I think in life, it's very easy to do things halfway, to take half measures or half steps, and not do the difficult thing, which is to see something through thoroughly and completely. And I think politics it's often difficult to do the smart thing completely because you're doing dealing with human beings who have their intrench little interests, and it's the art of compromise. You're dealing with a family who benefits from Joe Biden being in office, who kind of control,
they sort of hold the key to the whole thing. Everyone realized Biden staying on in the presidential campaign would be disastrous, that Donald Trump would clean the clean his clock. But clearly the Bidens didn't want to move out. They didn't want to stop campaigning. They wanted to keep going. Clearly, that's what Jill wants. Clearly, that's what Hunter wants. What does Joe want? Who knows? Maybe Joe, in whatever lucid moments he has,
he still wants to keep going. But all these Democrat power brokers, they don't want this to continue. And eventually, I think that the decisive thing was the money. The donors communicating through their key representative, who is Nancy Pelosi, basically just let Biden know, if you don't drop out, we're done giving any money whatsoever. So you're going to drop out otherwise this whole election will be a wipeout, not just for you but for everybody. That
I think was enough to get President Biden to drop out. And Ron Klaine, his former chief of staff, actually fairly bitterly tweeted about this and explicitly blamed the donors for forcing Biden's hand here, but it's still being done. I thinking kind of a half completed, half rear ended fashion. You know the word I'm trying to say. But I'm a little concerned about FCC stuff half but half butted fashion. What do I mean a half butted fashion?
Why is this half done? Well? First of all, what would Republicans actually really fear? Let's be real here, in spite of Donald Trumping, you know, I think Republicans kind of have lost sight of this. Yes, Donald Trump has had a pretty awesome month for him. He the first part of his speech at the convention was pretty good. I don't know why he included the second forty five minutes of his speech, which was kind of long and rambling, But the first forty five minutes were great. Would have
been great if he just stopped there. Stop stop at the first twenty five minutes. Why we needed the longest convention speech in American history. Anyway, the start of his convention speech was undoubtedly great. The whole Republican convention seemed incredibly unified, incredibly positive. It's going to give the party a big bump.
Trump's actions and way his resilience following the assassination attempt, the destruct the self destruction of Joe Biden during the debate and in subsequent appearances, I think Republicans have lost sight of the fact that President Trump still remains fairly unpopular.
Okay, President Trump's favorability rating has never been higher than his unfavorability rating, and there are a lot of Americans who still don't really like him, and that a lot of the sentiment around a Biden Trump pairing was that basically the election was going to go to whichever way the I don't like either candidate crowd broke. So there's a crowd of people who are the I don't like either
candidate crowd. And Donald Trump won that vote in twenty sixteen, and Joe Biden won that vote in twenty twenty and it was looking like Trump was going to win that vote in twenty twenty four. So Biden. Trump still has his liabilities. Okay, he's still in various wa He is deeply unpopular, and I think a Democrat candidate who was a genuine fresh face who could project as being genuinely moderate and likable, like, for example, the governor of
Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. I mean I haven't had much in a much intervention interaction or read much or understood much about Josh Shapiro, but seeing him speaking during he had a press conference after Trump's assassination attempt, he seemed incredibly impressive. He was effusive in his praise of the the firefighter who was killed, mister comparatory who was killed during the Trump rally. He was incredibly bipartisan and
seemed like an incredibly impressive dude. There are other candidates who are sort of fresher basis on the national scene, Andy Basheer, the governor of Kentucky. There are a lot of people who could present a very fresh face for the Democrats and thereby I think be really threatening to Trump. I think if you present the country with someone who is not in their seventies and is a fresh face and seems fairly likable and bipartisan. I think they could mop the floor
with Donald Trump. But what have they done instead? Half measures? And the half measure that seems to be happening is twofold one is seemingly the Democrat powers. Then that be seem to be coalescing around handing Kamala Harris the nomination. That seems to me to be a bad idea. No, why are they doing that? Well, remember who was driving this process? It was the donors. Okay, the donors clearly went to Joe Biden and said, we're cutting off the money. And who has always been the darling of the
donor class, Kamala Harris. Why was Kamala Harris on the Biden Harris ticket in the first place? Why did Joe pick her in twenty twenty? It never made any sense. Harris completely flamed out during the twenty twenty primaries. She didn't even make it to twenty twenty. She had to drop, She had to end her campaign months before the Iowa caucuses. She ended her campaign in twenty nineteen, in spite of all the money she had, In spite
of all the juice her campaign had. She immediately demonstrated herself in the debates to be a lightweight. She was absolutely skewered and roasted alive by Tulci Gabbard.
She was unlikable. She didn't come off as particularly bright. Her past record as basically was able to be tarred and feathered for her record as Attorney General of California and as attorney general as a district attorney in San Francisco as being both too harsh on crime for liberals locking up lots of African American men who were, you know, drug use offenders, but then also could be tarred and feathered as being too liberal on crime, supporting Prop forty seven,
et cetera. Also, during the twenty twenty primary process, she basically called Joe Biden a racist to his face. She had no history of working with Joe Biden. No, they did not overlap in government at all. She entered the Senate after Joe Biden left as Vice President. They didn't serve in the Senate together. They didn't serve in the Obama administration together. Biden had no history with her, so why did he pick her? It's because Democrat
money power is centered in San Francisco. National Democrat financial power is centered in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And those are the relationships that Kamala Harris had via Willie Brown, via her various campaigns in California. Like Kamala Harris is very similar to Gavin Newsom. Just as far as who is their power base, who is their base of money support, it's all these same people, the Getty family, these old money San Francisco people and newer money Silicon Valley
people. That is the base of Democrat power. Why was Nancy Pelosi the leader of the Democrats in the House, Cause I guess what does Nancy Pelosi represent? What district does she represent? Right the heart of San Francisco. That's her district. And she had the connection with all these people. And that's why she not Hakeem Jeffries. She was the main messenger, not even Chuck Schumer. She was the main actor in getting Joe Biden to step out
of the campaign. So the Democrats instead of having an open primary at their convention and an open convention process where a bunch of people are going to get nominated and the convention delegates can maybe go back to their states and take straw polls and figure out who it is that their people want. Instead, it
looks like we're clear, we're parting the red seas for Kamala Harris. And I gotta say, if I'm sitting in Trump's seat and I'm looking at the landscape of potential Democrat challengers, the one I am least worried about is Kamala Harris. But that's the half done approach, that's the half rear ended approach is just make Kamala the heir apparent. The donor class is comfortable with her, They kind of like her, and they know that it doesn't offend the
sensibilities of race and sex obsessed Democrats. Because there's also this problem if Harris isn't the nominee, and you nominate let's say, Mark Kelly from Arizona, Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, Andy Basheer from Kentucky, even Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan. You pass over a black woman for either a white guy or, in Whitmer's case, a white woman. Oh, that's not going to go well with a lot of the Democrat voting days. There are a lot of Democrats
who would get pretty angry upset about that. Now, maybe they'd get over it. They got over it with Biden clearly, when Biden beat out a field of or you know, even Pete Boudagig throw him in there. I guess Bootajige just got his his intersectionality minority thing because he's gay. But if you pass up Kamala Harris for say, Josh Shapiro, some Democrat activists might
get mad. But guess what, that's a guy who could I hate saying guess what because I realized that's a verbal tick that Joe Biden uses to cover up his sinility. If Josh Shapiro, if Josh Shapiro is the pick, yeah, that might offend a couple of super fringe extremists Democrats, but they'll get over it quickly. So what have they done. They've done the easy thing. But even in doing the easy thing, they've taken the easy way out. When we return, why Biden should resign not just for the good
of the country, but even like for smart campaigning purposes. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I think the Democrat decision to go to Kamala Harris, while a step, was a half measure, and that there is half
measures upon half measures. The first half measure is not having an open convention process and nominating genuinely the strongest person, because I think I would say, from my position as Republican, I would be much more afraid of a Pete Boodagi presidential campaign, a Josh Shapiro presidential campaign, a Mark Kelly presidential campaign,
a Gretchen Whitmer presidential campaign, and Andy Basheer presidential campaign. Then I would a Kamala Harris presidential campaign out of all of the options Democrats, even a Gavin Newsom presidential campaign would be scarier. Out of all the options, Kamala Harris seems to be the weakest one. And yet what is happening. All these big time Democrats are all endorsing her, The sees are parting. Pretty much everyone and their mother, starting with Joe Biden, has come out
saying we're endorsing Kamala. We're endorsing Kamala. We're endorsing Kamala. And I highly suspect that the machinery of the DNC is going to make sure that Kamala
wins at the convention. So I think there's this half measure of not having a genuinely open process because guess what, not only is Kamala maybe the weakest candidate out of all of them, she has all of the negatives of the Biden iministration's, you know, policy failures placed on her, plus her own unique special brands of being awful like her both, she could be both tarred and feathered, both as being too harsh on criminal justice matters for liberals and
too lenient having supported Prop forty seven. But the other half measure I see to this is and this is a half measure that's the result of the Biden's own self absorption and pride. Is this kind of preposterous position for which Harris is going to be held responsible just as much as Biden, that Biden continues to be president, that he's not stepping down as president along with stepping down
from the campaign, Biden's staying in office. So he's saying that he doesn't think he can keep well, he's just he said he's stepping down from campaigning, but for some reason, not from running the country. And I think
that's also gonna kind of hamstring Harris. I mean, look, the best way a Kamala Harris for President campaign twenty twenty four could kick off would be Biden resigning the office, and then Harris being able to have all the pomp and circumstance and free television coverage that comes with a legitimately newsworthy and historic thing her inauguration. She would have an inauguration. There would be a whole day
of news coverage for the inauguration of our first female president. Like, if the Democrats are really like, all right, Kamala is our girl, then do it right? Have Biden resign, Let her be sworn in as the forty seventh president of the United States, the first African American female, the first female president of the United States, and the first African American female president of the United States. Have a whole day of positive press around it.
That's the way to kick it off. She gets the the you know, the honeymoon phase bump that all new presidents get. What a positive way to get her started. And then at the very least she can say, look, once it became apparent the President Biden's age was unsustainable, was an unsustainable you know problem, he did the right thing to resign and I became president. Well, now what do we have now? She's got to answer questions of was how long was Biden senile? And you didn't tell the American people?
Why is President Biden still serving? Now? Can you, as vice president tell us with a straight face that Joe Biden is with it enough to be the leader of the free world, the president of the United States of America? Can you say that with a straight face right now? I don't think she'll be able to, or certainly not very convincingly. That problem,
the Biden senility problem, doesn't go away. If she's the nominee, she still kind of has to answer for it, and she kind of has to answer for lying to the American people because, I mean, she's on the record saying that Joe Biden's great, Joe Biden's awesome. Even after the debate, I mean, she had to say sort of positive sounding things about him, Like how is she gonna be able to answer of this? That that
issue does not go away? It goes away if he quits. It goes away if he resigns his office and she becomes president, and then she can more credibly say anyway, Look, once it became clear that he couldn't do the job, a bunch of Democrats came together. I was part of that process. We convinced him to step down. I'm very proud of him for stepping down. This was not an easy decision for him to make, but you know, everyone agreed it was, you know, and now I'm the
President of the United States, and I think Joe Biden. But she could get she could skate by in that way, she can't as long as he's still there. She still has to answer for all that. So it's it just seems to me like Democrats have taken half measures upon half measures upon half measures, and now maybe you know, you know, maybe tomorrow, uh, maybe tomorrow Joe Biden announces a whole bunch of pardons, he pardons Hunter, and then he steps down. Maybe he does that. I mean,
he could resolve it. But it seems very much like there's some Biden family arrogance at play here, that there's some Biden family arrogance at play here, that they don't want him to resign halfway, they want him to go out on his own terms, and that it seems like we're doing all of this, the Democrats are having to do all this to placate Joe Biden, and it's a bad strategy. It's going to hamper Harris. But again, in all of this, I see half measures. I see having this coronation process
for Harris without an open convention process. That seems like a bad idea, given that Harris, I think, seems like the absolute weakest candidate. Maybe there are some stories about the money that the money is most easily and freely transferred to Harris rather than other candidates, although I think even that's overstated. If another candidate became the Democrats' presidential nominee, then all the Biden Harris money could go to the Democrat Party or other places. Like I think it's a
manageable situation. So not having an open convention process, Democrats are going to land on the worst candidate possible of who's available, which is Harris. Budhagig would be a better candidate, Shapiro would be a better candidate, Mark Kelly would be a better candidate. Gretgen Whitmer would be a better candidate. All these other Democrats would be better candidates probably than Harris. And we have the half measure that Biden's also not stepping down. If Biden stepped down, he
would eliminate a bunch of problems for Harris. He would give Harris a massive bump as being now the first female president, but he's not doing that either. So I think if you're Trump, I'm not super worried. The only thing that could worry me is maybe a really effective VP choice. But even
then I think vice presidential choices are generally overrated. When we return the Bizarre Case of the Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and why no One in Washington never gets fired next on The John Girardi Show, The Curious Case of Kimberly Cheatle.
Now the head of the Secret Service is testifying, was testifying today in front of the House for Representatives, and she's basically trying to answer these Republican questions and not really answering them, not really answering them very well at all. You've got her sort of being mealy mouthed to Jim Jordan as he is as he's asking about why did you say that you didn't deny any security requests to the Trump team, but then it seems like you did. Why haven't
you stepped down? What's all this? There's question after question after question that remains unanswered, and she is still there. The one of the points I've been saying on the show, is this idea of like, well, well it was it really the Secret Service's fault that this happened. Stop. This
is sort of a resp Lockwitter situation. Requitter is this legal concept that basically, if you're walking down the street and a piano falls on you, and your widow sues the moving company who was moving the piano for negligence, you know, for negligent death, wrongful death due to negligence, whatever, and the judge says, well, ma'am, do you have any proof that the moving company was negligent. Yeah, the piano dropping itself. The thing speaks
for itself. Pianos don't drop unless someone doesn't take the appropriate amount of care that they should take, because you know the kind of bad thing that can happen if you drop a piano and you didn't take the necessary steps to move it. Pianos don't drop absent negligence. Secret Service protectees a former president who's also the leading candidate for president. They don't get assassinated unless the Secret Service
screws up. I think that's fair to say. Would you agree if Donald Trump's head had been positioned like one centimeter further to his I don't know. If his head had been positioned just one centimeter different, we'd be talking about dead Donald Trump. And obviously the Secret Service director would have been fire or maybe maybe that's not obvious anymore. I don't know, but you would imagine that heads would have to roll at the Secret Service if the assassination attempt was
one centimeter better executed. Now instead, for some reason, she keeps her job. For some reason, we get a whole bunch of tweets that come out suspiciously right after the assassination about oh, oh, here's all the ways in which the Secret Service wasn't at fault. We get these implausible explanations about well, or snipers couldn't have been on that roof because it was so slopy.
It was a very sloped roof when it's not a very sloped roof, and they had snipers on other buildings that seem to have equally sloped roofs. I have regaled all of you listeners with the story of how I went on my own roof for the far less important test and with far less gear, like a pair of sneakers I slipped on while I'm in my pajamas to chase my neighbor's cat off the roof. After my neighbors came and said, our
cat is stuck on your roof, could you help us? And all right, get out my ladder, and I'm on my roof, and my roof is actually decently sloped, more far more sloped than that building in Pennsylvania.
So here I am kind of like trying not to kill myself, and the cat keeps running from one side of the house over the top sort of ridge of the house to the other side of the house, and I'm having to kind of scramble up and down, up and down, trying to shepherd this cat to a corner where finally the cat got to a corner where it could jump onto a fence and then it came down. So I'm willing to do
that in sneakers and pajamas at nine o'clock at night. The Secret Service, I think has a little bit more gear for handling the situation, like what an implausible thing that was. But it seems like the Biden administration has taken on this sort of attitude of federal employees are sacro sanct and it's almost like there's this understanding among Democrats that federal employees, including federal employees who are who are not in political appointee jobs. So I mean the head of the Secret
Service, it's not a super politicized appointment. I mean, yeah, the president can appoint the replacement, but I don't think it's been a thing of like as soon as a Republican comes in, they appoint a Republican head of the Secret Service. It's just not a very political entity. I mean, it's kind of like the head of the FBI. You've often seen like a Republican president will hold over, you know, a Democrat appointee as head of the FBI or vice versa. Well, the Secret Service is, if anything,
one step less politicized even than the FBI is. It's you know, it has a very straightforward job protect the president, protect former presidents, protect the vice president, protect their families, and then leading candidates for the presidency. They also get Secret Service detail. It's a protection job. But I get the sense that the Democrats have taken this posture of we know that like eighty to ninety percent of all federal employees, even the non partisan ones,
are Democrats, and that is true. I mean the overwhelming percentage of the DC based employees of the federal government, whether that's DoD and that includes DoD, Pentagon people, CIO people, Intelligence Community, all these and all the federal executive agencies, all these different people who work at HHS, people who work for the National Institutes of Health, all these people up and down the executive branch of government, all these career appointees, Democrats. Know that they're
all Democrats, or that eighty plus percent of them are. They know this. So as a result, it seems like when bad things happen that are under the auspices of the federal government, there's almost this knee jerk reaction not
to hold them responsible. We have our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, where thirteen soldiers were killed in Kabul because of the bizarre way that the Biden administration decided to get us out where the only place we had for getting out was this one base in heart of Kabble, surrounded by Taliban, Thirteen of our soldiers die. The manner of doing this was obviously bizarre, irresponsible. Does anyone get fired. No, Mark Milli doesn't get fired, The Secretary of Defense
doesn't get fired. Nobody gets fired. Everyone sort of issues little tweets or gets people to send out little tweets saying that this, that and the other half. It's all fine. No one gets fired. Secretary Majorcus doesn't get fired for anything bad that happens at the border Patrol. Nobody gets fired for sorry. Secretary Majorcus doesn't get fired for anything bad that happens at the border. No one involved with the American Federal Immigration Apparatus gets in trouble for anything
wrong going on at the border. Secretary Mariorcus keeps his job. Everyone's just doing fine. There's this entrenched sense of not only are we not holding people
accountable, but screw you for even asking. The one thing that came out from the Secret Service that was clear and strident and that they clearly focused a lot of time on was a big, long statement last couple of days from Secretary Majorcus ripping people for criticizing the presence of female agents in the security detail around President Trump, and how terrible it is to slander the good work of female agents for the Secret Service. That's the only thing they care about.
It's defending these people who you know, I'm not saying it's it was the fault of any one individual agent on the ground at that Trump rally that day, but clearly some of the people there. I think there was some indication that some of the people in the security detail were not trained Secret Service agents, that they were Department of Homeland Security people who were pulled in. But it was clear just seeing the video that some of the people signed to protect
President Trump were fairly small, unathletic looking women. I'm sorry, but I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation for this. The job of this group is to protect their target, to protect their assignment from physical harm. I want big six foot three inch tall killers. I want former US Marines or Army rangers or Navy seals. I don't want a five foot two overweight woman who as I'm sure she's a lovely person and works really hard and is very accomplished.
Nothing against her, but I don't want a chubby five foot two women protecting any I don't want a chubby five foot two women protecting President Clinton or President Carter, or protect President Obama. I want. I don't want any American presidents or former presidents getting assassinated. I want big, tall bruisers who look like they can rip you in half. I want like former MMA fighters, like MMA fighters who got fourteen hundred on their SAT. That's what I
want. But there I think there's just this sense in Washington that federal employees are mostly liberals, so we don't fire them. And there's also all this reporting about the head of the Secret Service, miss Cheatle, herself, Kimberly Cheatle, she had been a Secret Service agent before, and whose detail was
she assigned to? To, whose detail was she assigned, why she was assigned to the detail of the second Lady, Jill Biden, and that Jill pushed for her to be made the head of the SAD Service when Joe became president. So it seems to me like there's this bizarre sort of favoritism sort of involved here, and that's the reason why Joe. Joe just doesn't fire people. He just doesn't. But maybe, you know, not everything's firing
on all cylinders for him himself. Obviously that's the case. When we return, could we have some proof of life for the guy who's allegedly currently the president of the United States. Next on the John Girardi Show, a couple
of questions about Joe Biden not being the nominee anymore so. Joe Biden announces that he's not the nominee on Twitter slash x. Not in a press release, not in a press conference, not a statement to the press, not in person, not in an address to the nation, on Twitter, on Twitter, with a pdf of a letter that's not even on official White House letterhead. No one has seen the president, nobody has heard from the president.
The announcement takes White House staff completely by surprise. The Cabinet Secretary's even only heard about it via the President's chief of staff, not even from the president. So this means maybe one of two things. One is that Biden is a he continues to be a jerk. Biden has always been a jerk. And I'm not saying that in a sense of, you know, I'm a Democrat, he's a Republican. He's been notorious for not actually being all
that nice a person. Okay, there's plenty of story and history about Biden being sort of this political and personal mediocre who has been a jerk to people in a lot of different ways. Maybe he's just being a jerk, but there's also I think the distinct problem of could we maybe have some proof of life here, like, did he given the concerns for why people thought he should step down? Could we not see an image of him offering this stepping
down from the campaign. Could we not see that he himself is doing it? And lastly, there's this after Biden makes this announcement, there's all this talk about, oh, how selfless it is, how selfless it is that Joe Biden stepped down from power. The ERLC, which is sort of the public policy representatives for the Southern Baptist Convention, is you this tweet about, Wow, it's really impressive to see political leaders stepping down from power voluntarily.
What an amazing Christian move this is by Joe Biden. To what I'm saying, he was dragged out of power, kicking and screaming. The only reason he's stepping down is because the donors clearly explicitly told him. All the reporting we have indicates the only reason he's stepping down from running and not resigning the presidency, which if you're doing one, you probably should do the other.
The only reason he's doing so is because the donors said, we're not giving you a dime of money, and the whole Democrat ship is going to go down with you if you don't step down. It wasn't some selfless act of giving. Yeah, oh my child, when I rip the lollipop from her hands as she's shrieking in the aisle, she selflessly gave up candy for that night. No, this wasn't some selfless act. He was forced to do
it by the realities of campaign money. That'll do it for John Girardi Show, See you all next time on Power Talk.