David Harsanyi on "one of the greatest scandals in history" (05-22-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three 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 of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot 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. I want to welcome back to the program. Senior writer for The Washington Examiner, syndicated columnist. He's the author of a bunch of books as well. He's a co host for a podcast. He's got a substack. It's David Harsani. You welcome, David. How are you. I'm well, thanks for having me. Yes, sir, absolutely so. Were you one of the media types that got fooled that Joe Biden's cognitive decline was actually happening or were you able to see through the elaborate cover up? I think I thought through it, but I wouldn't give myself too much credit. I don't think you have to be immediate t I think most people saw it, so I was not fooled, and I don't think maybe anyone was actually fooled in the entire world. So this is one of the things that is most offensive to me. I was a reporter, and I think you were a reporter at one point as well. Right, yeah, so, and we've talked about some of the trade stuff. But I. Thought part of the job of being a journalist was to report on the things that you see. Like when I would go cover a car crash or an apartment fire, I was the witness. I was telling people what I saw. I don't know why Tapper and Thompson now in their book they're saying, well, we couldn't get this stuff confirmed. But I thought confirmation would be your own eyes, the witnessing of the events. No, yeah, I mean the very idea. I think one of the best tools a person has being a journalist, and many people who are journalists shouldn't be journalists, at least in my view, is skepticism, which someone tells you something that seems untrue. It's literally your job to try to find out what is true, or to question what the people in power are telling you. I noted this elsewhere, but the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper to me, it's like I compare it to someone writing all the president's men but not naming any of the men. And then it was written by John Erlickman. You know what I'm saying. I mean, they were part of the cover up. You know. Charlie Cook, who works at National View, made a good point. You know, Jake Tapper says, we all need to, you know, to really look into ourselves, even he needs to do it. You know this, and that, Well, why isn't a person who actually saw what was happening writing this book from the conservative media? You know, if a conservative had written this book, no one would be interviewing them. They wouldn't be on any of the big shows. So nothing really changes. They get to participate in these things, then they get to make money off these things. There's no reckoning, there's no names. He's you know, he's not told us who who are the people who did this? This is, in my be one of the biggest scandals in presidential history, maybe since you know, Woodrow Wilson couldn't perform his duties as president. So I don't know, I mean, I agree it's a lot to cover. Yeah, No, I've been calling it that for the better part of two years. It's the biggest political scandal maybe in American history, definitely within my lifetime. And I you know, when I went to journalism school, I thought, man, that's crazy that like the media helped cover up Woodrow Wilson and de FDR's infirmities and and you know John F. Kennedy and all of this stuff that that could never happen now, right, And then I'm watching this unfold over the last five years and it's like, oh my god, it is happening again. And you know that have you read, as you guess I should ask, have you read their book? Do you intend to read their book? I have it, and I have kind of perused it. I can't say I've given it like a thorough read or anything. And you know what I've read. You know, if a normal reporter had written this, maybe it would be an okay book. But when you're reading, you just can't escape the looming fact that the person who wrote it participated in it, you know. And and also that it's kind of like a triangulation. You know, it's like being brave when being brave doesn't matter. The moment that Joe Biden debated Donald Trump. In that first debate, all the media turned against Joe Biden. They didn't turn against Joe Biden because they had some kind of ethical journalistic imperative to do it. They did it because they saw he couldn't win, or they thought he couldn't win. And so I don't even buy that they ever came around really for any good reason. They you know, if he hadn't done that debate, they would have if he hadn't debated Donald Trump, they would have continued the sham all the way to election day, and if he had one, they would have continued it into a second term, including Jake Tapper in my view, And until he actually comes out on some other issue against you know, in a way that hurts the left, but you know, you know, propels the truth, then I'll believe that he's changed. Or until then I just think he's you know, it's just a fraudulent position he's taking. Yeah, well, he just wishes he had covered it quote more aggressively, that's it more aggressively. Yeah, it's it is pretty amazing. And then on top of all of that, then we get the news that Joe Biden has cancer, and I got into a little bit of trouble on Monday when I said this, but I believe it, like I don't trust the Bidens to tell me the truth about their medical conditions. I'm sorry, but you don't get my default setting of, oh my gosh, that's awful, you know, because I don't know if this is actually true, and I don't know if it's been true for a longer period of time than just what last Friday. It's difficult to believe. Now, Listen, I think it's plausible that a person after seventy doesn't get checked for this sort of thing for various reasons. But here's the thing. I agree with you. I would consider myself anti conspiratorial, right right, And I would say that if you don't look into this and you believe what they say, you are totally advocating a responsibility as a journalist. I mean, they have lied to you about everything. Everything that was supposed to be a conspiracy theory, from Hunter's laptop to his mental acuity and on and on. It all turned out to be true. So we don't need to trust a word that they're saying. We should never really trust the word that they're saying. We should verify all these things. We don't get complete medical records from the presence. You get summaries, and they have their own doctors, and there's no reason for me to trust them. I don't trust anyone in government, and I think that's how every journalist should act. You know, I'm trying to a journalism professor or anything, but that's how I viewed the job. That's how I viewed the job as well, and I don't think there are enough people that do anymore. And one of the things that you talked about naming names, one of the things that struck me was the examples that I've seen the book. I do not own it, I've not read it, I do not intend to read it, but I don't want to give them any any money. But one of the stories was about this fake town hall that they set up that Biden could not perform well enough over the course of ninety minutes or so, and so they never used any of the video from the town hall. So okay, well, where are all of those people, the people that were in that town hall. They had to have seen how poorly Biden performed, and nobody ever leaked anything. This makes me rethink all conspiracies Now, like all of the conspiracy theories that I have dismissed, now I'm wondering, Okay, maybe maybe a lot of people can keep a secret, how about you. Well, I think it's pretty incredible, right, And I thought about this as well, that we never got any leaks of any of this stuff. In fact, when Robert Herr very very politely called him an elderly man with a poor memory and let him off the hook for something that the Biden administration was at that moment going out to Donald Trump on classified document documents, he was completely smeared across the media, across the White House, not one person. And then the attorney general, the corrupt attorney general Biden's was the name, Merrick Garland. Yeah, suppress the people from hearing the audio of that first track, I think, to even suppress the transcript. So yeah, I mean it's crazy everyone was in it because that's what they do for Democrats. And listen, I've never I've never had a huge problem with people going aggressively after Donald Trump if they're telling the truth. The problem for me has always been that they don't go aggressively against Democrats. That's the that's the real problem. I think with journalists, and yeah, I think this is obviously maybe the best example that's ever existed of that. Yeah, you write in this piece at the Washington Examiner headline, the Biden cover up is one of the greatest scandals in history. You say, yet not one person in the White House thought it was important enough to blow the whistle. And this really is the problem, right, Like somebody is using the auto pen, somebody is signing this stuff on which policies or executive orders, what bills? What was Joe Biden actually signing? What was he competent enough to sign? And if he wasn't doing it, then who was? And it means you have all these people around the president that did not think anything of doing this kind of activity, and that's shocking to me. Yeah, they care about power more than their country. I mean, that's the truth of it. And I know there's a lot of partisanship out there and everyone protects their own and all of that, but there comes a time where it becomes something so corrupt that it's mind boggling that no one would would blow the whistle. I mean, think about those pardons. There are retroactive ten year blanket pardons for a bunch of people in his family, a bunch of his political allies. Maybe they came up with their own pardons. We don't even know. I mean, there's not gonna be any way to sit in that cause you could never really prove those things. I don't even know how you go about it. But that is corruption on an incredible scale. And I think we're just a newer to it because there's so much of it goes on. But you know, this makes I hate saying these words, but it's so much worse than Watergate. It's not even funny, you know, right. I hate the people always say that, but it is. Yeah, yeah, And I think right now what we are seeing is this effort to just move on. Okay, everybody, do your maya culpis now, get them all in and then, you know, launder the reputation and we're just going to proceed right now. We're really going to hold you know, the president accountable, truth to power because it's the Orange Man, and I think people see through it, and the media gets everything that they deserve on this one. David, I appreciate your time as always. David Harsani is the senior writer over at The Washington Examiner and you can read the latest piece. The Biden cover up is one of the greatest scandals in history. Thanks David, I appreciate it. Good to talk with you again. You too, anytime. All right, take care. That's David Harsani. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription. Then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media lands gate more transparent. A great point that David Arsania made in this uh. In this piece at the Washington Examiner, if Joe Biden had skipped the presidential debate with Donald Trump, which he was urged to do by many Democrats, they said, Oh, it's because you know, you shouldn't be platforming a convicted felon. Donald Trump is so terrible, you shouldn't be on a stage with him in all of this. But Biden had you know, they'd come out and issued this challenge, is not even fit to care my golf clubs or whatever, like they had. They had laid down the gauntlet. Trump immediately agreed, and so it was on Nancy Pelosi urged him not to do the debate. Why would they urge him not to do the debate? Was it for the cover story reason? I'm not buying that. I think they were urging him not to do the debate because they knew the problems that he had. Had. He skipped that debate, right, he would have run again. I mean, think about that. We would not have seen what we saw the night of the debate. They no doubt would have done the cover up throughout the next election campaign cycle, and had he won, they would have continued it into his second term. Right, this would not have stopped but for that fateful debate performance and really his agreement to do it, because remember they were like, oh, he did the State of the Union speech and he was so awesome and all of that, high on their own supply. Get this now, this was Alex Thompson appearing on News Nation the other day. I think when you were reporting this, did people in his inner circle? Did those that you talked to acknowledge that the media where they suppor by how complicit the media was. It was interesting. I had one conversation with someone, this was after the election, while we were reporting this book, and this person said, listen, yes, we deserve. Blame for X y Z. We were hiding him, we were, But this person also sort of got on my face and they said, listen, the media deserves some blame too. Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin went on, They in some way like the bank Robert complaining safe, wasn't they're just like you guys, You guys should not have believed us so easily. And I thought that was like a really interesting But I also think that's true. I think I think the media in a lot of ways just was not skeptical enough and did not remember the lesson that they do it to different degrees. But every White House lies. Right, Every White House lies. That is true. By the way, every White House lies. They all are doing stuff that they don't want people to know about. It's government, okay, no matter who's in office. If you think that the Trump administration that people aren't lying in that White House, you're crazy. Of course they are. And again, this was my argument in the last election campaign cycle, where I said, for the first time in my adult life, I will vote for a major party candidate for president. I had always used that race as a protest vote, and I had never voted for a Democrat or Republican. And I voted for Trump precisely because of this, that the media is unable or unwilling to hold Democrat presidents accountable. They do not have skepticism for Democrats in that White House or anywhere really, but they do not have this level of skepticism, and the Biden people basically mocking them. We couldn't believe how stupid you are, Like, that's what they said. I can't believe we got away with this stuff. We said these really stupid things to you guys, and you were like, oh okay. Meanwhile, As Reclined, New York Times columnist claimed during a podcast that mainstream media outlets could not get sources to verify whether President Joe Biden's health was in decline during his presidency. He defended the press, saying sources reluctance to speak out prevented coverage. Quote, there are a lot of failures in this book, and certainly the news media. It's hard to argue that we were on top of this, Jake Tapper said, and as Recline replied, it was harder to get people to say anything, and it's hard to get I mean, you need evidence for stories, but we're trying to crack this. Oh that's what it was. They were. Oh they were so close. They just couldn't get it verified that Joe Biden wandered off while on camera, right. They I just couldn't get that verified. I mean I saw it happen, but nobody in the White House would tell me, Yes, that did happen, and so I just can't do the story. It's man so difficult. News Nation host Chris Cuomo of All People said that the book itself, Original Sin, is a cover up of the media's political bias in favor of Biden over Trump. He said the former president's decline was clear, and the media's reluctance to report on it was not due to ignorance but its desire for Biden to beat Trump. And he's exactly right. Here's a great idea. 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They talked about how they had the Biden world had created this, this image or this narrative in their own minds that only Joe Biden saved America from Trump and only Joe could do it. Again, we should view Trump's media coverage through the same lens. What they what they won't or what won't they do against Donald Trump? Right, they viewed him, they viewed the media. So many in the media viewed Donald Trump as this existential threat that anything is excusable. Right when and I've been saying this for years, as long as they've been calling Trump Hitler worse than Hitler. Like, if you're calling somebody that, then it opens the door for any amount of actions, illegal or legal that you can mount because you're trying to save America from Hitler. Right, This was the whole problem with the punch a Nazi thing that the leftists were doing. Right, and a Nazi is defined as anybody that disagrees with me as a leftist. Let me see here, I have some emails, Philip says, subject zombie Joe. On top of all the confirmation of Joe Biden's mental decline is the fact that for the debate, he had been given the questions in advance. Was he. I don't know if that was true. Little wonder that Clooney, Pelosi, Obama at al. Went mollistic over Biden's performance, like how do you mess it up when you practiced and rehearsed the script? So yeah, I don't know if that was true. He did get questions and answers before his press conferences, the like two that he held in the entire term. And by the way, nobody in the media in this moment of reckoning, nobody has has copped to that yet. There aren't any reporters out there saying, yeah, I submitted my question ahead of time so I would be able to ask the question and be on TV at this press conference. And look how important I am. You know, we have the still shots from over the shoulder where you can see he's got the card with the reporter's name, their outlet, a picture of the reporter and the question and then his answer. He had note cards about it, and he would talk about it. Give me the list of people to call on here. I don't want to get in trouble. Right, Bill says, did you notice the obvious absence of those two prolific yet magic words and Jake Tapper's reporting on the robust Joe Biden quote without evidence? Right? Yeah? They throw that without evidence all the time into news stories about Donald Trump. Donald Trump said without evidence, blah blah blah, and they never say it. They never do that with Joe Biden. This is why nobody believes the purpose of this book is to find out what really happened. No, it's reputational laundering. Rich says, Pete enjoy the show. Tapper's claim that he did not know only leaves two conclusions. Either he is stupid and lazy, or he is a liar. Well, now, Rich, he could be both. I don't think that's I don't think it's an either, or he could be all of the above. Tim says, I'm now calling Tapper joke Tapper or Jake the fake fake. Jake Tapper heard that his credibility is all shot, as if he had any to start with. Here's one from DG who says the only way Jake Tapper would have been able to redeem himself would be to expose with evidence and names of who was actually running things on a daily basis, who made each major decision in the Biden White House, and who should be held accountable by facing charges. We know that people involved know the answer, and a real reporter would find out. He will never do that because he is still a Democrat Party shill and his book is just an attempt to cover up that fact. That's too long, I can't read it. I agree one hundred percent that the Biden cover up of his mental state was by far the biggest cover up. Ever, I have to add that the second biggest cover up, simultaneously occurred and perpetuated by the same pool of liars, was that the border was always secure. Combined, we get a two or one on the worst cover ups, should get some sort of special award at GITMO. Well, you know, I just I roll it all together, right, It's just it's just amazing and to watch it be perpetuated, and as David Harsani said at the beginning of the hour, that you know, where are the book deals for the conservative reporters that were actually covering this. Peter Deucey didn't get a he didn't get a book deal, and Deucey was asking these questions for the entire term. He didn't get a book deal. Nobody that's written about this stuff has gotten a book deal. Jake Tapper gets the book deal. And even if a conservative writer had gotten a book deal and published a book, none of these media outlets would be putting that writer on their show. They would not be giving any oxygen to that story or the book. We all know this, all right. So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and especial days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. 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Charlotte City Council Member Juanna Brown and her two daughters adults, were indicted today on federal charges for allegedly defrauding COVID nineteen relief programs to obtain more than one hundred and twenty four thousand dollars in pandemic aid. Story by Nate Morabito at WCNC dot Com WCNC Television. According to a release provided by the DOJ, Councilwoman Brown and her two daughters are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wirefraud. So they did not just conspire to do it, but they did it as well. I mean according to a grand jury. And a grand jury. You know, prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich in a grand jury setting because the defense is not present, right, they call in the grand jury, they present them with this evidence, and then the grand jury says, yeah, we think there's enough to prosecute them with. And so that's what has happened. She has held a news conference where she said she didn't do anything wrong except maybe she didn't like look at the documents, the applications or whatever closely enough, but I don't know. The evidence looks pretty bad. You've got multiple applications being filed within like well two of them were filed within minutes of each other. Identical gross revenue numbers were used, and yeah, yeah filing with was it to schedule see tax documents that actually were not real. Brown's released a statement this morning saying the alleged events happened years ago. Yes, during the pandemic. I remember I was alive during that pandemic. I survived the pandemic, So yes, I remember that. It was only like it was only five years ago, four five years ago. So she says it has nothing to do with her time on city council because she was only elected this past election, so two years ago, a year and a half ago, and she is running for reelection. She says this is a deliberate effort to interfere with her reelection, which no, it would. It would be a deliberate attempt to prosecute you for crimes that the federal government believes you committed in trying to defraud us taxpayers, right to the tune of like one hundred and twenty something thousand dollars. She says that she had repaid like twenty something thousand dollars and that's all that was her part of it. That's all she was required to pay back. So she settled all of this already. But yeah, no, they're like, it's over one hundred and twenty k. She says that she is to keep running for reelection, but we'll see what happens there. We'll see if anybody jumps into a primary against her, and if she survives through that primary, then I guess we'll find out whether the voters of District III would prefer to have an indicted council member representing them, And given what I have seen over the recent history of Charlotte, the answer might very well be yes. She called it a deliberate effort to interfere with the election. Brown served four years in federal prison for a felony fraud conviction. Back in the nineteen nineties. It's never the ones you suspect. You know, who could have predicted that somebody who went to federal prison for fraud for four years might engage in fraud at some other point in the future. Yeah, it's a it's just a shock. The indictment claims the group filed at least fifteen fraudulent loan applications between April twenty twenty and September twenty twenty one, using fake tax forms and false documentation. I think the kids call those receipts. Federal prosecutors say the money was used for personal spending, including fifteen thousand dollars for a birthday party for herself. I don't even know how you spend fifteen thousand dollars on a birthday party. Luckily they outline how that happened. She apparently rented like a horse and carriage, a throne. Yeah, thirty five hundred dollars for the venue, five grand on catering, twenty three one hundred dollars on balloons, a rose wall, a throne, and a strong carriage Like this is you know what? This reminds me of the Loomis Fargo heist. Happened right around the corner the we had the Loomis shop or whatever right around the corner from the station here, like I could see it from the studio window. And yeah, they stole all of this money from the from the armored vehicle. They had a man on the inside. They stole all of the money and then they just started spending it over there in Cramerton, right, They started just spending it. They bought all sorts of crazy stuff, buying cash, using cash for cars and mansions and stuff. And it was kind of a dead giveaway that they had come into a lot of money. Like I said, it's never the ones you suspect. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.