Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This is a Countdown podcast special. And to anybody listening who thinks President Biden pardoning his son Hunter was a bad idea, and I suspect that includes nobody in this audience. But if you happen to run into somebody who believes this, you can use this explanation. And by the way, my condolence is that you ran into somebody who thinks it was a bad idea. Let me explain this to them.
One they cannot find their political ass from their political elbow. Two that is probably because all they have is political ass. And three President Biden didn't pardon his son to keep him out of jail for this literally trumped up gun and drug prosecution. He pardoned him to protect him from further persecution by Trump next year. In this continuing hysterical ringing of pearls and clutching of hands reaction to the pardon, we are reminded that we are in this transcendent mess
because Trump is an evil psychopath. First of all, obviously, but also because all of our guard rails against evil psychopaths, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the laws, the media, patriotism. They all turned out to be made out of paper machet. And we are reminded that perhaps the most disturbingly diaphanous of these butter solid protections was the assumption that eventually
Democrats and liberals would actually, you know, fight back. Some time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket, the light bulb finally went off over Joe Biden's head, and he realized that no, the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and most of the rest of us had dedicated most of our lives did not miraculously regrow after Trump's relentless assault on them. They did not suddenly spring fully restored and
intact from the ground. Biden saw that not only was his last son about to go to prison because he was his son, and because he the President bent over backwards to not interfere with the Department of Justice that thought by partisanship meant bending over backwards to do nothing against Trump while bending over backwards to do everything against Democrats.
The President not only saw that was true, but he also finally, at nearly the last minute, as if this were a Shakespearean tragedy like Othello, that Trump's Department of Quote Justice unquote, will at minimum try to initiate further prosecution against Hunter Biden next year, and through him against Joe Biden, and through him against Jill Biden, and through them against anybody else they could get their hands on.
The President figured this out and went over and pulled his son out of harm's way, and then much of left attacked President Biden morons. I don't care about Hunter
Biden particularly. I care about the fact that we are forty eight days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking over our government, supported by an unknown percentage of the population that actually wants to see Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and maybe me and maybe hanging from construction cranes parading through the streets of Washington and wants to see
Trump in power for life. We just got one more good person out of their sights, and we just shoved one more plotline up Trump's ass and up the asses of Cash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Steven Miller and whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylums, and countless liberals and anti Trump conservatives think this will actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January sixth insurrectionists, because apparently for the last ten years these people have
been hallucinating and thinking that Trump has ever once bothered to seek cover for anything, or they think we should be better than them. They are planning to put us in camps. I do not care if we are seen as better than them, or worse than them, or monstrous in comparison to them, because if somebody's going to wind up in camps, it ain't going to be me, It's
going to be them. End of discussion. Also, where did this idea come from, considering that he ran on pardoning the January sixth insurrectionists that now he would be provided cover for doing so. You people really need to take the weekends and do a little work on them and not half ass your jobs. Never trumpers and faint hearted liberals, that's the generic you. I am not talking to you, dear listener, since you agree with me. As I said yesterday,
I cheer the pardon of Hunter Biden. My loan complaint is that the president should pardon another ten million potential Trump targets. I want Trump waiting in the White House neck high through biden issued pardons. I want him to find that every prosecutor, every Democratic politician, every reporter, every critic, every cartoonist has been pardoned. I want their families pardoned, I want their pets pardoned. I want every barricade thrown up against Trump on every street Biden can get to
in time. The serious host and human rights lawyer Cassim Rashid adds, quote, My only issue with Biden pardoning Hunter is if he stops there. Biden should commute death penal for forty Americans on federal death Row, cancel student debt via EO executive order, and force Trump to revive it, and protect abortion nationwide. Ya EO, get bold, take action, slow down maga fascism unquote exactly, just get in Trump's way. You don't have to get run over by the tank
in TN and Men's Square. Just get into TN and Men's Square. Every step Trump takes for the rest of his god damned life should be into quicksand or at least make him go through a pool filled with oatmeal. Eric Holder cheered the pardon. Ellie Mistahal cheered the pardon. My friend John Dene cheered the pardon and further urge that it be extended to anybody on Trump's enemies list, and John dene is one man who knows about presidential enemies lists. But also to all anti Trump commentators, I'll
take the pardon. But then there are the idiots. Then there are the reasons we are in this mess. Then there are the dilettants. Rick Pearlstein's Nixon Land is a classic of recent American history. It's up there with Gibbons decline and fall of the Roman Empire, as far as I am concerned, only it's better written. I read it to my father out loud as he lay dying in the hospital. And yet Pearlstein and I had this exchange yesterday.
He wrote, I think the Hunter pardon is dumb, instantating Joe's political tragic flaw of selfishness with the worst possible timing. It chisels the narrative of democratic deep state cronyism into stone. For anyone on the fence about whether to surrender to Maggie is or not, I replied, firstly, there is no longer a fence, and nobody still on it him. No,
this is the most crucial time. Millions of people poise between Trump is right and Trump is bullshit, between being on the cop side of the line when the roundups come or the Jews, I mean Mexicans. We have to think inside the fascist, anti fascist frame, right Rick, I hadn't been doing that me. The first step is to block all efforts to put people in camps. The intended further persecution of the bidens is part of the process. Biden should pardon everybody. We are already at the barricade
the streets stage. Rick, fewer will join if they're given own goal, excuses to sigh and say both sides are the same. This helps depopulate the barricades. Me all caps. They said that on November fifth, you are fighting the last war, and I mean that of all people. Rick should know that the Republicans have spent literally every day since Watergate, which he wrote about in nixon Land, insisting that both sides are the same. That is the whole point. That is how they have gotten away with this. That
is how they tried to get away with Watergate. That was the whole first line of defense in Watergate. Well, everybody does this. Nixon just got caught. They have insisted for more than half a century that both sides are the same, and they have convinced at least half the country that this is true, and Perlstein and other liberals are wondering if something like the pardoning of Hunter Biden
might make the undecided waiver. The undecided decided they elected Trump twice, and part of the reason that they decided that way was the fact that the Democrats didn't fight this. We are perceived as cowards. It's not an incorrect perception. Some other samples of cowardice Matt Gertz from Media Matters for America, the guy who always gets the angry missives
directed towards Matt Gates. My Hunter Biden take is that if you make your whole stick the other guys put themselves above the country, undermine the rule of law, and lie constantly, then you need to have a much higher standard for yourself than pardoning your son after saying you wouldn't. It's Gavin Newsome getting caught at French laundry, just an obvious example of not honoring the standard you said people
should follow when it affects you personally, that's idiotic. If you vow you are not going to use a gun against the people who are running after you on the streets, pursuing you by foot, on the street, and then they double their speed and their threats, and instead of running, they get into tanks. You are allowed to change your mind and use your gun up on the high horse, Matt Gertz, you still don't see the difference between corruption
and self defense. Shame on you. Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic, formerly of New York Magazine, which we now understand to have been one of the great fraudulent operations of our time politically now writes with this headline Biden's unpardonable hypocrisy. The President vowed not to pardon his son Hunter and
then did so anyway. Charlie Sykes, an ex Republican supposed non Trumper smart person, texts me Joe Biden has just removed the issue of pardons from the political arena for the next four years, and Trump probably once again camp leave his own dumb effing luck at this point. Sadly, I think he's right. Well, I got the word sadly
right in there. Yeah, Because Charlie Sykes, you and the other writers made sure that Trump's pardons, including pardoning his son in law's father for having hired a prostitute to help him blackmail his brother in law, so he wouldn't go to the authorities about the crimes, blackmail his brother in law with a sex tape of his brother in law, a tape he showed his own sister that of course, was front of mind in the twenty twenty four election.
Oh that's right. Nobody mentioned it until Trump just appointed this scumbag who he then pardoned as envoy to the Middle East, the Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, who just last week had been sucking up to RFK Junior to side show Bob about vaccines. While as a father, I certainly understand President Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put
his family ahead of the country. This is a bad president that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become president, your role is pater familius of the nation. Anyway, I'm going to interrupt a note that anybody who uses the phrase pater familius non ironically is trying to pretend that he's smart
when he's not. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a president and not a president's son. Jared, that ship sailed. Everybody in trump Land is now above the law. In fact, there is no more law. Maybe you missed it while you were busily sucking up to RFK Junior about vaccines. If the governor will not resign, mister Polish should be
expelled from the Democratic Party. We have enough cowards, two more that border on the hilarious Nate Silver. You can always depend on Nate. He'll always let you down. I discussed here how I voted for Harris despite feeling like Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters were rational to publish. He meant punish. But Nate has a little problem publish after the White House lying about the Hunter pardon. I'm not sure how much more I
can tolerate. Move to Brazil. Don't vote, he says, don't vote for any Democrat in twenty twenty eight who doesn't repudiate the pardon within forty eight hours. Nate forgets that, thanks in part to his previous attempts to pinocchio himself from his real form a calculator with bad haircut into an actual living boy. We may not have any elections in twenty twenty eight in which to not vote for any Democrat who doesn't repudiate the Hunter pardon because of
all that bad democratic behavior. Oh yeah, Attila, the hunt is over here, and over here is somebody who changed his mind about pardoning his own son. I think we should give Attila another chance. And lastly, not a liberal obviously, but I like to try to give you something to laugh at it the way out. Also not a liberal and not a smart person, just plain old Denesh Desuza. He retweeted my insistence that Biden should give out ten million more pardons and then added, Olberman proves once again
he is the reductio ad absurdum of the left. The punchline to this, of course, is that convicted of vice relations of campaign law, Denesh Desuza was sentenced to eight months in a criminal halfway house, but then on May thirty first, twenty eighteen, he was pardoned by Donald Trump.
By the bye, Desuz's all time great moment of self unawareness about pardons yesterday came on the same day he had to retract under thread of lawsuit, the entire propaganda movie two Thousand Mules, which, to my great surprise, two thousand Mules that turned out not to be about his love life. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Follow me for the podcast promos on Blue Sky YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, threads, and
Tuba Gram. Bryan Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical directors have Countdown arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and mister Ray, of course, was on guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments. You're by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music, although there wasn't any in this edition, is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. That's Countdown for Today, an abbreviated edition, but an extra one just and twelve days until the scheduled end of the Lane Duck presidency of Trump. The next scheduled Countdown is Thursday. As always, as this evidence is, bulletins is the news warrants. Until
next time, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.