically
Speaker 2: present during this process or simply authorized the signing. And
Speaker 2: you know, you have people like Steven Miller in this
Speaker 2: administration who try to find niche little laws or statutes
Speaker 2: to then apply in a way that it was probably
Speaker 2: never designed or we have since these laws inceptions have
Speaker 2: decided not to use the laws in that way because
Speaker 2: that doesn't make sense of our current context. But someone
Speaker 2: like Miller, very willing to do such a thing, and
Speaker 2: there could be, for instance, some obscure aspect or interpretation
Speaker 2: of like proxy signature laws that they could try to
Speaker 2: like force through into their interpretation of like Article one,
Speaker 2: section seven of the Constitution, which might make some auto
Speaker 2: pen signatures invalid. But this is something that's like kind
Speaker 2: of dismissed in a lot of legal circles because as
Speaker 2: like a practical matter, it would be disastrous to start
Speaker 2: rescinding executive actions based on this interpretation because like decades
Speaker 2: and decades of laws and regulations would then fall into
Speaker 2: question and possibly become void. So lots of people just
Speaker 2: like kind of don't think this is like a real
Speaker 2: question or a real concern, and part of me thinks
Speaker 2: that as well. But as like someone like Miller is demonstrated,
Speaker 2: they're absolutely willing to use like niche arguments or precedents
Speaker 2: to do some pretty like crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: Do you know what is not very crazy?
Speaker 4: Robert paying money to the sponsors of this show.
Speaker 3: It's an extremely reasonable act.
Speaker 4: It's the only sane thing you can do. If you
Speaker 4: do anything else, you are being fifty one to fifty,
Speaker 4: then you'll be on an involuntary seventy two hour. Hold,
Speaker 4: that's the way the law works.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back.
Speaker 2: So with this Biden autopen thing, it's not really about
Speaker 2: the autopen. The autopen actually is not the problem here
Speaker 2: kind of at all. That's not what they're really focusing on.
Speaker 2: In early June, the Justice Department launched an investigation into
Speaker 2: Biden's alleged use of the autopen, with the DOJ pardon
Speaker 2: attorney Ed Martin writing in an email that this investigation
Speaker 2: is to determine whether Joe Biden was quote competent and
Speaker 2: whether others were taking advantage of him through use of
Speaker 2: the autopen or other means unquote, with a specific focus
Speaker 2: on the primpt of pardons for members of Biden's family
Speaker 2: and clemency for thirty seven death row inmates whose sentences
Speaker 2: were converted to life prison. So this is the real crux,
Speaker 2: whether Biden was competent and whether people were using the
Speaker 2: autopen without his knowledge. And I think the reason why
Speaker 2: they're starting by focusing on these pardons, whether for January
Speaker 2: sixth investigation committee members or for those close to Biden,
Speaker 2: like this all relates to Trump's campaign promise of like retribution, right,
Speaker 2: you can think of cash Betel's list of deep state
Speaker 2: actors that he wants to investigate like that was such
Speaker 2: a core part of what Trump campaigned on, and he
Speaker 2: does still seem keen on fulfilling parts of that promise.
Speaker 2: Now Ed Martin, the DOJ pardon attorney investigating this autopen debacle, himself,
Speaker 2: has said that the president's pardon power is absolute and
Speaker 2: that using the autopen is quote not necessarily a problem.
Speaker 2: But I think that the core part here is that
Speaker 2: it's not about the autopen itself. It's about this secret
Speaker 2: cabal who are using the autopen without Biden's knowledge. So
Speaker 2: a few days after this investigation was announced, White House
Speaker 2: released a public memo from Trump entitled reviewing Certain Presidential Actions,
Speaker 2: which ordered the Attorney General and the White House Council
Speaker 2: to investigate quote whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the
Speaker 2: public about Biden's mental state and unconstitutionally exercise to the
Speaker 2: authorities and responsibilities of the president. And this document reads
Speaker 2: like something I would read on like a conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: website five years ago. It's written in a very similar style.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: President Biden's aides abused the power of presidential signatures through
Speaker 2: the use of an auto pen to conceal Biden's cognitive
Speaker 2: decline and assert article to authority. This conspiracy marks one
Speaker 2: of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.
Speaker 2: The American public was purposely shielded from discovering who wielded
Speaker 2: the executive power, all while Biden's signature was deployed across
Speaker 2: thousands of documents to affect radical policy shifts. Unquote. The
Speaker 2: memo states that Biden's advisors quot unquote tried to hide
Speaker 2: the true extent of his mental decline to quote cover
Speaker 2: up his inability to discharge his duties. The investigation specifically
Speaker 2: wants to look into which policy documents were signed via
Speaker 2: auto pen and who ordered the President's signature to be
Speaker 2: a fixed to said documents. One other quote from the
Speaker 2: memo quote the White House issued over twelve hundred presidential documents,
Speaker 2: appointed two hundred and thirty five judges to the federal bench,
Speaker 2: and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in
Speaker 2: United States history. Although the authority to take these executive actions,
Speaker 2: along with many others, is constitutionally committed to the president,
Speaker 2: there are serious doubts as to the decision making process
Speaker 2: and even the degree of Biden's awareness of these actions
Speaker 2: being taken in his name, given clear indications that President
Speaker 2: Biden lacked the capacity to exercise its presidential authority, if
Speaker 2: his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal
Speaker 2: this incapacity while taking radical executive actions all in his name,
Speaker 2: that would constitute and unconstitutional wielding of the power of
Speaker 2: the presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the
Speaker 2: legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden's
Speaker 2: name unquote. So though the two thousand and five Bush
Speaker 2: DOJ memo does support the use of the autopen to
Speaker 2: a fix the president's signature, obviously it still must be
Speaker 2: the president who decides to sign a document, with the
Speaker 2: Office of Legal Counsel, memo state in quote, we do
Speaker 2: not question the substantial authority supporting the view that the
Speaker 2: president must personally decide whether to approve and sign bills.
Speaker 2: This is pretty obvious, and that's why so much of
Speaker 2: the autopen investigations are around Biden's deteriorating mental state and
Speaker 2: not the autopen itself. It's about trying to prove whether
Speaker 2: Biden was either not mentally capable of sufficiently authorizing a
Speaker 2: signature to be affixed to certain documents, or was just
Speaker 2: completely unaware that the autopen was signing certain documents with
Speaker 2: White House advisors specifically covering up Biden's mental decline to
Speaker 2: take advantage of his compromise date to personally direct policy.
Speaker 2: And that's what the investigations are going to try to prove.
Speaker 2: The White House is already making repeated assertions that this
Speaker 2: was the case, and this question may be finally settled
Speaker 2: in a Trump sympathetic court, and Republicans are currently trying
Speaker 2: every angle of attack on this. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson
Speaker 2: has started a Senate investigation and a House Oversight Committee
Speaker 2: investigation is already up and running. The past month, Kentucky
Speaker 2: Republican James Comer has been subpoena ing Biden admin officials
Speaker 2: to testify on the use of the auto pen and
Speaker 2: Biden's mental faculties while in office. Comer's own letters and
Speaker 2: subpoenas for this investigation have been signed with a digital signature,
Speaker 2: because this is such a common practice in Washington and
Speaker 2: like all over the country. Now, try to think of
Speaker 2: all the official documents you sign on your computer, right yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: metadata from a subpoena cover letter sent to former Senior
Speaker 2: adviser to the First Lady, Anthony Bernal showed the document
Speaker 2: was authored and signed by someone named Benzene, an Oversight
Speaker 2: Committee staffer, not James Comer, because again, this is pretty regular,
Speaker 2: so even the investigators are doing this process themselves while
Speaker 2: doing the investigation. Part of the reason why the Republicans
Speaker 2: are trying to make this a continuing story and not
Speaker 2: just about, you know, the pardons, is because as like
Speaker 2: Biden appointee judges began blocking Trump's executive orders, the focus
Speaker 2: on the auto pen turned from just pardons towards use
Speaker 2: of the autopen to nominate federal judges. And this is
Speaker 2: where things get a lot more slippery. Last month, Fox
Speaker 2: News asked House Overside Committee Chairman James Comer if not
Speaker 2: just pardons may be found to be null and void
Speaker 2: because of the results of this investigation, but possibly also
Speaker 2: judicial appointments.
Speaker 8: Biden made two hundred and twenty eight judicial appointments, including
Speaker 8: forty five Appeals court and one hundred and eighty seven
Speaker 8: District court judges, and most importantly, Biden appointed Justice Kachanji
Speaker 8: Brown Jackson. The Court's most long winded justice who couldn't
Speaker 8: even define what a woman is. Mister Chairman, you mentioned
Speaker 8: that you're looking at some of the pardons that were
Speaker 8: done under President Biden and the use of the autopen
Speaker 8: doctor Fauci being one of them, talking about whether they
Speaker 8: were legitimate or not. Are you also looking into Biden's
Speaker 8: judicial appointments as.
Speaker 9: Well, Absolutely everything that was signed with the autopan, especially
Speaker 9: in the last year of the Biden presidency. This is
Speaker 9: when all the books that are being written, all the
Speaker 9: tell all interviews that are being recorded from his former
Speaker 9: disgruntled staffers and staffords who are trying to preserve the
Speaker 9: reputation for future employment. They're all saying that Joe Biden
Speaker 9: was in a deep mental decline and that he was
Speaker 9: protected by a very small inner circle. We brought a
Speaker 9: few of those people on the inner circle and ask
Speaker 9: them simple questions like were you ever told to lie
Speaker 9: about the President's health? And they couldn't answer that question
Speaker 9: that had to plead the fifth to avoid self incrimination.
Speaker 9: This raises an issue whether these pardons, whether these judicial appointments,
Speaker 9: and whether these executive orders are legal. I believe that
Speaker 9: if this investigation keeps going in the way that it's going.
Speaker 9: That's going to a very serious concerns about whether or
Speaker 9: not Joe Biden even you what was going on around him,
Speaker 9: much less whether he authorized the use of his signature
Speaker 9: on all of this stuff. I think all of these
Speaker 9: are in jeopardy of being declared null and void in
Speaker 9: a court of law. And that's a big deal for
Speaker 9: the Trump administration because so much of what Trump is
Speaker 9: up against in court now with these liberal biased Biden
Speaker 9: appointed judges is the fact that they're using and citing
Speaker 9: some of these executive orders as reason to throw out
Speaker 9: President Trump's agenda and President Trump's executive orders. So they
Speaker 9: tried to Trump proof the administration on the way out
Speaker 9: the door. And the problem they got now is the
Speaker 9: American people realize that Joe Biden wasn't the one calling
Speaker 9: the shots, and he may very well have not even
Speaker 9: been mentally fit to make decisions to authorize the use
Speaker 9: of his autopinion, if he even authorized it. So this
Speaker 9: is going to play out in a court of law.
Speaker 9: I think our investigation is going to be a substantial
Speaker 9: part of evidence in it, and that's why we're doing
Speaker 9: the investigation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's the rub right there. That's exactly what
Speaker 4: they want, right is to completely peel back the last
Speaker 4: administration or two of judges and make it just be
Speaker 4: all their people, a whole justice system that they completely control.
Speaker 2: If they could recall like two hundred and thirty federal judges, yeah,
Speaker 2: and fill in two hundred and thirty more like Trump
Speaker 2: appointed judges, that would clear out so much of the
Speaker 2: legal roadblocks that they're currently fac there.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And that is the real crux of their focus on
Speaker 2: this issue. That's why they're trying to like insert this
Speaker 2: into real and they're throwing this autopen story like everywhere.
Speaker 2: Even the Epstein files, which don't exist, were concocted by
Speaker 2: the ever suspicious Autopen.
Speaker 5: It's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion.
Speaker 5: I can say this, Those files were run by the
Speaker 5: worst come on earth. They were run by Komi, they
Speaker 5: were run by Garland, they were run by Biden and
Speaker 5: all of the people that actually ran the government, including
Speaker 5: the Autopen.
Speaker 2: Whatever the current big news story is, they're going to
Speaker 2: try to shove the Autopen in there because that's how
Speaker 2: they operate, that's how they craft reality.
Speaker 3: Okay, we are back.
Speaker 2: So, needless to say, Biden and his advisors have denied
Speaker 2: all of this. And it's a little tricky because part
Speaker 2: of what this story slightly compelling for Trump's team is
Speaker 2: that obviously Biden's mental health was in decline for the
Speaker 2: past few years of his presidency.
Speaker 3: We all saw that happen.
Speaker 2: That is like a accepted part of our country's history. Now,
Speaker 2: we all saw the debate, and so much of their
Speaker 2: argument for this is resting on how much everyone understands
Speaker 2: that you have a whole bunch of former White House
Speaker 2: staff writing books on this topic now. So with that
Speaker 2: aspect in mind, they still have to defend the use
Speaker 2: of the autopen and Biden's competency and awareness of all
Speaker 2: of the decisions being made to do this. Last month,
Speaker 2: had his first interview with The New York Times since
Speaker 2: like twenty twenty one, where he discussed how he gave
Speaker 2: oral authorization for all of the pardons with the autopen
Speaker 2: operation specifically being managed by the Staff Secretary Stephene Feldman.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, I made every decision. Biden said that
Speaker 2: the White House used the autopen specifically for the last
Speaker 2: batch of pardons. Biden said that they used the autopen
Speaker 2: because of the high number of pardon warrants issued totaling
Speaker 2: around four thousand, which affected three categories of federal convicts,
Speaker 2: people serving home confinement, non violent drug offenders, and people
Speaker 2: on death row. He did not choose or prove like
Speaker 2: every single name on that list, but claims to have
Speaker 2: determined the criteria and categories, saying.
Speaker 3: Quote, I was deeply involved.
Speaker 2: I laid out a strategy how I want to go
Speaker 2: about these dealing with pardons and commutations. I pulled the
Speaker 2: team in to say this is how I want to
Speaker 2: get it done generically and then specifically unquote. In preparation
Speaker 2: for the final months of the Biden presidency, his White
Speaker 2: House counsel wrote an email to staff in November of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, laying with the process for reviewing pardons,
Speaker 2: the last step being quote the President makes the final
Speaker 2: decision on the final pardon and or the commutation slate unquote.
Speaker 2: At this point, around a dozen people have been subpoenaed
Speaker 2: and are giving testimony, and the investigation is looking through
Speaker 2: emails from the time, specifically starting with these pardons, because
Speaker 2: I think that's the only way they have to like
Speaker 2: investigate this right now, it's easier to investigate the pardons
Speaker 2: from the last three months the presidency than just all
Speaker 2: of the documents assigned over the course of like four years,
Speaker 2: or even just two years if you look at like
Speaker 2: the past two years of his presidency. So specifically, they're
Speaker 2: focusing on the final pardons as like a way in
Speaker 2: to figure out the process for how the auto pen
Speaker 2: was functioning and who was using it, and they may
Speaker 2: try to extend that process out to things like judicial
Speaker 2: appointments over time. I think trying to rescind the appointment
Speaker 2: of someone like a Supreme Court justice very unlikely because
Speaker 2: obviously Biden had awareness that that was going on. But
Speaker 2: they might try to pull more fucky shit with the
Speaker 2: you know, circuit court appointments or that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is like the most important story
Speaker 2: facing the country right now. Obviously, the stuff going on
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. And many other aspects of how
Speaker 2: the Trump administration is operating with Ice and with trans
Speaker 2: people affects people more immediately. But I've been specifically trying
Speaker 2: to pull information on how they're crafting this narrative around
Speaker 2: the autopan ever since he made that first truth back
Speaker 2: in March, because I saw this as a ongoing reality
Speaker 2: crafting project which might accumulate in something actually meaningful over time.
Speaker 2: And none of these investigations have released their findings yet,
Speaker 2: and they're not expected to for at least a few
Speaker 2: more weeks to months, But it's something that I think
Speaker 2: is worth keeping an eye on right now, especially considering
Speaker 2: you know, Miller and others and like the Heritage Foundations,
Speaker 2: focus on trying to find niche loopholes in which executive
Speaker 2: power can be really exercised. And if one of the
Speaker 2: ways to remove some of the roadblocks towards this president's
Speaker 2: executive power is to undermine the executive power of a
Speaker 2: previous administration, it would be the first time we see
Speaker 2: that strategy actually enacted. And it sounds like kind of cartoonish,
Speaker 2: but that's so much of what they're currently doing is
Speaker 2: pushing everything to that extreme, trying to test all of
Speaker 2: these more niche theories that you see people talking about
Speaker 2: in the past, Like around twenty eleven, when Obama first
Speaker 2: signed legislation with the autopen you had a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of libertarians complaining that this is unconstitutional because he wasn't
Speaker 2: physically present when the document was being signed, and so
Speaker 2: you have like think pieces on that at the time
Speaker 2: that then kind of get memory hold, and now you're
Speaker 2: going to see some of those justifications back again and
Speaker 2: actually try to test them out in court, especially if
Speaker 2: you have a Justice Department investigation, you have an Attorney
Speaker 2: General investigation, of a cent an investigation, and a House investigation.
Speaker 2: If one of those can stumble onto or develop or
Speaker 2: invent some compelling argument, we will actually see versions of
Speaker 2: this complaint be tested in a way that we never
Speaker 2: have before, because it would be like disastrous to the
Speaker 2: functional aspect of this state if you determined that all
Speaker 2: presidential documents signed the autopen are not bad and unless
Speaker 2: presidents in the room, that would be a massive domino
Speaker 2: tipping over which you know, most reasonable people who work
Speaker 2: in government, like elder statesmen, are not gonna want to
Speaker 2: do that because that sounds like a fucking nightmare, like
Speaker 2: legally speaking, and it would be like disastrous, like it
Speaker 2: would destroy some fundamental aspects of the government. But right now,
Speaker 2: destroying aspects of government is kind of the point. That's
Speaker 2: what we saw with Doge. That's what we saw during
Speaker 2: the first few months of the presidency. Using this kind
Speaker 2: of tech startup thought process behind running a government. You
Speaker 2: have to break things first so that you can rebuild
Speaker 2: it in a way that suits you better. And if
Speaker 2: that means stripping away two hundred federal judges to put
Speaker 2: in two hundred of your own, that would have massive
Speaker 2: benefits for them. And I think that's part of why
Speaker 2: they're having this focus right now. Oh yeah, that's kind
Speaker 2: of all.
Speaker 3: I have on that. So once you have some some
Speaker 3: some closing thoughts.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, of course, this is the game as
Speaker 4: laid out in not just Project twenty twenty five, but
Speaker 4: what the right has been talking about my entire life. Like,
Speaker 4: none of this should be surprising if you've been paying attention.
Speaker 4: The only reason why some people are surprised is that
Speaker 4: there's folks in the democratic hierarchy who have been saying
Speaker 4: for years, this isn't really what conservatives want. This is
Speaker 4: just a fringe, right.
Speaker 3: There is no fringe anymore.
Speaker 4: They'll never actually do this. They can't do this, the
Speaker 4: system doesn't work that way. There's just been this belief
Speaker 4: that this can't happen, right, it can't happen, or that
Speaker 4: like if it did, obviously you know the cops will
Speaker 4: stop them. The FBI will stop them, the army will
Speaker 4: stop them. And there's a reason why they've went out
Speaker 4: of their way to gain control of all of those
Speaker 4: organizations before doing this. So yeah, I mean you cannot.
Speaker 4: We either pretend that someone's going to stop them and
Speaker 4: you don't have to worry about it, or just accept
Speaker 4: that we are where we are and there may be
Speaker 4: some unprecedented things that need to be done. Yep, that's
Speaker 4: all I'll say. Legally, that's all I should say.
Speaker 3: That's the episode. Bye bye everyone, Okay, cool.
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