Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden to protect him from legal repercussions, leveraging his presidential power to shield his son from potential jail time and other consequences related to drug and gun charges.
The media widely praised Joe Biden for his commitment to the rule of law, contrasting his stance with Donald Trump's perceived interference in legal processes. News anchors and commentators celebrated Biden's supposed refusal to pardon his son as a sign of his respect for the judicial system.
The media largely ignored the contradiction, with few outlets addressing the stark contrast between Biden's earlier statements and his actual actions. There were no widespread apologies or acknowledgments of the blatant hypocrisy from the news anchors who had previously praised Biden's supposed commitment to not pardoning his son.
The pardon undermines the credibility of the justice system by highlighting the double standards where political power can be used to circumvent legal consequences. It also raises questions about the integrity of public officials who claim to uphold the rule of law while privately using their influence to protect family members.
The pardon exposes a stark contradiction in Biden's legacy, as he was instrumental in creating harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug and gun offenses during his tenure in the 1980s and 1990s. This move to pardon his son reveals a blatant disregard for the very policies he helped implement, which have disproportionately affected minority communities.
The scandal underscores the deep-seated corruption where politicians' family members can leverage their connections to secure lucrative positions and influence, often with foreign entities. It highlights a system where such practices are normalized and go unpunished, reinforcing the perception of a 'swamp' of corruption in Washington.
The media framed Biden's initial refusal as a principled stand for the rule of law, contrasting it with their portrayal of Trump's actions, which were often criticized as undermining legal processes. This double standard was evident in the way Biden's statements were celebrated as a contrast to Trump's perceived abuses of power.
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What's up, what's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Hope you had a good one. Hope you, uh, you know...
got fat and drunk and didn't curse out too many of your family members. That's all you can really hope for at Thanksgiving. How was your week, Rob? It was a little too much Thanksgiving. I like a day off at a time. That's all I need. Anything more than that, it starts getting a little out of control. But it's all right. My family kind of bored me this year. They need to step it up for next year. I don't come to the family events that often. I feel like kids could have been a little cuter. People could have had a little bit more to say.
We didn't need to start. I think we got to start a little bit later in the day. I'm just, I'm going to give my family like a C grade this year. They just really weren't all that compelling. The kids not being cute enough. That even gets in there. Hey, you. Yeah, they all collectively. Mikey, step it up. Collectively, they all have to step up their game. They didn't have it this year. All right. Well, Rob's family gets a C. Is on notice. They're on notice. I'll tell you. You know whose family gets an A plus?
is Hunter Biden's. Oh, that's true. Hunter Biden's family came through pretty hard for him in a long history of his family coming through for him.
And giving him that, putting him in the position he's in. He got another big one. That is the news that everybody is obsessing over. If I learned anything, it's that being on crack might actually help you manifest things into your life. That, you know, we always make fun of the crackheads, that they're just talking crazy shit, but maybe that's how you bring the goodness into the universe, is you have to really take the crack and believe it. Like, don't worry, my dad will just become president and pardon me.
Yeah, like you're talking to a crackhead and you're like, there is no purple elephant chasing you. And the crackhead's like, yeah, with that attitude. Like, yeah, if you come into it closed off like that, like, of course, there's no purple elephant. But like, if you get over here on my level, maybe, maybe we get one. Well...
Here's to more crack, I guess. That's what Hunter Biden will... I don't know. They say he's clean, and he's been clean for a while. We'll see. But anyway, the big news is, not very surprisingly to me, I always thought that...
If which again, I'm not I don't mean like I thought this. I think it's kind of common wisdom that if Joe Biden was in a lame duck session, if he if he wasn't if he was going to be forced out or if he lost, probably, you know, a pardon of Hunter Biden was coming. So I don't think there's anything really surprising to me about it. But of course, it is. It's an interesting question.
because it is one of those, it's one of those times where the true dynamics are kind of nakedly visible for everybody to say. And so you can kind of spin this any way you want to, but the, you know, like Joe Biden in his post or whoever posted it, obviously none of us believe Joe Biden is capable of opening a phone or a computer and locating people.
Twitter. But he said that, you know, essentially that the the prosecution was unfair or something like that. However, however, you want to spin this, whether I mean, I certainly don't agree with that. I think, in fact, Hunter Biden got a
got a sweetheart deal for many years, then got such a sweetheart deal that it actually offended the judge. That's actually how he got in this mess, legally speaking. But the truth is that his father's the president, so he gets to get off. That's just the obvious truth in any of this. I'm curious to get your thoughts on it, Rob. I mean, I guess I just gave some of mine already.
I will say, and I guess this perhaps takes me back to some of my bleeding heart libertarian roots, but I've never really changed in this regard. I do, the thing to me that's appalling about Hunter Biden actually has nothing to do with Hunter Biden. And I'm not like personally upset that he's getting a pardon. I think I said this on the show a couple of weeks ago, that that's not really like,
You know, I mean, look, aside rumors about like children that were on the laptop, that aside, like if that were the case, then OK, yes, I'd want him prosecuted for that. I don't know if that is the case or not.
But all of that aside, when it comes to like drug crimes and gun charges and this type of stuff, I don't, I don't care about justice being served on that guy. I do. I would be interested in say like some of the stuff that those whistleblowers revealed about the people covering up his crimes. I'd like to see some of them get charged. I think that the, the, the truth is that
leaving aside whether Joe Biden is the big guy or not, which if that's the case, then Joe Biden is implicated in some legit crimes. But leaving that aside, the real scandal that we absolutely know about that is 100% true, that is not denied by anyone really is of what Hunter Biden was doing is legal.
Like it's like what he did with Burisma or those Chinese companies, assuming he doesn't pay Joe Biden a percentage, you know, which is is an assumption. There's nothing illegal about it, but it's just it lets you know what an incredibly corrupt system he's working in. And the truth is that Hunter Biden and in a way, I kind of feel bad for Hunter Biden about this.
is that he got kind of, he was like, like an example was made out of him. But really, I think what we all know is that what Hunter Biden was doing is just really not that much different from what senators kids or vice presidents kids or presidents kids or senators brothers or cousins or uncles or there's a whole,
you know, swamp of creatures like this. And all of those, I mean, just go, just go look at all of the people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama. Look at all of these people who have served in government for
who make like a healthy salary when they're serving in government, you know, they make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, but they're worth like hundreds of millions of dollars. And you're like, oh, how did that happen exactly? How are they all worth hundreds of millions of dollars? And it's like, oh yeah, because they're all in one way or another involved in this scam.
where they just get to manipulate political power and translate that into big money. And so that I'm, I'm much more interested in like the people who actually facilitate that system being created, being held accountable rather than just some crackhead. Anyway, what I was getting at that I said brings me back to my libertarian roots is that the thing I've just been paying attention to this shit for a while. And I,
You know, there'll be this kind of conversation about what a father would do in that situation. And I'll certainly, as somebody who has two kids, I could certainly tell you, although they're young and neither of them are felons yet, give them time, let them cook.
I certainly would do anything to save one of my kids. I can't really imagine a scenario where I wouldn't. And if I had the power to, my kids would be getting pardons. That doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is the legacy that Joe Biden has when it comes to the issue of throwing the book at people who got drug or gun charges.
And I know a lot of people today don't even know this stuff. But many decades ago, Joe Biden was not senile and he was just a not that bright guy. But he made a name for himself starting in the 1980s. He made a name for himself by being the biggest hawk on nonviolent victimless crime.
And this was something that he thought a lot of these the Democrats in the 80s and 90s thought that like the Republicans had been bashing them for being soft on crime. And so they were like, well, we know what we'll do. We'll be even tougher on crime than the Republicans. So they can never use that attack against us. And Joe Biden is the guy like he was. He was more that than any of the other Democrats.
And he in the 80s, he teamed up with Strom Thurmond, the segregationist, to criticize Ronald Reagan, to get to the right of Ronald Reagan and say that Reagan was being too soft on drug crime.
and pushed Reagan to ramp up the war on drugs. And then he bragged for years about being the co-author. I don't know if anyone believes that he actually did co-author anything, but the 95 crime bill or 94 crime bill, it was either 94 or 95, that was signed into law by Bill Clinton. This is what Joe Biden was bragging about being his key instrumental role in that. And
Essentially, that's been the norm in America for many decades, for my entire life. And perhaps in the last few years, it's been rolled back a little bit, but not that much. Where the standard is, and this is again, Joe Biden is the architect of this policy. The standard is what's come to be known as mandatory minimums, essentially meaning that the judge doesn't have a choice.
that we're taking the judgment away from local judges
and putting it in the hands of politicians in Washington, D.C., who say, I don't care. I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care about your defense. I don't care if everyone in that courtroom went, man, this really is just a good kid who got caught up in some bad shit. No, you have this amount of substance on you. You're doing 15 years. You're doing 25 years. You're, I mean, just ruined people's lives all around this country. Like, just...
I just can't even express how fucked up it is. I mean, if you really think about something like you think about like what the mandatory minimum laws were for things like, you know, having a little bit of crack cocaine on you, having a little bit of cocaine on you, maybe selling a little bit of pot. And, you know, it's very easy for people to kind of get on their their high horses about this stuff, particularly if they don't.
they don't use drugs or they don't, you know, like they would never sold drugs or had friends who sell drugs or anything like that. And I'm not trying to like defend using or selling drugs. It's not great. But like, you know how even, um,
There's like this, it was a conversation a lot during this election where I know when Theo Vaughn had Trump on, he talked a lot about addiction and getting sober. I know Tucker Carlson's talked quite a bit about getting sober and good for those guys. I mean, like, I think that's awesome that they all got sober. But just also keep in mind that the reason they got sober is because they all used to not be sober.
Like when they were young, they weren't sober. And the question becomes like, are you, you're really going to like ruin somebody's life over this? You're going to ruin, and with the mandatory minimums, I mean, go look it up. You cannot believe the sentences that are still on the books in some states. Like if a 20 year old gets caught in the wrong state with like really a very, not even that much, uh,
of a controlled substance. They're looking at decades in jail and that is just insane. It's madness. But Joe Biden, now that he's 80, you know what I mean? After, after a 50 year career of, of just ruining people's lives. Absolutely. You know, like every single one of those people who Joe Biden's responsible for putting in jail were somebody's son, but he never gave a shit about that
Until it came to it being his son. And yeah, of course, of course, if you're a father, you don't want your son's life ruined over a drug problem or the fact that he left a gun somewhere he wasn't supposed to. But like you would think maybe that along with this pardon would come some type of thought of like, oh, yeah, I did that to so many other people's children.
And I just, I don't know. I think, listen, I have a, I have very, very, very little sympathy for violent crime. That being said, when it comes to like the nonviolent victimless crimes, anybody who thinks you should, and I mean this, and I know there'll be people who listen to this who like,
don't like the way this sounds, but okay. I'm still, my role is still to say the things sometimes that might bother you. But like,
If you believe that in a nonviolent victimless crime, someone should do multiple decades in a cage, that they should be like stripped of their liberty, enslaved to the state and thrown in a cage to be raped and tortured and just like treated like an animal. You believe someone ought to be there for a nonviolent victimless crime? You're a monster.
I don't mean to say that you're like a monster in every aspect of your life. I'm sure you can compartmentalize that and then be a decent person in other ways. But in that area, you're a fucking monster. It's like a goddamn terrible thing that if humanity survives another couple hundred years, we will look back at the way we look back at slavery, the way we look back at like witch hunts.
and just go, what the fuck were people thinking back then? Wait, you're literally telling me if you got involved in the cocaine trade that you had to do 30 years in prison for that? Like, I don't know. I also think it's sometimes it's people just have lived different lives. Like I've just, I've known people since I was a kid who like sold drugs and I'm not saying that was the best decision. I'm not saying it's not a seedy world, but like,
You know, a guy like Joe Biden, who has this legacy of being the guy who's like, nope, sorry, you go rot in the pits of some of some prison to then turn around and get your own son out of that trouble. There really is something profoundly horrible about that.
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So anyway, any thoughts you got, Rob? Let me know. I mean, I agree with everything that you just said, and it's certainly no one's even really talking about the morality of how many people he's put in jail. I do think there's a richness to it in that he was obviously going to pardon his son. If we didn't say it on the show, it's because maybe it was just so obvious or it didn't come up. He was obviously going to pardon him, but he's such a son of a bitch that he kept saying it in the
most bold-faced lying way of I will not do that, which then had to force every television anchor to go out there and go, look at how great Joe Biden is. Nobody's above the law. He said he's not going to pardon it, and he knew he was going to do it the entire time. So he really just hung out everybody to dry because he knew that he was going to pardon his son. And the worst part about it is that...
They were never going to unearth any of the real corruption. And there is a real storyline here that probably does need to be investigated, but they all make some money off the corruption. So nobody wants to unearth how many people's senators kids are working for foreign companies and what kind of access are they shilling and selling? And is the Biden's shilling and selling more egregious or to what extent are we in a Ukraine war so that money's being filtered to them? I mean, there's some horrible potential storylines of death.
just so that money could be going to the Biden family. We don't know the levels of corruption that exist here. It would be interesting if they son of a bitch him back and then start investigating him for things that happened 11 years ago or they go after his brother. But I don't think there's any political will to actually go after the Bidens once he's out of office and an old man. But beyond the richness of him
not even handling it that well and just boldface saying, I will absolutely not. It's not even on the table for every news anchor on the left to get out there and go, no one's above the law. Joe Biden said he'll never just sell them all out to dry. He then puts out a letter saying the problem is our justice system, which was not fair to my son. After that,
what they put through Donald Trump for four years. So now you're willing to turn around and say, oh, sometimes the Justice Department isn't fair and they'll prosecute people that shouldn't be prosecuted. What a fascinating storyline. Are we going to be addressing that one also, Mr. President? Hmm.
Interesting. Interesting how that works. Yeah, well, of course, Joe Biden, I'm sure in his barely functioning mind was thinking that he was going to win reelection. And so he could just promise not to pardon Hunter Biden and then they wouldn't have to deal with this situation. But it didn't work out that way.
I think amidst the many changes that need to take place to our government structure, I think one of them is on the night that you lose the election, you should be out of office. You shouldn't be allowed to escalate wars. If you want to pardon individuals, you should have to do that earlier. Uh,
earlier on so that there there actually is a conversation about who you're pardoning and why there shouldn't be this like gap time can you imagine leaving like a giant job and you just kind of stick around to make the company worse and you know pull some pull some nice things out for the last couple weeks
Yeah, no, listen, I get your point. There is something about this lame duck period that does seem to just be like, okay, so the voters just rejected you and now you get to just fuck with the system for a couple more months. Yeah, that doesn't doesn't seem great. And it does kind of leave you wondering why we would design a system this way. There, you know,
Again, to your point, which is a very good one. Yeah, look, the media, it's just like one more example on this gigantic mountain made of one example at a time where, you know, it's like the you know, I remember saying this when after I debated Chris Cuomo.
And I was going back and forth with him on Twitter a bit lately. He's still not a fan. He's a little salty. He's trying to take little cheap shots, but he doesn't realize there's some fights he just can't win, you know? Well, the thing about it is, man, is like I kind of get it. I kind of get it from his perspective. Well, he's a little bit salty, and I know what it is. I know it's because last time I went on Rogan, I...
you know, took some more shots at him. And I, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I believe I'd have to go back and watch the episode, but I believe he was the jumping off point for me, um, launching into a whole thing about how much I hate the corporate media and how they're in the business of baby murder. And, um, they, uh,
just they're basically just there to sell wars to the American people. I'm of the opinion that nothing you've said about Ukraine is accurate so far because you've never actually been there. Well, that is good. That is a damning point. That is a great counter. There's some magical knowledge that just comes from setting your feet in a location where you can better understand it. And honestly, anything you've said about the situation that was right, it was lucky.
Because your feet haven't been on the ground. And that's where real knowledge comes from. It's touching your feet to the earth. We all know that. It's not reading. I hear a lot of people saying how bad Hitler is, and they never even went to Hitler's Germany. They never met him. How would you know? Yeah, like, come on, dude. You ever shake, you ever break bread with the man? Then I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear any of your opinions on Hitler. Well, look. It's like an old floppy disk in a hard drive computer. You got to put your feet onto the ground, and that's how you absorb knowledge. And we all know this. That's true. That's right.
So anyway, so, okay. So I took some shots at Cuomo on that thing and on Rogan, and I'm sure he didn't like that too much, but I, you know, whatever, I don't know. I meant what I said. So I don't regret it. But the thing is that Cuomo just doesn't get is it's like, look, dude, so we debated. I like the Pillsbury Doughboy. You're fun to poke it. And the more aggravated you get, the more fun you're going to be to poke. Well, look, obviously, look, here's the elephant in the room that I guess, uh,
we all know, including Chris, is that, yeah, dude, you made a mistake by agreeing to debate me. That was a mistake. You're not supposed to do that. That's how the whole thing works. You don't do that. And if you do it, you damn sure don't do it against me. Like you find someone else who's going to at least carry you a little bit who won't like who you could like. I don't know. Just not me.
now i'm not the guy for someone to step off of cnn and come debate i'm just too like i'm not even saying like oh i'm so great at debating or anything like that i just i know my stuff well enough and i'm also just vicious and so like this wasn't gonna go good for you there's a reason why all of those guys like all those scientists refuse to debate rfk
Because they're not supposed to. You don't do that. Fauci is not going to go debate Jay Bhattacharya on Rogan's podcast because you don't do that if you're Anthony Fauci. And Chris Cuomo, I guess, just had enough like narcissism that he just didn't play by those rules. But OK, so, you know, they had I forget the numbers of it. But if you remember, Rob, there was a poll that Valuetainment put out after the debate.
And it was 50 something thousand people answered the poll and they were like, who do you think won the debate? And it was like the 90 high nineties percentage said I won the debate. Like, I mean, it was just fantastic.
It was a dominant one-sided debate. That's just the facts. That's what it was. And so the problem now is that I understand you don't like that I get to use you as the example forever. You know what I mean? Like that's, but that's what I win.
by winning this debate that you were never supposed to do. And then he's pissed off about that. So he comes to like take cheap shots at me on Twitter. But the problem is that you just can't do this anymore. If you had never agreed to debate me, you could do this. But now you take these cheap shots and I'm just like, hey, dude, what do you want to do? Debate this one again and get fucking humiliated again, just like you did last time.
And he's like, well, no, he doesn't want to do that. Like what? I don't know, dude, I will debate. My wife said to me the other night, cause she saw that he tweeted at me and she goes, oh my God, she goes, would you debate him again? And I went, I'll debate him every day. I'll just make the rest of my life debating Chris Cuomo every day.
And I'll win every one of them. Like, it's just, it's, sure, let's do it. So what's his play here? What do you want to do? Do another one and have it be the exact same thing? And then, right, okay, so obviously he's not going to do that. But so, like, by the way, I will say, and I don't, like...
Don't I don't bring these numbers up to be petty Okay, a little part of me perhaps nice to be petty. Well, petty is great. That's sometimes all you have in life Well, I'll say this it's um, if you live alone have no kids and career that's you know But it does it just shows me something it says something about kind of like where the cultural moment is at because I mean Chris Cuomo has He's got about two million Twitter followers
And in the thing that he called me out for, his tweet got 413 likes. And then my response to his got 22,000. Like, it's just unbelievable how much it's like, dude, no one's on your side on this. Like, this is just, why are you, you're just gonna, like, look, I don't mean to be a dick, but the thing is like, Chris Cuomo, you can go away and never bring my name up again.
Just never utter my name again. And it's up to me if I decide to just keep taking shots at you or maybe just move on at some point. But every time you respond to me, every time you mentioned my name, you're going to lose. Like whether it's an exchange on Twitter or a debate or whatever else, it's just going to be another huge L for you.
So I'd recommend just taking the first path. But yes, you were the number one show at CNN during the rise of totalitarianism in America. And so like, I'm going to keep that like that's you're kind of the and you were also the brother of the governor who was the number one lockdown governor at the time. You're just too easy of a poster child for me to say, you don't mention me. I don't mention you. And so it's like, you don't mention me and I reserve the right.
I reserve the right to bring this up. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is CrowdHealth, a longtime sponsor of this show. And they're a great company. If you've been an adult for more than five minutes, there's only a few things you know. And one of them is that our health insurance system is broken. Premiums are always increasing. Deductibles are getting larger and claim denials are becoming more common.
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crowdhealth.com slash POTP. That's join crowdhealth.com slash POTP. All right, let's get back into the show. Just enjoy your paycheck and nice body. You got good things going for yourself. You got, yeah, you got that. You
You got money and biceps, so there you go. You didn't come out of this empty-handed. But anyway, the point I was going to make there, which I guess is taking another shot at Chris, but I mean it, is that one of the things that I mentioned during the debate, I think it was something that, or I mentioned after the debate, I think it was something that most people watching the debate were kind of taken back by. And I've done a lot of debates in my time.
I've done a lot of debates with other podcasters and other political commentators and stuff like that. I've never been in a debate before where I just couldn't believe it as it was happening, which I just couldn't believe how comfortable Chris was with lying.
and and how much you would just say something that you're like yo dude like you are just lying through your teeth right now i remember i did a podcast episode where we kind of like did a debrief on this after that and that this was like one of my biggest takeaways and that anyway pulling this back to the hunter biden thing that is one of the things that you see with what you were getting at rob when you talk about this media coverage was it's just like it it
It's so like the way Chris Cuomo in that debate would just I'd be like, dude, and you said this back on CNN. And he'd go, I never said that. And I'd be like, yes, you did. What do you mean you never said? Yes, you did. You said that. And then they'd pull up the video of him saying the exact thing he just said he didn't say. And then he'd go, oh, that's not what I said. And you'd be like, did we all just I mean, dude, there were there were.
If you go look at the while they're pulling up the clips of him there's in the room there were what's the term what audible gasps I'm not like I'm not even exaggerating in that to where Chris Cuomo will be like I never made fun of Joe Rogan for taking ivermectin and then I'll be like yes you did like you're lying you did it'll be like no no if you see the clips you see everyone else at CNN doing that but you won't see me doing that I didn't make fun of Joe Rogan taking ivermectin and then they
pull up the clip and it's Chris Cuomo at his CNN show going, "Ivermectin? Really Joe Rogan? Horstie Wormer?" And as they're saying it, I just hear like a lady in the crowd like, "Oh!" She can't even believe like, she didn't know, I guess, I'm assuming. She didn't know when I was like, "No dude, you actually said this." And she's like, "I don't know, he's saying he didn't say it." And then when you see the clip, like she's even in that moment going like, "Oh, I can't believe he just
Oh, he was lying through his fucking teeth. And I'm just telling you, like, that's the culture over there. That's the culture in cable news is it's like we got an agenda here, dude. This is the new talking point. We all repeat that talking point. And it does not matter the relationship that that talking point has with the truth. It simply does not matter. Here, let's play the compilation that Tom Elliott wrote.
made, which is so great by the way. Tom Elliot is the OG best in the game at making corporate media compilations that have just aged so terribly. You don't like this shit? Because they all kind of rely on like, okay, there's these talking points, they come down, they all say them in unison and you are a bad person if you don't agree.
And then when that talking point gets completely disproven, we're all supposed to quietly walk away. Like they all just Homer Simpson back into the bush away from all of that. And like, yeah, you're not, we're not really, we're not going to address it. We're not going to talk about it. We're just not really going to have that conversation anymore. And so I just love that Tom Elliott always comes up with the compilations of them saying the shit. But anyway, here is their takes on the prospects of Joe Biden pardoning Hunter.
The presidential promise to put the law before a family. I said I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him. Letting the world know that he will not wipe away the decision of 12 of his son's peers was asked directly. And he has said he wouldn't pardon his son if he gets convicted. Let's wait and see what happens if he loses. Yeah, but I mean, but.
but he said it. He's going to get pardoned by his dad. There's no question about that. The president has ruled out pardoning his son. Major commitment from the president, accepting the outcome of the trial and also pledging not to pardon his son. The challenge for him is really to continue to live up to his values when it was really personal. And he did that today. It seems like a pretty normal, straightforward answer, but it does.
It takes new weight when we see what Trump is saying about the outcome of his trial. We're hearing from other Republicans who say they don't accept the jury's verdict here in New York. The contrast is profound. To sit there and say, well, I'm not going to intervene in the legal process, and I wouldn't pardon my son. One side, Democrats and Joe Biden protecting the justice system. And on the other, Republicans and Trump protecting Trump. A current president of the United States...
has so much respect for the law that he has said he would not pardon his son. I mean, what, you know, again, it's all about the contrast. President Biden saying, I will respect whatever this jury decides versus Donald Trump after he was convicted on 34 counts, saying the entire system is rigged against him. Their latest attack has been that Joe Biden has politicized and weaponized the DOJ, right? That was a whole
argument around Donald Trump's conviction. And this week, of course, Hunter Biden was found guilty. And Joe Biden has very clearly said he would not pardon his son. He would not commute his sentence. How stark is this difference? I mean, how can Republicans keep making this argument now that that now that Joe Biden has really put it out there? Where's Hunter? And he stood there in a courtroom flanked by his family and he's accepted his sentence. He is not pardoning
his son, which he could do. These are federal charges. He is not doing that. He is not doing it because he is living what it means to have a rule of law in this country. And then it is, it is. And I mean, if you want to know if he believes it,
you can actually see what is happening with his own son. The President Anderson has been really clear that he is going to accept the outcome of the trial no matter what happens. So Joe Biden's gotten asked about, you know, talking about law and order. He's gotten asked if he would pardon his son. He has said no. On the other side, you've got Donald Trump who has said that he will pardon the January 6th insurrection.
They're not even his sons. They're just sons of bitches. Washington said, I am not running again because he understood the self-restraint was absolutely essential to this country. So you don't have a king. He did not pardon his son. He did not order the Department of Justice to
to say, don't prosecute my son. So impressive. Could have ordered the Justice Department to halt the prosecution of Hunter Biden, according to this court. Everyone understands he's a decent man. I think Joe Biden has a chance here to stand up for the rule of law, to say the law is the law, no matter who it is, no matter if it's Trump.
or Biden. And remember, part of Trumpism's dangerousness is that it tears down institutions, important institutions of our democracy. So there is an opportunity here for Biden to say, you know, the jury found him guilty. This is how it's supposed to work.
Period, paragraph, end of story. Have you ruled out a pardon for your son? Yes. As I said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. The president said he won't touch it. He said he's not gonna pardon his son. And it seems that Mayor Garland let it go through. How can the Justice Department be weaponized against Trump when all of that is happening? Democrats stand for the rule of law. Remember law and order.
And we've been saying that Trump's not above the law. Hunter Biden's not above the law. No one is above the law.
And it is amazing to see the stark contrast between how Democrats handled today and how Republicans handled this whole thing over the last couple of weeks. For years, these conservatives have been crowing about a politicized Justice Department, Biden politicizing it and so on. What happened today? The Justice Department convicted the president's own son, his only living son. You heard the president say he would accept the outcome of the case today.
I know no other word for that, but presidential. He even went so far as to say he wouldn't pardon his son. That's how much respect he has for the system. The president has said that he will not pardon his son. What did you think of that?
I thought it was extraordinary. I mean, it was a moment of just moral clarity on the part of Joe Biden and couldn't have been in, you know, starker contrast to the way Donald Trump has handled his own conviction. He could still pardon him. He said he won't do that. All of that conduct, given that it's his son, is kind of, at least you should pause for a moment and think about how unbelievable that is. In a million years, if the shoe were on the other foot,
and Donald Trump was facing the prospect of his son being prosecuted by a Biden, me, if I had been held over, a Biden holdover or Obama holdover prosecutor, not in a million, million years would that have happened. So, you know, some of the people on the right, the people who support Donald Trump, are trying to cast this as some clever ops program. Hunter Biden was found guilty by a jury of his peers, just like Donald Trump.
because this is our justice system at work. The divide here is stunning and it's a great reminder that one political party remains committed to the rule of law and the other doesn't. Joe Biden has already proven he's willing to stand up for the rule of law in a way that we could all never imagine Donald Trump to do. Pretty emphatic over the last few days that he does not
plan to pardon or commute his son. But that really is him saying is I don't plan to use the powers of the office, the powers of the presidency to provide private relief for my family. In a sense, he's staking out a pretty bright line between being, as he says, a president and a dad. And that's not just an emotional expression. He's in effect saying, I don't think that I should. I don't have a right, even if it's legal. And God knows it must be tempting.
to use this power in a way that is not available to so many other Americans facing similar kinds of struggles. There's a kind of old school sort of flinty core to his conception of how you are to be in the system, how you are to be as a person, a moral person and
ultimately how to contend with questions of power. One of the things that anybody who spends time around Joe Biden comes to know is that he's had this long running focus on how much he is bothered by abuses of power. - He'll accept the verdict no matter what it is and that he has ruled out pardoning his own son. Contrast that from what we hear from Donald Trump. And again, we have to underline in no uncertain terms, President Biden saying, "I will accept the outcome. I will just accept what the jury decides here. That's the way our legal system works."
And no, I will not pardon my own son if he is convicted. And the contrast is so clear here. Um, just because it's, I think people get the point. Um, there is something powerful though about, I know that was a bit long, but there is something powerful about seeing how all of the shows repeat it.
You know, like they all do the exact same thing. There's it's so easy by the way to just poke holes in all of this and yet this can go on on every single show and they just repeat mindlessly the same dumb propaganda. And by the way, I will, I guess I should give credit there to the one Chris Wallace
um who of course is mike wallace's son and at least has a little bit of like old school newsman
in him where he was the only one in that montage who goes like, well, let's see what happens if he loses, you know, because that right away pokes a gigantic hole in this entire thing. You guys are all celebrating this as if he's done it, but he hasn't done anything yet. He just said he wouldn't do it. And of course, then there's other things where, you know, as you heard there, four or five different people.
Say that he's not pardoning his son because he believes in the rule of law, which is a stupid argument anyway, because the law actually says that the president can pardon him. It's not against the law what Joe Biden just did. So it's not as if. But of course, no.
They were. Why were they all saying that? Because they thought this was a good way to damage Donald Trump. That's it. They'll lie through their teeth because they think it's a good way to damage Donald Trump. Now, do you think any of those people will be coming out today because Biden pardoned Hunter yesterday and saying, turns out Joe Biden opposes the rule of law? Are we going to hear any of that?
No, because there's no political expediency to that. That doesn't help them in any way. Yet at the time, they thought it was helpful to damage Donald Trump. By the way, another aspect of this that is kind of entertaining is that...
And Tom Elliott could do, I'm not going to do the legwork for it, but if Tom wants to, you could find a whole nother montage of back during all the Russiagate nonsense when the thing they were feeding people was that Don Jr. was going to go to jail. There's a whole nother media compilation that would be just as hilarious as this one where they were all preemptively saying Donald Trump's going to pardon his own son.
And wouldn't that be a perversion of justice if he were to do that? So it's there. They're just it's like again, it's like the feeling like I had with Chris Cuomo when I was debating him. Like you just you're almost like
Like at a certain point, you're like, you unbelievable liar. Like what? It's like a move that you didn't even know was a possible move. You know, it's like you're like, oh, you're just playing a different game than the rest of us are. Like it's like if you sat down to play chess with someone. I was never much of a chess player, Rob. I don't know if you were. But if you sat down to play chess with someone. Checkers. Well, and they just told you, yeah.
They just started playing with you and they just started moving their rook like it was a queen. And you're like, hey, wait a minute, you're not allowed to do that. And then they go, oh, no, no, no, that's how it works. Rooks can move the same way queens can. And you're like, I wasn't even prepared for this. You know, like I wasn't even prepared for this as a possibility in the game of chess that you would just try to start redefining how the pieces are allowed to move. It's like that. You're like, Jesus Christ, just to see this all is it's it's.
It's like equal parts appalling, but then it's also just, um, I don't know what the term is. Like it's so shocking in a way that cause you were like normal people just don't act like this, that you're, it almost leaves you like paralyzed. Like I don't even know what. Oh, okay. All right.
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As you said, none of them, or I'm assuming, I haven't watched the news today. I can't imagine any of them are going on the news and going, this is terrible. We have backed Joe Biden and apparently he doesn't respect the rule of law and that this is dangerous precedent. I bet you got a couple honest actors out there. I think I've seen some scattered reports about how this will empower Donald Trump to give more pardons to the January 6th people, who I think he should pardon all of them and he should do it on day one.
But yeah, I mean, it's pretty the implication of all the statements in that video was that giving a pardon would be undermining the rule of law. And now here's Joe Biden doing it. And it's incredible that they will state these things without any concern for reality. And the fact that these statements will be untrue in just a couple of months is...
It's amazing to me that these people just have no that Joe Biden has no foresight to just go. I definitely will not. And that all the news acres will just run with that and then take it to the extreme of, oh, look at how bad this makes Donald Trump look without any preparation for reality. Well, it's also like.
It's not just that these hacks on cable news should be like now turning around and saying, oh, Joe Biden doesn't stand for the rule of law. They should all be issuing apologies. Like you have a politician, a career politician just says he's not going to do something. And they all ran with it as if it was a matter of fact.
As if it was a guarantee that because he said he wouldn't do this, it's not happening. Like it, I mean, like, I don't know, again, you know, like Sam Harris will say, we're just comedians and we're, you know, we've done our own research, but we're not, we don't have, you know, newsrooms and institutions and all of this, but.
At the same time, here's one more example. How much we hold ourselves to a higher standard than that. Like, look, as people know, I ended up supporting Donald Trump in this last election. And I've, you know, been in...
sharp critic of his first four years. And I'm after all the picks now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a sharp critic of his next four years. But like even there are things that I'm somewhat optimistic about that I'm somewhat cautiously optimistic about, somewhat hopeful about. But could you imagine, Rob, if me or you, we just started celebrating that he ended the war in Ukraine because he said he was going to do it.
And so we just came on our show and acted like that was a given that it was done because he said he was going to do it. We would never because obviously you'd go, well, I mean, that's okay. That's great that he said it. Now let's see if he comes through on it. And yet they, the standards that everybody in the corporate media has is to just pretend just because it's politically advantageous in that moment to them. We'll just pretend he did it. He's basically George Washington, Rob, don't you know?
Because he said he won't pardon his son six months before he did. But because he said that, that makes him George Washington, who, you know, could have been king, but decided to only be president and have limited terms and only served eight years. But he could have been king. And so that's the same as Joe Biden saying that he won't do something. I guess there should be at least a conversation of if he lied, right?
This arrogantly and bold faced. What else did he lie about? He's clearly pretty comfortable lying. He said, I will not give him a pardon. Or he said when asked, he said, yes, I bet if we went through all the clips, that's not the only time that he said it. I think I've seen other times, but he was 100 percent willing to lie on this. What else did he lie about? Yeah. Yeah.
And look, again, to your, you know, to the point that you made before, which is because, you know, I did say like for the sake of argument, let's say there was no, you know, 10 percent to the big guy or something like that. But that just to be clear was just for the sake of argument. And the truth is that there was quite a bit of evidence that.
implicated Joe Biden in all of this. And what, when you said that, what brought this to my mind is just when you said that, uh, you know, what else will he lie about? Well, he was also on record saying that he knew nothing of his son's business deals and that got blown up as a huge lie. You know, like it, I don't know if it was exactly proven that he's the big guy and took 10%, but there was real evidence.
You know, there was, um, what was it? One of those 10% was going to Hunter's penis for what? Um, yeah, there you go. Uh, I was, I was in a debate with, I can't remember those, those Twitter brothers. Um, I can't remember their names, but I remember I was in a debate with them. It was me and Clint Russell versus them too. And we were debating over Biden's corruption. And they, one of them said to me at one point, they go, he said, there's not a shred of evidence that,
that Joe Biden was connected at all to Hunter Biden's business dealings. And I went, Hunter Biden's business partner told the FBI.
that he was directly involved that they had had meetings that he they had talked about it and that he was getting 10 of all of it and i was like you know and i said told the fbi because like that's like the same standard as perjury or it's a crime to lie to them i should say so there's there's some extra you know what i mean it's not just saying the words it's saying i'm with some risk attached to it and i remember he said to me he goes uh he goes that's hearsay
And I was like, Hey, I'm no lawyer and I know you're not either, but what do you think hearsay means? Cause that's not hearsay. That's what's known as eyewitness testimony, which is a slightly different thing.
then hearsay like hearsay gets thrown out of court. Eyewitness testimony becomes your star witness in court. Those are different things. And so like, anyway, there are actually, and we, this is before we found out that he was actually on the phone with them. Anyway, I, so I,
There was a...
Anyway, dude, anyway, the real, as I've made this point before, but it's, it's worth repeating. But so anyway, I saw, um, just before I was, I was starting this, it's like a video that was made, but it's not, it's literally not even worth responding to cause it's so stupid. Um, but I, I was in it. Um, but it was some account had made this video. Like, I guess, I don't know if you saw that, uh, um, Klitschko, um,
had, you know, asked Rogan to have him on or whatever. I thought it was Zelensky asked.
Both of these things happen. Oh, okay. Yes. So Rogan had said on the show that Zelensky was trying to do it and he wasn't real interested. It looks like Lex Friedman is going to host Zelensky on his show. That should be interesting. But Klitschko also had offered. Now Klitschko, for people who don't know, and I always confuse which of the brothers is which, but they were both very good fighters. But he was very involved. They have the same face. What are you going to do? How am I supposed to differentiate these people? That's a good point.
um but he was very involved in the the maidan uprising um in fact if you go on those uh on the victoria newland phone call the infamous phone call now klitsch is what she calls him and she's uh klitsch has to stay out of government is what victoria newland decided it was the wrong casting choice
They needed a Jewish comedian, not a tough boxing character. Well, she literally said that he didn't have the experience or whatever it was. Anyway, and she got her wish magically. But anyway, so this guy, someone on Twitter made this video.
it was just just terrible but they were like uh they were like here's the the russian propaganda that's been on joe rogan's show that klitschko could smack down and the one he had of me was he literally just plays like a like a three second video of me saying that russia good yeah well he he played a clip of me saying that victoria newland like i said something like victoria newland worked at the state department she was hired by dick cheney and then promoted by hillary clinton
which is factual, factually true. And then he goes, but then he writes on the video, the claim is that Victoria Nuland created the Maidan revolution, which is like, that's not exactly what I was saying. Like I never said that, you know, but anyway, so he goes through all of these things, but then one of the claims that he made, which is so funny how,
how just dishonest they have to be. It's one of the things that blows me away about the people. Like if, if you're, if you are, if you're an anti-war person, I know you've seen it too, but when you, when you argue about Ukraine or Israel, it's just amazing. The lies that,
the other side relies on. Just total. But anyway, so he said in this video, which I thought was so funny because this part didn't have anything to do with me, I guess, even though I have talked about it. But he was saying that the claim was that Joe Biden was involved in some shady deal with Burisma. And he goes, really? Burisma, the company who was pro-Russian, who was against the Maidan revolution? Yeah.
And so that's essentially was his response, right? Well, that this whole story doesn't make any sense at all because first of all, this company, Burisma, they weren't for overthrowing this government. They liked the Russians and they liked them. And it's just like, it's amazing how much they rely on people having no knowledge.
of the situation, which is like, it's a constant thing. It's like the war hawks do it all the time. It's a, it's a thing where, you know, on Fox news for anybody out there, who's got like a Fox news watching dad who, you know, maybe, maybe today this isn't what they're doing exactly, but like over the years,
They would always say like in the post 9/11 Fox News would always Karl Rove and John Bolton and all these guys would always get on TV and say Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism and that's why we have to overthrow that government and now when you hear that and
Like if you know anything about the region, you know what it is. But if you don't and you're just if you're just relying on some Fox News dad who doesn't really know, like hasn't like read 15 books on the Middle East, you know what I mean? They've just they turn on Fox News and they get their information right there. And so what does that sound like to any of them? What impression are you giving those people?
9/11 dude you remember 9/11 remember the few terrorist attacks after that well Iran is the number one state sponsor Iraq was involved in that too so that makes sense right exactly you know it's like oh yeah all these but it's literally just on the level of you going oh yeah it's one of those Durka Durkestan guys I knew that you know it's that because if you know that the first thing about the region you'd immediately go like well wait a minute Osama bin Laden
was a Sunni. Iran is ruled by Shiites. But they can get along with terrorism. That's where people come together. Right, right. I'm back. I got to pee so bad. I'll be back for the last minute, though. I know it's not very professional. It's okay. It's fine. So anyway, the point is that Iran is not giving money to Al Qaeda or ISIS or any of the groups that that Fox News dad wrote
come you know that pop into his mind when he thinks terrorist they're giving money to hezbollah and hamas you know israel's enemies okay now you could have your problems with hezbollah and hamas but you could still see where when carl carl rove comes on fox news and tells you they're the ones contributing to terrorism that is not what
the American people who watch Fox News are thinking about. They're not thinking about like, oh, they're giving money to the Shiites in Lebanon who are pissed off that Israel's occupying Palestine and used to occupy Lebanon. Like that's not what they're thinking in their mind. They're thinking of like the,
guy who just drove a truck through a concert in Europe or something like that. But no, Iran was not giving any money to ISIS. In fact, they were fighting a war against them while the U S was on ISIS aside. Anyway. So likewise, when this guy makes the argument that, uh,
Okay, well, you know, Burisma, this energy company in Ukraine, they were against the Maidan revolution and they were pro-Russian. So why would they be involved in a conspiracy with Hunter and Joe Biden? I do understand where if you don't know anything about it, that kind of sounds like a good point.
It almost rhymes with a good point. You're like, yeah, why? Why would they be involved in a conspiracy with the Bidens when they're on the opposite side of them? Right. Like the Bidens are involved with the guys who just had this successful coup or the street putsch, whatever you want to call it.
And this company was on the other side of that. But so here's the thing to just if you just want to understand where the real scandal is with Hunter Biden and this energy company and this Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. So there he is. He's back.
So I was just, just to catch up. And on that point, no, I'm kidding. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Babbel. You want to learn a new language? Well, the best way is to uproot your entire life, drop yourself in the middle of a new country and figure it out from there. But if you're not quite ready for that, you can still learn a language the next best way. And that's Babbel.
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at babbel.com/problem. That's B-A-B-B-E-L.com/problem. Rules and restrictions may apply. All right, let's get back into the show. Well, I was just saying that I can understand where if you don't know anything, it kind of sounds like a reasonable argument to go, "Hey, Burisma, they were against Maidan, and they were friendly with Russians, so why would they be involved in a conspiracy with the Bidens? 'Cause they're on the other side of this thing." But so here's essentially what happened, right?
So in 2013, you know, I've told the whole story before, but essentially what happened was the EU was trying to make a deal with Yanukovych, who was the democratically elected president of Ukraine. And by the way, the EU oversaw these elections. These were legitimate elections. And Yanukovych was elected president. So Yanukovych was the president of Ukraine.
He wanted to do a deal with the EU and then Vladimir Putin started putting a lot of pressure on him not to do it. He started essentially saying that there would be no more discount on natural gas for Ukraine if they entered a partnership with the European Union, which is a big deal to Ukraine, particularly at the time that they got a discount on Russian energy.
And and of course, this Burisma, right, like the guy said, he is right about that. They were against Maidan and they were like they were into making the partnership with Russia. So ultimately, Yanukovych, the EU ended up like and this is what Henry Kissinger said at the time. This is all in Scott's book, by the way, which is really phenomenal.
But Henry Kissinger said at the time that the EU, and he personally blamed Merkel, they fucked it all up by insisting on too many concessions. So they were essentially like, you can become an EU member and we will give you a loan. I forget, it was either five or $15 billion. And we'll give you this loan.
but you have to have severe austerity and anti-corruption measures. You got to cut your social safety net. You got to cut your pension funds. You got to cut down on all this corruption, all of this stuff. And then Vladimir Putin came in and said, I'll give you the 15 billion, no strings attached. And they went with Putin. So Putin won in the game of, you know, international, you know, deal making. And so they went. And so because they did that,
the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, how ironic is that? The NED, they poured millions and millions of dollars into the totally organic, made-on revolution. It's known as a color-coded revolution. And there's, Scott's got a whole chapter on this in the book. We're up against time here, so just to save time, yada, yada, yada.
It overthrew Yanukovych. Yanukovych ended up fleeing for his life. And as soon as he was gone, they declared a new government. And the next day, the Obama administration recognized the new government, even though Yanukovych was in Russia saying, hey, I'm still the legitimate president of Ukraine. They went, no, sorry, you're not. And they went away.
Then they installed this new government. All of the people who Victoria Nuland wanted in got in, all the people she wanted out were out. So there's this new government. Okay, so here's where the scandal comes, right? So Burisma, this company who was against the street putsch that just overthrew the government that they were in bed with.
Okay, the more pro-Russian government that they were in bed with just got overthrown by a violent street mob who they opposed. So now they're in this situation where they're a little bit worried.
They're a little bit worried about where they stand now because they used to be in bed with the democratically elected government. That government's gone. Yanukovych isn't in town anymore. Okay. And so what did they do in this situation where they were worried about not being in with the new government? Well, one might think maybe you'd try to bribe the new government, but they decided to go right to the source.
Because they thought, hey, let's just cut out the middlemen instead of trying to bribe like the Poroshenko government or whoever. This might have been a little before Poroshenko came in. They were like, we'll just put the vice president's son on our board, pay him six figures a month. That ought to keep us in business. And so they did. And so it did.
That's the scandal. So you could sit there on the face of it and go, well, why would a company who was against Maidon be in business with the Biden? It's like exactly because they were against the uprising. And so now they needed an insurance policy. And that's what Hunter Biden ultimately was. So forget Hunter Biden going to jail. That's not really the issue. The issue is how fucking corrupt that whole scheme is.
You know that the National Endowment for Democracy is in the business of overthrowing democratically elected governments. And then some company who was in bed with the old government could just bribe a politician here in America's kid and they'll be just fine, which they were. We're going to wrap up there. Thank you guys very much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode. Catch you then. Peace.