07/08/24 - Special Episode

Good morning! It’s Monday, July 8th.

National Blueberry Day.

Oh great, now I want cobbler.

And now, the news.

Special Episode - Election 2024

-via AP News (Biden), Intelligencer (Trump-Epstein), The Hill (Heritage), and NY Times (Classified Documents)

Twist – this here’s a special episode!

If you’re a subscriber to the show, you should have two episodes on the feed. This one, as well as a classic news episode.

If you haven’t subscribed to the show… ouch. And also – subscribe! It’s free!

If you were lucky enough to have not spent the better part of last week, as well as all weekend, manically refreshing Twitter… First of all - what’s that like? And also – you may have missed some stuff.

So this episode is going to cover Trump and Biden news in a way I wish it was being reported. Let’s get into it.

First, the Biden stuff. As you may recall, the first presidential debate happened about a week and a half ago.

Trump lied the entire time. Just nonstop lies, when you could actually get him to answer the question. He also refused to accept the election results so – classic and dangerous.

Biden also had a bad night. Content-wise, Trump’s performance was abhorrent. Optics-wise, Biden’s performance was abysmal.

That opened up a pretty serious question about whether Biden should stay in the race because we’re not just fighting another political party, we’re fighting for our democracy here. This is serious.

Since then, and thanks to media framing of it as well as the very real threat of Trump, an open, and currently very loud, question has been asked: should Biden continue running?

I don’t mean to blow your mind about how aging works but Biden and Trump are both old. They’ve both been old. That’s not news. That’s not been news – until it was.

And it was all over the news. In the other episode out today, all the news – none of it was as big of news as the Biden stuff. The President had an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, where he said, as he has maintained, that he is absolutely going to continue running. That interview didn’t do what he needed it to do, and in fact now talk about him dropping out of the race is almost louder.

In all, the Democrats are fairly split on what to do. The threat of Donald Trump is much larger than just a shift in party power. This is a five-alarm fire for the future of our democracy. This is fighting against a fascist.

After a meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday, folks like Governor Newsom pledged unwavering support for the president. However, on Sunday, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries met with top committee lawmakers and several of those big party players, Jerry Nadler, Jim Himes, and Mark Takano said Biden should drop out of the race.

Who knows what’s going to happen. The Democratic Convention is at the end of August and so there’s not a ton of time here.

Here’s what I will commit to you – we will know more when we know more, but here, on this show, you will not get theory and possibility. You will know the news when it happens and I will not conflate gossip for news.

Because while yes, it is news if the President drops out, that’s currently just a distraction. While the major outlets were covering a shiny distraction, let me tell you about a few things that you may have missed:

First, on Saturday Judge Aileen Cannon postponed some classified documents crimes case deadlines, in order to allow prosecutors time to respond to Trump’s request for a big ol pause in the case after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump can do anything he wants as long as the vibes are that it’s an official act. That absolutely bonkers and infuriating ruling has already seen Trump get a delay of sentencing in his felony case from the time that, as a candidate, he hid information from you, the voter, so that you wouldn’t have all the information you needed to cast a ballot. Now he’s using that ruling to say that, after he was no longer president and was literally leaving office, it was okay to just take some of our most classified secrets because… uh… well you know what a reader he is!

A crime he did as a candidate and a crime he did literally as he was moving out of West Wing – and both of those things have enough of a possibility, vague as it is, of being tossed out that his cases are being delayed. I wonder what would happen if he were back in office and felt like he was actually more able to do crimes… probably nothing good!

So anyway, more delay on the classified documents case.

Also, more information about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 came out. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the roadmap for a second Trump that includes things like: reverse the FDA approval of the abortion pill as well as invoking the Comstock Act to ban the shipment of the abortion pill, and compelling states to report the reason for every abortion in the state. It would also have us withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, gut clean energy programs, reestablish marriage as being only between a man and a woman, withdraw anti-discrimination for our trans youth while also expelling transgender service members, stop government support for international groups that promote LGBTQ+ equality, fire thousands of nonpartisan government workers, privatize Medicare, allow ICE raids in schools and churches, and end no-fault divorce, among almost 900 pages of horror.

oh! and allow Trump to use the military on private citizens.

Trump did his little social media thing about Project 2025 saying he knows nothing about it, has no idea who’s behind it, but added: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Anything they do, I wish them luck.

I have nothing to do with them.

First of all – you don’t have to wish them luck. You’re wishing them luck to wish them luck. Calling something abysmal doesn’t cancel out that you wished them luck.

You don’t hear me out here wishing the Cybertruck’s luck even though I think they’re absurd. When I don’t like something, I either just ignore it completely or become so absolutely annoying in my bullying of it that no one brings it up around me. That’s why none of my friends drive a cybertruck or bring up, even as a joke, Ted Cruz. Because I will spend the rest of my time absolutely roasting a beard that tells me that Ted Cruz may be a Republican, but his beard it voting for whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is.

Also – he has a lot more than “nothing” to do with them… The head of the project, Paul Dans, was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during his administration. Ben Carson contributed to it, as did former acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, and one of his closest aides, John McEntee.

Dude. You know about it.

Perhaps the reason he wants to get a little distance is because first – it’s terrible but has been around and he likely thought he’d get through the election without it getting too much attention.

But the more salient reason likely came on July 3rd when Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts went on Steven Bannon’s podcast and said this chilling sentence: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

But separating Trump from Project 2025 is impossible. There can be no pretending otherwise.

 Anyway, so that’s where things are right now… Biden is old. He may or may not be the presidential nominee in the end, but he is right now.

Trump is also old. Additionally, worse actually, is that he’s super into fascism.

For some reason, the Biden thing got more attention over the weekend.

Don’t worry. I’m back now. So for the like ten of you that listen… here on this show, being old and being a fascist will not be covered as if they’re the same thing.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of Kelly Clarkson. She’s not connected to any story here at all, but I just… need something good. I need something to be good right now and you know what? That’s Kelly Clarkson.

But more than… oh I’m in a pickle of my pickling. I can’t say more than Kelly Clarkson!

More than blueberries – because some blueberries are great and some are too mushy, but that is never the case with you. You are just all great and zero mush… I’m proud of you.