An incurious media unburdened by what has been (08-14-2024--Hour1)

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_02]: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So a couple of stories about being unburdened by what has been, shall we say. First up, Politico reporting. This is a piece by Jonathan Lemire, or is it Lemire? No, it's probably Lemire. Ursula Perrano, Daniela Diaz, and Ryan Lizza. So this is a four-man job, or sorry, four-person job.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_02]: President Joe Biden is frustrated that Barack Obama would not tell him to his face that he should leave the race.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's what he's frustrated with Obama. Not that Obama wanted him out, but that he wouldn't say it to his face.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Which I can't, look, I kind of feel like that's one of those things that you say when you're really hurt by the action, but then you make it about something like, oh, I mean, I don't care about the action.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_02]: You just should have said it to my face.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I bet you still would be mad, you know?

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Also, Joe Biden is angry with Nancy Pelosi and views her as ruthless for ushering him out the door.

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_02]: This was a fun exercise in how many ways you could describe what occurred as a coup without saying the word coup, right?

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Ushering him out the door, leave the race.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Biden is still miffed at the role Chuck Schumer played, too.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Biden has told his closest aides and associates that he is coming to terms with his decision to bow out of the presidential race last month.

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_02]: All right. OK, so now we've got I should really just start highlighting these.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So we've got him out the door, leave the race, bow out.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But he is still coming to terms with his decision.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't wouldn't the coming to terms have occurred prior to the decision?

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't he have come to terms with the reality of his situation and that prompted his decision?

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I mean, at least that's been the cover story so far.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. But while he's still coming to terms with his own decision, he still harbors some frustration toward members of his own party that he believes pushed him out.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's another one pushed him out.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: OK. According to three people familiar with Biden's thinking, who are not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Pelosi has been at the forefront of late as the former speaker is on an extensive book tour and has been publicly explaining her part in nudging Biden off the top of the ticket.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02]: That's another one there. Nudging him off the top of the ticket.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_02]: OK. The president is still smarting, but has told people in recent days that he grudgingly respects Pelosi's actions.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. That's right.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, honestly, if you're Joe Biden and you are a creature of the beltway, right, of the swamp and you've been in politics for, you know, what, 87 years or whatever it's been.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, like, you kind of you kind of expect him to recognize and respect.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: The sheer, you know, political power play hackery at play.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. I mean, that's OK. So he's not going to like them, but I understand.

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's I don't like what they did to me.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_02]: But by golly, you got to admire the moxie, you know, like that kind of thing.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I get that from a guy like Biden. Surely he can't take this stuff personally.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Again, you've been in politics in D.C. for like a million years.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know how this game is played, but you never thought it would happen to you.

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the lingering tension between democratically what lingering tension.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean lingering tension? I thought we were all with the joy.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I thought there was so much joy. Everybody was united in the joy.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Why would there be any lingering tension? Joe Biden is a hero. He's a patriot.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He should be on Mount Rushmore. That's what I've been told.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: The lingering tension between Democratic leaders underscores the historic tumult that has gripped their party in the last six weeks.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Contrasting with the unity Democrats hope to present at their convention next week.

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Biden's faltering debate performance in late June convinced Pelosi that he could not win.

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Why? It was just one bad night.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what we were told.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Y'all said it was one performance.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_02]: It was just one bad performance.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And look at all he's done. Right.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Watch me. Watch me.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. That's what they said.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what Biden said.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of how he said it, too.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Look at my record.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Look what I've done.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_02]: We were told repeatedly.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Wait, do I still have the.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me see here.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got the.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Kamala Harris.

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_00]: What I saw that report last night.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe is.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: As a former prosecutor.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_02]: She's talking about the Robert Herr.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_00]: The comments that were made by that prosecutor.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Special report.

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Gratuitous.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Inaccurate.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And inappropriate.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And clearly.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Politically motivated.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Gratuitous.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Gratuitous.

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I will say.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Say it.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: That when it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like that,

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_00]: we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what she said after special counsel Robert Herr put out his report saying that he would not prosecute because the jury would probably look at Joe Biden as he presented himself to Robert Herr and his team.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_02]: As a.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Elderly man, well-meaning with a poor memory.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_02]: So.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_02]: This was the pushback.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_02]: He's fine.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_02]: You don't see it behind closed doors.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_02]: He's like juggling, you know, torches of fire and stuff.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_02]: He's doing squats like he's running circles around all of the 22 year old staffers.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_02]: How dare you, sir?

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Suggest otherwise.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So it was just one night.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_02]: He just had a bad night.

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_02]: He had a cold and a stutter.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_02]: He had a stuttering cold.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why he did not do well on that one night.

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So why would that have convinced Nancy Pelosi that he couldn't win?

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_02]: That just is.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there are some dots that just are not being connected here.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: But this is Politico and there's four people reporting the story.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_02]: So God knows they must have covered every single base uncovered every rock, you know, turned every rock over looking for every piece of information here.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a mystery.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02]: We may never know.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So she determines he could not win.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And so Nancy Pelosi helped orchestrate an unprecedented mutiny.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Whoa.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_02]: That's another way to say that, huh?

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Mutiny.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_02]: So we had leave the race, out the door, bow out, pushed him out, nudging Biden.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And finally we get to mutiny, which I guess is sort of like nudging Biden off the top of the ticket if the ticket were, say, like a gang plank.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Is that what they're called, right?

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_02]: The plank.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Walk the plank, captain.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And then they push him over.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_02]: A senior White House official also granted anonymity to describe private conversations to Politico said Biden views Pelosi as, quote, ruthless and willing to set aside long term personal relationships in order to keep her party in power.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And her.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_02]: And most importantly, to prevent Republican nominee Donald Trump from returning to the White House, quote, that's who she has always been.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_02]: The person said.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But Biden also harbors some resentment that Obama, his friend and former boss, did not call him directly to voice his concerns.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, come on.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Like on this one, I got to I got to go with Obama on this one.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, how do you call up Joe Biden at his age?

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_02]: First off, he got a very small window when he's awake during the day.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_02]: So you got to, you know, and Obama's probably, you know, out on the jet ski or something, enjoying the day traveling or something, shopping with the family.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_02]: But you got to you got to carve that out of your schedule.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Then you got to call him and then you got to have this really uncomfortable, awkward conversation that Joe's probably not even going to remember after you hang up the phone.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So I even bother.

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And the wheels were in motion.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Obama did tweet in support of Biden immediately after the debate.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_02]: But then he went publicly quiet.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't say anything in public.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_02]: The former president did not try to stir up a movement to dislodge.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_02]: But there's another one.

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Dislodge Biden in the mutiny.

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_02]: But he also didn't quell the mutiny or the movement.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Much to the dismay of some of those closest to Biden.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_02]: His relationship with Obama has always been more complicated than it appears.

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_02]: The two men are personally close.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Obama even offered to pay Biden's mortgage after his son Bo's death in 2015.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02]: That seems important to me.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I have never heard that bit of information.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Have you?

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_02]: That Obama offered to pay Biden's mortgage?

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Mortgage?

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Why?

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Dude, as vice president, you're pulling down, what, a quarter mil a year?

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_02]: 300K?

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_02]: What?

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_02]: You're...

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Why are you...

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_02]: How can you not afford the mortgage payments on your house?

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, houses.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, that might be it.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So you got money problems?

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Is that the deal?

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_02]: There's money problems.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_02]: In a related story, they're throwing Hunter Biden under the bus.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think it's actually just a preview of the pardon that's a coming.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Which might have been part of the deal as they tossed him off the plank.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got some audio from Eli Lake.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_02]: He did a podcast for the Free Press.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And...

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_02]: It's brilliant.

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Politico reports Biden's inner circle told him the day before he dropped out

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_02]: that if he persisted in the race,

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_02]: they believed that Pelosi was going to take her misgivings public,

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_02]: including her belief that Trump would defeat him,

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_02]: which would have been deeply humiliating for a sitting president.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_02]: During her book tour, Pelosi has also been publicly pushing for Biden to be added to Mount Rushmore,

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_02]: which many Democrats privately indicate they see as her attempt to make amends.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_02]: That's right.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So look, Joe,

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_02]: you give up power

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_02]: and just

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_02]: ride off into the sunset

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_02]: and I will make absurd proposals to honor you.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_02]: How about that?

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Does that sound like a deal?

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Does it sound like a good deal for you?

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Eli Lake has a podcast over at the Free Press.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_02]: The website there is thefp.com.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Eli Lake is an American journalist, podcaster,

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_02]: former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast,

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_02]: as well as Newsweek,

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_02]: a former columnist for Bloomberg View as well.

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And he has a,

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I found it to be very enlightening and instructive commentary on his podcast at the Free Press about what occurred here.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_03]: This is not weird in the way the Democrats are now messaging.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_03]: It's weird because the party is asking us to forget what they themselves were just saying.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Overnight, the press went from picking Joe Biden apart as an out-of-touch, senile, selfish old man

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_03]: to praising a great patriot who understood when it was time to exit,

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_03]: as if the same media wasn't pushing him off the stage.

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Am I the only one feeling the whiplash?

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_03]: We are now asked to consider the presidential race in terms of memes and gaffes and polls and focus groups

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_03]: as if this was just another election year.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_03]: We are also being asked to accept at face value and absurdity

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_03]: that the president too feeble to run for re-election

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_03]: is fit for the job he currently holds.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And that his successor,

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_03]: who was widely understood as a drag on the ticket just a few weeks ago,

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_03]: is now the second coming of Barack Obama?

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_02]: This is insanity.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, they're not asking us,

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_02]: this is a slight correction,

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I would just take,

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I would just pick a teensy weensy little bone,

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_02]: a chicken bone, if you will.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Not the kind that got stolen by that teacher in Illinois.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, did you see there was a story about a whole bunch of

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_02]: cooking oil that's being stolen too?

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_02]: So like, I'm thinking it's related.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, the slight bone to pick here is that we are not being asked to consider.

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_02]: We're not being asked.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_02]: We're being told.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_02]: We are being instructed.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_02]: There is an implicit demand here

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_02]: that we forget everything of the last five weeks.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Eli Lake with a podcast at the Free Press.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's called Kamala Harris and the election of laughter and forgetting.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't laughing just because it's in the headline.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a funny headline.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a funny name.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Because it's true.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_02]: It's funny because it's true.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_02]: He says that exposing the big lie about Joe Biden's mental acuity spawned another lie

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_02]: about the legitimacy of Kamala Harris's political legitimacy.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_02]: A candidate I'm sure you remember.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Or candidacy.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Canceled her first run for president in 2019.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Hang on.

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me back that up.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I wrote the same word twice.

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_02]: It spawned the lie about Biden's cognitive ability spawned another lie about the legitimacy

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_02]: of Harris's political candidacy.

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_02]: About how she's this great candidate.

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Here we go.

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_03]: A candidate I'm sure you remember who canceled her first run for president in 2019 because

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_03]: she was polling so poorly in Iowa, a state where she held 87 separate campaign events.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_03]: She failed to receive a single delegate.

[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_03]: But never mind everything she said when she ran for president the first time, her commitment

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_03]: to ban fracking and abolish the agency in charge of protecting our border, her aides tell

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_03]: us she has changed.

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_02]: That's so 2019, people.

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Come on now.

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And she hasn't said that.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just all the people around her.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't talk to the media.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessary.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_02]: She has all the joy and the joy is going to win this election and a basement campaign

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02]: and a media that wants her to win.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_02]: A brief reminder.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02]: He says Joe Biden's age was actually an issue back in 2019.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_03]: When Joe Biden decided to run in 2020 for the presidency, his age was already a big issue.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_05]: You said they would have to buy in.

[00:16:12] [SPEAKER_05]: They would not have to buy in.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_05]: If she qualified for the Medicaid, she'd automatically be informed.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh.

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_03]: That was a news clip from 2019 during the competitive phase of the Democratic Party primaries.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Julian Castro, then a rising star in the party, suggested Biden may have forgotten his earlier

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_03]: statements about his health care proposal on stage at the debate.

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my heavens.

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Castro has since been memory-holed.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_03]: But the concern about Biden's age way back then, when he looked very different than he does today,

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_03]: was enough of an issue that Biden himself promised voters in the 2020 campaign

[00:16:47] [SPEAKER_03]: that he would be a one-term transitional president.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_05]: Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_05]: There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_05]: They are the future of this country.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_05]: They're the people who are going to run the country.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So what exactly happened?

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we still don't have a definitive answer.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Perhaps it will emerge if the Democrats lose in November.

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_03]: But what I surmise is that after the 2022 midterm elections,

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_03]: where Democrats did much better than expected,

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Biden and the people around him fell victim to hubris,

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_03]: the vice of excessive pride.

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he was slowing down, but he could still win.

[00:17:29] [SPEAKER_03]: And in that moment of hubris, the party came to accept

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_03]: the bonkers plan to run an octogenarian for a second term in 2024.

[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's true.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that is what happened.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Listen, I've got no other information to inform me otherwise,

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_02]: so I think that is what happened.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, I beat Trump.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll beat him again.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody's like, uh, okay.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody, I guess we're going to have to make this thing happen.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And then remember they cleared the field.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody's allowed to challenge Biden.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_02]: I think Lake is, is going around, he's ignoring,

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_02]: or maybe he's just not aware or hadn't thought of this idea that the people around Biden

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_02]: were perfectly happy to keep him there,

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_02]: to prop him up like a weekend at Bernie's kind of a character

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_02]: in order to protect their own personal power and access and privilege.

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Because there were warning signs, many warning signs over the last three years

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_02]: that Joe Biden was in decline.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, came the special report from Robert Herr

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_02]: and the description of Biden as a, quote,

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_02]: sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_03]: The fogginess we would see in glimpses in public appearances

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_03]: was now confirmed by the Justice Department.

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_03]: 20 years ago, the Herr report would have sparked a useful crisis for Biden and his party.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Perhaps Biden would have exited the race earlier, allowing time for a credible primary.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_03]: But the White House doubled down.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_00]: The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: could not be more wrong on the facts

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_00]: and clearly politically motivated.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Gratuitous.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Joe Biden himself held a press conference, and he was feisty at first.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_03]: But towards the end, he began to fade.

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_04]: The conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_04]: I think that, as you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_04]: to allow humanitarian material to get in.

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I talked to him.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Sisi, we should say, is the president of Egypt, not Mexico.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh!

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_03]: At this point, one might expect the press to stay on the story of the president's decline.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And a handful of reporters really did stick with that story.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_03]: The Wall Street Journal, to its immense credit, on June 4th, published a devastating piece

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_03]: about Biden's performance in private meetings.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Most of the Washington press corps, though, dismissed it as a hit piece driven by anonymous Republican whispers.

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_02]: All right, so I need to point out here, I'm giving you like little snippets of this podcast.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_02]: It runs about an hour, and he's got tons of audio clips in it.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Receipts out the way zoo, okay?

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_02]: That is how you pronounce that from now on.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So it is well worth the listen if you've got some time to listen to this podcast.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_02]: It's called Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, so you had all of this evidence that was mounting, right?

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_02]: The warning signs that were there.

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, comes the debate.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And the whole charade crumbles.

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_02]: All right, hey, real quick.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_02]: If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day,

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_02]: send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_02]: It's super affordable.

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[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_02]: making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Send me a message.

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[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Run the numbers with you.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_02]: So there were warning signs about Joe Biden's decline,

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_02]: but we were told that those were cheap fakes, right?

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_02]: That was just the conservative media blowing stuff out of proportion.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And selectively editing things.

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's totally fine.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_02]: He's totally fine.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He's totally fine.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And oh, my God, I had one bad night.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_02]: It was just one bad night.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_02]: It was one bad night.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_02]: All right, he's out.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And now we're just all supposed to forget about everything that was said prior to that.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And now we're supposed to believe also that Joe Biden, you know, belongs on Mount Rushmore

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_02]: because he's a patriot stepping aside for the good of the country, blah, blah, blah.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_02]: But also that Kamala Harris is now the second coming of Barack Obama and that she's this

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_02]: fantastic candidate, which, of course, we all knew she was not.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_02]: But now we're supposed to believe that she is.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And we are supposed to believe that everything that the Biden-Harris administration has done

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_02]: is not connected to her.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_02]: That she is now going to be different.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't believe any of that stuff.

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_02]: She needs some distance.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And the media is just going to go along with it.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Eli Lake goes into a lot more of the psychology of this in his podcast.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not covering it here.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_02]: It is well worth the listen.

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Go to thefp.com and you can find it again.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_02]: It's called Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_02]: He talks a little bit about it here.

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He talks about a mixture of catastrophization, like everything is going to end in catastrophe,

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_02]: right?

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_02]: The sky is falling.

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Lose the democracy.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_02]: All of that.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So the mixture of catastrophization and stigmatization in the press corps has led us to this spot.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And you can see it happening now, particularly at places like MSNBC.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_03]: No one there would risk solitary confinement if they had said Biden is too old to be president

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_03]: before the debate.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_03]: But they wouldn't be called back as a guest.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_03]: They may not be invited to the White House Christmas Party.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_03]: They could lose followers on X.

[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_03]: And after all, if they acknowledged the obvious about Biden, then it would make Trump's path

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_03]: to the White House a little easier.

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_03]: This is particularly important in understanding our current moment.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_03]: When a class of people believes that a single political opponent is the end of democracy itself,

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_03]: it provides a permission structure to support all kinds of measures that would be rejected out of hand if the consequences of an election were not so stark.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to believe that the Democratic Party, for example, of 2004 would cheer on a rogue district attorney in New York to pursue a prosecution of George W. Bush based on a novel and ridiculous reading of federal and New York election law.

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_03]: This would be seen as election interference, not to mention a dangerous precedent.

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And yet the party cheered the convictions of Donald Trump this June in New York for exactly those kinds of charges.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_03]: It became a kind of campaign ad.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_03]: It was worth pursuing this authoritarian tactic of weaponizing the legal system against one's opposition because it meant keeping an authoritarian out of the White House.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. If this guy is going to destroy the entire country and democracy, then anything goes to stop him.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I've said this before, and Eli Lake does not use this analogy, but this is essentially the philosophical question,

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_02]: the ethical argument of would you kill if you had a time machine?

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Would you go back and kill baby Hitler?

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And the Democrats are obviously making the case.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, they would.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Which, honestly, I mean, they're Democrats, so, you know, killing babies is really not that far.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_02]: It's funny because it's true.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_02]: OK, so what can be unburdened by what has been right?

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_02]: This is the slogan.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_02]: That Kamala Harris keeps using.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And Eli Lake says that's basically a perfect slogan.

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_02]: We just need to forget everything that has occurred in the last five years and especially everything that has occurred in the last five weeks.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Kamala Harris can be the next president and save our country from Donald Trump.

[00:25:48] [SPEAKER_03]: One just needs to unburden oneself of everything we know about Kamala Harris and how she came to be her party's nominee.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Just imagine what can be unburdened by what has been.

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_01]: When I spoke with her Sunday, she said she wanted the opportunity to win the nomination on her own and to do so from the grassroots up, not top down.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01]: We deeply respected that.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Ah, I did.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_01]: She said she would work to earn the support of our party.

[00:26:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And boy, has she done so in quick order.

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And that was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on July 23rd telling it like it isn't.

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Unburdened by what has just happened to tell us how he would like it to be.

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Vice President Harris wanted a competitive primary, he tells us.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, sure.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_03]: To take over from the man Democrats had already nominated in their own primary.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_03]: And then, lo and behold, the grassroots of the party all got behind the vice president in less than 48 hours.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_03]: The Democratic National Committee has announced that Kamala Harris has now officially been nominated to lead the ticket.

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_03]: We have no idea how this process actually played out other than apparently there was a lot of texting.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's the explanation that we have gotten, right?

[00:27:13] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of texting.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_02]: She made phone calls.

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_02]: And she just shored up all the support, just lickety-split like that.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man, this is really amazing.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Now, she wanted a competitive primary, but she's willing to go along with not having that at all.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So, what happened?

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And Incurious Media is not curious.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Incurious.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_02]: All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_02]: So, if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here.

[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_02]: You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.

[00:27:53] Thank you.