BIDEN SOTU: I'LL HAVE WHAT HE'S HAVING - 3.8.24

SERIES 2 EPISODE 137: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For everybody who doubted the Biden Campaign vision of last night's State of the Union as some sort of seminal re-set moment (like me): we were wrong. Biden's first seven minutes were not only the best public seven minutes of his life but they comprised one of the greatest openings to a SOTU in the nation's history.

He not only dispelled any notion that he is no longer up to the challenge in any way, shape, or form, but he kicked Trump's teeth down his throat (and the teeth of MAGA and the GOP with them). Speaking forcefully, rapidly, confidently, and just this side of angrily, he hit them before they realized the fight had started: on Ukraine, on Putin, on January 6, on J6 Denial, and on every major issue.

If it had been a fight it would've been stopped at seven minutes with Biden's hand raised by the ref. But he went on for a total of 68 minutes and continued to score on every issue. Before the speech only 45% in a CNN poll thought Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction. After it the number hadn't just blown up it had gone nuclear: 62%

I devote this entire episode of the podcast to analyzing the speech and its impact and the impacts still to come, summarized by plagiarizing that line from "When Harry Met Sally." I WILL have what he's having.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'll
have what He's having. President Biden spoke for one hour

(00:27):
and eight minutes. And if there are any questions left
about his viability as a presidential candidate or as a president,
or about his stamina or his witness, or any other
questions that have been raised by the Republican plot, the
Republican Biden age plot, they were dispelled. I am his
junior by seventeen years, and I could not possibly talk

(00:50):
uninterrupted for an hour and eight minutes, despite my reputation,
and despite my attempt to do that tonight. Thank you
for joining us here live from Iheartworld headquarters in New York.
This is our special Down with Keith Olverman podcast postgame
show after one of the more remarkable States of the
Union addresses in the history of this nation. The first

(01:14):
seven minutes of this State of the Union were not
just as powerful as President Biden, or before him, Vice
President Biden, or before him Senator Biden has ever spoken.
It was perhaps as powerful and as forceful and as
determined as any first seven minutes in the history of
any State of the Union address. Ever, I was not

(01:36):
expecting what he did. He came out punching, forceful, strong voice.
He threw boiling oil on Maga, on Trump, on the Republicans,
without ever mentioning a name. He segued from Maga's interference
with the defense of Ukraine and the value of Ukraine
to our defense here directly into the questions about what

(01:59):
they were saying and telling their own people about January sixth.
This was all Delver in an extraordinarily forceful voice. He
was not quite yelling, he was not quite speeding through
the script. He hid it pitch perfect, especially for the
first seven minutes, but realistically through the entirety of a

(02:19):
sixty eight minute address. There was only one interruption from
some protester in the gallery who made some shrill sounds
that were barely intelligible that threw him off late in
the speech. But they certainly did not get time any
of the Republicans in the audience to make any point
of any note in terms of audio, in terms of
what the viewers at home saw, And that was largely

(02:42):
because Joe Biden never took a breath. So I think
that if this was as the White House was expecting
and hoping, and I will confess to having doubted that
this was possible. If this was the reset moment at
which he could immediately refute all questions about whether or
not he had the stamina to be president for another
four years, he did, so one would hope he does

(03:04):
take breath sometime in the next four years. I wanted
to interrupt one thing about this, but I did want
to say that if it had been a fight, they
would have stopped it after seven minutes. The subject of
Joe Biden speaking in public is a very nuanced one,
and it's one that I have some immediate experience with
and personal experience with. And if you are a listener
to the podcast, you know I've told this story several

(03:26):
times on it since we debuted in August of twenty
twenty two, and I've told it in other venues. I
once told it during an interview on MSNBC with then
candidate for the vice presidency Joe Biden. In two thousand
and seven. I got a phone call from his press
secretary asking me to have lunch with the Senator the
next time he was in New York, and I asked
if this was about policy, because in my naive way,

(03:49):
I didn't think people who were on television are being
political pundits or even anchors, should ever consult with candidates about,
you know, policy? This makes me kind of naive in
terms of what's going on at the present moment of
both on the liberal and on the conservative sides of things.
But I was told by the Press secretary, no, this
was not what we were talking about. He just wanted
to talk to me about public speaking. So we sat

(04:10):
down at a restaurant that is in fact not far
from here, and he was a delightful immediate visitor and
part of my life. He worked right in, told me
about watching my sports career and totally remembered meeting me
in a hotel in Los Angeles in two thousand during
the convention there. And then he got right to the point,
which was he said, you and your commentaries. Every time

(04:32):
you do a commentary, I get one hundred emails the
next day from my constituents, from my staffers saying, listen
to this guy and his righteous indignation. He hits it
just right. He said, Then when I go on to
the Senate and say angry things and say things with
righteous indignation, I get one hundred emails from my own
staff saying, you seem crazy. How do you do it, man,

(04:54):
How do you not seem crazy but you seem righteously indignant?
I said, I hadn't really given it any thought, but
I'd be happy to help. But I had a question
for him first, which was, you've been in the Senate
since nineteen seventy three and this is the first time
you've asked this question. Well, the words are no sooner
out of my mouth before, I said to myself internally,
only that's not some friend of yours there, that's a politician.

(05:17):
He's going to get up and leave the dinner of
the lunch now and perhaps hit you on the way
out instead. Joe Biden did this. Many laughed, He uproariously laughed,
and he said, that is so funny, and that is
so true. And then we went about the issue of
analyzing how to be angry, how to speak forcefully, and
yet how not to seem, for want of a better term, crazy.

(05:40):
I do not think, and I'm mentioning this only because
it is a slight bit of personal insight into the man.
I do not think that the lunch that we had
in two thousand and seven had anything to do with
what you watched tonight in the State of the Union. However,
if we were to have lunch again about the subject
of speaking in public, the person who would be asking
all the questions would be me, and the person who

(06:00):
would be giving all the advice would be Joe Biden.
That's how forceful I thought he was tonight. Let's go
through a resume of what we heard here, at least
some of the highlights. Play you a few of the clips,
and then give you some of the context, including something
I've been teasing all day about a new poll from Emerson,
a very respected pulling operation out of Massachusetts that really

(06:20):
does cast the presidential campaign in an utterly different light
and in fact puts President Biden ahead in the campaign
polling that they have done. And we get to that
and other things too, and I will take some of
your questions off the rapidly accelerating feed here, but let's
go through a few more of these things. His only flaw,
to my point of view, was the opening joke, if

(06:43):
I were smart, I'd go home now. And then he
proceeded to knock the hell out of Donald Trump and
the Republicans for as I said, seven minutes in perfect
form and a one hour and eight minutes in total.
He listed his achievements, he discussed and got a standing
ovation for the political power of women and the fact
that the Republicans were soon going to find out just

(07:04):
how powerful it was. Just again, he went through the
plans for the next four years as a president. Mortgage
price cuts, drug price cuts, education that would extend to
pre school for all reading by the third grade for
every student in America, lowering the cost of college, and
reinstating the child tax credits. There was one motif that

(07:29):
continued throughout the first half of the speech, certainly, and
then I think that the man in question noticed he
was doing it. If you looked over to the right
side of the screen, over President Biden's left shoulder as
he gave this address, you saw the man who is,
for the moment anyway, the latest speaker of the House,
their fifth string choice, Mike Johnson, who sat there and

(07:51):
at least for the first half of that speech, did
this as if he were fighting himself. And then I
think he sort of tapered off towards the end when
he realized that people were probably able to see him
doing that. Again. I don't know that it's going to
matter much in the long term, or certainly not in
terms of the campaign, insomuch as they'll probably have another

(08:14):
speaker before the end of the year, and certainly before
the election. There was one attempt to interrupt this speech
by who else but the worst mannered American, Marjorie Taylor Green,
who wore, in violation of House rules, a campaign insignia
a maga hat, tried to bait the president on the
walk in apparently did not succeed based on the laughter

(08:37):
of those others around her during that walk, and then
tried to shout the president down on the issue of
the border bill, in fact, as she shrieked in a
complete surprise, which I'm sure will put off a lot
of those on the far left, and I do consider
myself on the far left. The name of Lake and Riley,
the murder victim of an undocumented immigrant, was not just

(09:02):
invoked by President Biden, but he produced a button with
Lacan Riley's name on it from under the podium. The
value of this in terms of strategy and in terms
of policy for the year ahead, for resolving the issue
at the border, for installing some form of chaos under
benign and humane leadership rather than letting the situation rot

(09:26):
and get worse and worse and not be addressed in
any fashion until January of next year. That can be debated,
but I would rather have it in the hands of
humane people who could take the advantage of a bipartisan
operation to install humane systems at the border that would
in fact reinstate something in terms of organization. And the

(09:48):
pulling of the lacan Riley button almost produced an audible
sound of air going out of MAGA balloons nationwide. They
said he wouldn't even mention his name. He had the
button handing, and then he went right back to the
actual point of the thing. We all came from somewhere.
The President said, we can fight about the border, or

(10:09):
we can fix it. I'm ready to fix it. Send
me the border bill now. And he in fact invited
once again, as he has previously in videos and in
social media, he invited the former president. Since he didn't
name him, I don't have to name him either, do I.
He invited him to work with him to encourage Congress
to pass and send the bill to the President for

(10:30):
his signature. He went on to urge once again and
to insist he would once more ban assault weapons. He
then took on the Israel Hamas situation. It is a tightrope,
it showed. Anybody walking over it will have to maintain
their balance. He made it to the other side, and
he introduced what we knew in advance. He would the
news that had been leaked, because obviously they wanted an

(10:53):
international headline. And for all the talk of Israel and
Hamas in this country, the story remains in the international media.
In other countries it remains covered probably four or five
times as much as it is here. He brought up
this subject of a humanitarian peer through which to Gaza
humanitarian aid can be delivered under the auspices of, but

(11:14):
not involving any actual US military personnel. And then he
moved towards his conclusion. When he talked about his heroes
and what brought him into politics and what maintained his
vision for the future, he invoked the name of Martin
Luther King Junior. Not certainly a surprise, not a rarity

(11:34):
in American politics, not a rarity for the State of
the Union address. We are now hearing of Martin Luther
King the way previous generations of politicians used to invoke
Thomas Jefferson. Whatever it is you believe in, you simply
say that Thomas Jefferson used to believe it too. Now
you say it about Martin Luther King. But he also
brought up, and I thought it was an extraordinarily a

(11:55):
droit move just for the reference, he brought up Robert F.
Kennedy Senior, and thus, without ever having to mention him,
brought up the rogue candidacy, the stalking horse candidacy of
the unfortunate Bobby Kennedy Junior, who is there, as you know,
as a stalking horse on behalf of Trump to draw
votes away from Joe Biden. And again, if I may

(12:17):
interject a truly personal note, Bobby Kennedy Junior was, before
his deterioration of the last decade, a friend of mine.
I knew him only marginally. I knew him because of
his work on the Hudson River near my home where
I grew up, and I had admired him for that,
and he had admired me for my commentaries, and he
had said at one point that I was his hero.
And I now regret what has happened to him more

(12:39):
than almost anything I have seen in the political landscape
in this country in the last twenty years. But now
Joe Biden introduced Bobby Kennedy Senior and what he stood for,
simply by the simplest of references. And that is one
thing that I would want to say. In an overall
assessment of this, there was almost nothing that was too

(12:59):
long and almost nothing that was too short. Joe Biden
hit all the points, and as I said, he I
went through them at railroad train's speed, at high speed
rail speed, and yet each time you were not left
thinking he's gone on too long about this particular topic.
He's gone on too briefly. He skipped through this. He
made a laundry list. One of the great fears was

(13:21):
that Joe Biden, who has a history of the proverbialistical,
would go into a simple list of accomplishments and not
tell any story. There were several themes and threads throughout
the entirety of this, and I think he expressed it
continuously and it built to what was all these things
tied together. I have a list of ten things that
I asked myself before this speech about whether or not

(13:44):
he would do these things and what would happen if
he did. He tied them together. Thusly in my career,
I've been told I'm too young, I've been told I'm
too old. Whether young or old, I've always known what
endures our north star, the very idea of America that
we are all created equal thing, tied in together, including

(14:06):
without ever referencing the opponent, that the Republicans are still
maddeningly likely to introduce once again inject into our bloodstream
like poison. To borrow somebody's phrase. He invoked him, he
bashed him, He made jokes about his own age, and
he again, as he has always done, dating back to

(14:27):
his earliest speeches in the Senate, including the ones that
his staffers would send him emails and say you sounded crazy,
he always tried to bring us back to the point
of America. There are very few, I think romantics about
this nation left, and Joe Biden happens to be one
of them. And we are fortunate, and I think that
we happen to have a romantic about the United States.
As President of the United States, we are all developing

(14:50):
and developing more rapidly as each year goes by. A
cynicism about this country and what can happen to it
under pressure, and what can happen to the guardrails that
we have depended upon for all of our lives, which
it proved to have been made out of paper machet.
Joe Biden still believes in all of those things, and
I think he managed to express every one of them
in great detail and at great speed. And again, can

(15:14):
you believe that the entirety of this speech was considered
to be simply a referendum on whether or not Joe
Biden would fall into the orchestra pit? When did that
get erased? When did he accomplish that seven minutes in?
When did he erase fifteen minutes in? How long did
the speech seem to you when you look down and
saw that you'd been watching for half an hour? I'll

(15:34):
say it again, I like my ability to talk. I
have made a lot of money off of it since
I was about sixteen years old. I couldn't do what
he just did. Let me go through some of my
own checklists here to give you something more substantial than
simply a recap, and then we will hear again some
of what Joe Biden said, so that I can be
refreshed in what I wanted to say to you. About them.

(15:55):
Did he mention Trump my name? Was the first question
that I asked myself, if you heard the podcast this morning,
I said that he should declare Trump the greatest threat
facing the country. Well, he did not make to Donald
Trump by name, and still manage to do basically that,
still manage to express that, if not the only threat
facing us, Trump and his influence is as great as

(16:15):
anything else menacing this nation and the free world and
our role in it, and also the control of what
is happening in Russia and other countries in the Russian
area of influence. Did he attack Trump and Maga by
name or inference? Yeah, I think so. He did that
at about three minutes. Then did he reference the January

(16:36):
sixth coup or insurrection? You bet your ass. Did he
reference Trump and defunding schools that would require vaccines? This
oddly was left out this new idea, which I'm sure
you've heard about, that Trump will not fund any school
in this country that requires students to get vaccines. And

(16:57):
we're not talking about anything that is even mildly controversial
like the COVID nineteen vaccine. We're talking about mumps and measles,
and we're seeing what happened in Florida as a result
of it. No, he did not mention it. Did he
heckle back with my sixth question to myself, Yeah you do?
Number seven. Did he joke about his age, Well, I
think the phrase I may not look at but I've

(17:18):
been around for a while is a sufficient joke, and
certainly the opening remark was in some respects if I
were smart, I would go home now. As I said,
they leaked the Gaza relief port news in advance. Since
this speech started at two am in London time and
throughout much of Europe and three am in other parts,
they had to get something on the news in advance
before the European audience, and in fact the audiences in

(17:43):
Israel in the Middle East woke up to this speech
in the morning, so they got that out. But now
he also put out many of these proposals about what
education reforms should be done, this goal to get everybody
reading by the age of three. I believe the current
number is certainly in the Red States, is thirty three.
He did discuss a tax credit for two years worth

(18:03):
four hundred million, four hundred dollars a month to all
of the homeowners. Did he address the Supreme Court and
remind them that presidential immunity means he could have them
all arrested. No, he did not mention the Supreme Court.
I was struck by the fact that several key members
of the Supreme Court could not be bothered to show up.
I guess it was Supreme Court Bowlding Knight. Did he

(18:26):
invoke previous States of the Union addresses and key moments
from them? I suggested, well, what were the most famous
moments that have ever come up in the State of
the Union? War on poverty, access of evil, something like
the Monroe Doctrine. And no, I don't believe that he
was in attendance for the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine
in eighteen twenty three, but maybe that's a joke he
could use next time. He did, however, make immediate reference

(18:50):
to the Four Freedoms. We had a hint of this
because that photograph that the Biden office put out on
Twitter the other day of him doing his prep for
the State of the Union included a page and somebody
at NBC News apparently took the page of that State
of the Union and script book, blew it up and
read through the first page, which simply had who he

(19:10):
was going to greet at the start of the address,
and they actually were able to read I guess backwards
the word freedoms on the second page rather an alert
technical status. And also something that if you consider for
a moment, this I know more about than you would.
It was something that would allow you to experience what
it was like to work at NBC, where they would
try to find things that you had left written in

(19:31):
places that you did not know you had written them.
And my eleventh question, which I added just before we began,
did he talk rapidly again? Yes, Let's look at some
of these highlights here. First, the start of this speech.
As I said, I don't know if this speech will
be studied for its entirety, the length of the speech,

(19:54):
all the nuances of it. But I do believe that
the seven minutes that open this speech will in fact
be studied throughout the future of American history, presuming there
is a future America and that we're allowed to have history.
So the first one I want to hear again and
then react to in real time and give you a
chance to react to as well. The attack, the tying

(20:15):
together a Putin and Trump and Trump saying that if
Putin were to engage in further violations of international law
and attack other nations as he has Ukraine, that Trump's
response would be, do whatever the hell you want.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote
do whatever the hell you want. That's a quote a
former president actually said that bowing down to a Russian leader.
I think it's outrageous, it's dangerous, and it's unacceptable.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
That's how he started. If you did not see this speech,
and for some reason you happen to be dialing around
online and you're seeing me talk about it, may I
suggest they're not going to like when I say this.
May I suggest that you turn this off and go
and watch the first seven minutes of the speech again.
That's how he started. Not only did it express the

(21:26):
forcefulness that is in Joe Biden's personality and the best
of what he used to to cry in his own personality,
as I sounded crazy, but it was tempered just enough
so it sounded righteously indignant, exactly the same attitude that
I've had for the last nine years now. And I'm
sure and I know from my interactions with you, you've

(21:46):
had too, which is, what in God's name is going
on in this country? How did all these people either
get here or get like this to create a world
in which Donald Trump got more than twenty five votes
in a presidential election. There was that undertone do everything
he said that touched vaguely on the subject of Trump
or Maga, and again without ever mentioning Trump's name. And

(22:09):
yet he went right from the subject that first subject
of Putin and Ukraine and Republicans stalling on Trump's behalf
and stalling because they are in thrall to Vladimir Putin.
He went directly from that to the subject of January
sixth and the denial of what happened and what we

(22:32):
all saw happen in real time, and what was condemned
by Republicans in real time, and what was condemned. And
he'd never invoked Mitch McConnell's name, but I have a
feeling that this was designed to give Mitch McConnell a
sleepless night, although I don't know if we have to
worry about that, because the man with the age problem
in Washington is Mitch McConnell. Nevertheless, the attack on the
January sixth, Deniers was the second part of this speech

(22:55):
that I think will be studied in years to come.
In a literal sense, history is watching.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
History is watching, just like history watched three years ago
on January sixth, when insurrections stormed this very capital and
placed the dagger to throat of American democracy. Many of
your here on that darkest of days, we all saw
with our own eyes the insurrections were not patriots. They'd

(23:23):
come to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Don't restir
in the will of the people. January sixth lies about
the twenty twenty election and the plots that steal the
election posed a great gravest threat to US democracy since
the Civil War. But they failed. America stood, America stood strong,

(23:54):
and democracy prevailed. We must be honest. The threat to
democracy must be defended. My predecessor and some of you
here seek to bury the truth about January sixth.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
I exactly what we have been asking from every Democratic
leader since January sixth. Talk about it in those terms,
talk about it bluntly. Recognize who in the government in
the form of the Republicans in the House, in the Senate,
and outside of it, manipulating the House in the Senate
talk about what they hold as responsibility not just for

(24:29):
that January sixth, but for the January sixth they have
planned to come in the future. I have a question
that has been pulled from the list of questions from
commentaries on Twitch, in this case from Thrignar. Good Evening, Thrignar,
here's a question for Keith. Well, of course, it's question
for Keith. Why else would you be putting it out

(24:50):
on Twitch? In today's podcast, it was noted that states
of the Union, with one exception, have moved the needle
less two percent or less in either direction. Does Keith
think this one might be more impactful than the historical trend.
I'm going to address this later, but let's go through
that now because I went at it at some length
because I found this rather exceptional piece of research for

(25:10):
one of the guys at five thirty eight, not Nate Silver.
And again let me apologize. I was the guy who
segued Nate Silver out of baseball statistical predictions into predicting elections.
Then he went from what he was good at, which
was taking all the numbers and averaging them, to believing
that he knew without the numbers, what was going to
happen next, and then then he went crazy. Nathaniel Rakisch

(25:32):
at five thirty eight did what five thirty eight was
supposed to do. He looked at presidential popularity polls both
before and after every State of the Union since the
year nineteen seventy eight. That would be forty six speeches
by Carter Reagan, Bush first, Clinton, Bush second, Obama, Trump,
and Biden. The average change in approval after the State
of the Union good or bad change in a president's

(25:54):
popularity one point nine percent. All of them averaged together,
the average result was in a boost of zero point
three percent. In other words, it's really not worth the
president of the United States since nineteen seventy eight, even
bothering to wear a tie to the State of the Union.
Only once in the last twenty years has it moved

(26:16):
by more than two point one percent. That was Obama,
who got to two point six percent after his State
of the Union in twenty twelve. Only eight have had
more impact than that, and three of those were by
Bill Clinton, who might still be the most effective speaker
who's held the office of president, including Reagan, including Obama,
including Biden. Tonight, in the last fifty years. He gained

(26:37):
eight points after his first State of the Union address
or his informal State of the Union address in nineteen
ninety three, gained three in nineteen ninety five, ten approval
points in nineteen ninety eight. Even George Bush, on the
eve of invading Iraq, only went up three point nine
percent in two thousand and three. You can screw it up.
His father HW Bush lost five points of popularity after

(26:59):
his first speech in nineteen ninety I guess because the
comparison to Reagan failed Georgie JH. W. Bush significantly. He
regained that popularity in the ensuing year, then gave this
next State of the Union in nineteen ninety one and
lost another five percent. That's probably why he did not
get reelected. The point is the average net effect, the
boost of three tenths is actually inflated a little bit

(27:21):
because Bill Clinton went up ten points after the nineteen
ninety eight Monica Lewinsky speech. Obviously, it was not a
speech about Monica Lewinsky was simply ten days after the
Lewinsky Clinton scandal broke. But the media continues to insist
this is vitally important and thus the bar for actually
impacting a presidential popularity issue is really high. Most of

(27:46):
the media is still pretending that this is nineteen ninety eight,
nineteen seventy eight. They want to wake up and find
that to be the case. They want to have influence.
In other words, in nineteen ninety eight, twenty percent of
this country saw the State of the Union address tonight.
We don't know obviously what those numbers will represent. We

(28:06):
do know that something like fifty five or sixty percent
of the audience is above the age of fifty five.
We do know that that's probably not going to come
in at ten percent. It may be seven or eight
percent of the country. The streaming audience for the speech
itself is almost non existent. So if Biden's popularity does
increase in the next few days, and I would suspect,
which you will see, oddly enough, is that his popularity

(28:28):
his approval rating will increase among Democrats, among people who
have been baited in the last few months pretty much
ever since David Axelrod, of all people, brought this topic
to the four by questioning whether or not Joe Biden
should continue or if the White House was not in
fact being realistic about the issue of an eighty one

(28:49):
year old man running for president. If there are people
worried about this, they would be on the Democratic side.
In fact, there is polling, and let me reach for that,
because that is a rather extraordinary thing, this Emerson poll,
which I'll get into in a moment, there was one
statistic in here that pertained to people worried about his age,

(29:11):
and it was a small number, an extraordinarily small number.
Voter No, that's the independent voters. Emerson's polling not altered
by let's see, there was an age question. It was
online one twenty five of the new Emerson polling that
was done Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. The question

(29:31):
was does his age raise doubts about him? Fifty seven
percent said it did raise doubts about Joe Biden. Not
a serious consideration forty three percent. The White House would
probably say that's a pretty good number, and that was
before tonight's speech. But for it to be forty three
percent saying it's not a serious consideration rather than fifty

(29:53):
one or fifty two percent, it means seven, eight, nine,
ten percent of Democrats or maybe more than that, were
actually worried about it. So if it does move the
bar it will move the bar I think, I think
among the Democrats, and in any event, we'll go through
the Emerson poll in a little bit. But I would
point out that there are indications from that Emerson poll

(30:14):
that the Biden popularity number was increasing and has been
increasing sort of surreptitiously been below the radar for the
last month month and a half. Let me resume where
we were. We had talked about the first two sort
of signal soundbites from this, and again, the real value
of the state of the Union perhaps is in viral moments,

(30:36):
just like it is the real value of everything else.
Who's going to sit there and watch through a speech
of one hour and six minutes other than you and
me and everybody in Washington. But to most people, they
will consume this between now and sometime tomorrow in small bursts.
So let's anticipate that. And I believe we had not
yet gotten to the issue of the role of the

(30:57):
power of women in politics, which was greeted not surprisingly,
rather strongly by the Vice President. Let's listen to that
one again.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are
promising to pass the National Ban on reproductive freedom. My God,
what freedom else would you take away? Look, it's a
decision to overturn roeby Wade. The Supreme Court majority wrote
the following, And with all due respect, Justices, women are
not without electoral power. Excuse me, electoral or political power.

(31:31):
You're about to realize just how much you've varrity about. Clearly, Clearly,

(31:55):
those bragging about overturning Road we might have no clue
about the power of women, but they found out when
reproductive freedom was on the ballad we wanted twenty twenty
two and twenty twenty, and we went again in twenty
twenty four. If you, if you, the American people, send

(32:24):
me a congress of supports the right to choose, I
promise you I'll restore Roe v. Wade as the long
Land again.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
I truly do not think there was a wasted moment
in this speech, except perhaps when and this did not
I think Carrie as loudly as it was intended to.
We have identified someone on the floor who did. As
a Stan from YouTube asks who was the idiot who
started yelling, well, I would have naturally assumed that Stan

(32:55):
is referring to Marjorie Taylor Green, and that would not
have anything particularly to do with the state of the Union.
That's what she does all day. However, we have now
identified that there was a member of Congress who at
some point started to yell lies as President Biden talked
to about what's the name of the guy Republican President,
the guy ap preceded him? What was his name? Again?

(33:16):
Couldn't have gotten through this with the with the team
of a dog sled team getting him through it. Couldn't
have spoken for an hour and eight minutes. What's his name? Humpy?
Representative Derek van Orden yelled lies when Biden criticized Trump's.
Sources say Manu Raju, who's one of the bright lights

(33:37):
at CNN, was he said. Van Orden was the member
who yelled lies. According to two sources who heard him,
Representative Van Orden has a what was used to be
called in polite circles, a disordered mind. Representative van Orden
is the guy who came upon a couple of I
believe Senate interns who were taking pictures of the Capitol

(34:00):
and one of them was lying on the floor shooting
up at the Capitol dome with his camera and Van
Orden basically tried to scare the hell out of them,
threatened them, called the Capitol Hill police on them, and
then talked about how they were defiling the capital. Van
Orden has several other problems, and I don't mean to

(34:20):
assume perhaps you have seen this story. It has been
growing and I think it's going to be one of
the big news stories of the next year. There was
evidence in one of the shooters who conducted one of
those nightmares in public of mass shooting, where they have
in fact autopsied and analyzed his brain. He was a
former member of the military, and there was significant damage

(34:42):
to his brain. And it is believed that we have
not really looked at the psychological or rather the physical
reasons for the psychological condition that was once known as
shell shock and has more recently been renamed PTSD among
veterans and other members of the military. And it looks
like actually that handling ordnance, being around explosives, even just

(35:06):
handling some of the high powered machine guns and other
equipment and other weaponry inside the military can cause literal
brain damage. I'd like to point out that Congressman Van
Orden is a proud veteran of our services. A couple
of other questions, hell fire Zombie from YouTube comment, that's
an interesting family name. What would you suggest to Biden

(35:30):
to maintain the momentum he generated tonight? Continue to talk
at that speed? Gareth Goodworth off YouTube. Obviously missing from
the speech unless I missed something, nothing about Iran and
its proxies. I don't think he missed anything. I don't
think there's any particular disagreement on Iran and its proxies
and its role. I believe, however, that they I'd like

(35:55):
to have been now, having seen how good the speech was.
I'd like to have been the proverbial fly on the
wall and looked at how they this justin thank you,
I'd like to have looked at how they composed this
and what they decided to leave out, because one of
the things that I had thought was we are now
entering the age in which people watching something that was

(36:15):
going to last for at least an hour, we're probably
expecting a halftime show. They were probably expecting him to
say I have more to say. We'll be talking about
the Middle East, but first Taylor Swift and it didn't happen.
But here now, at some point they must have said,
look the speech, even if you read it five times
the normal rate of the human speech. Read it faster
than that Olderman guy reads scripts. It'll still last an

(36:38):
hour and eight minutes. We're expecting a few four more years.
Interruptions with chance, Well, they had to drop something, And
I suspect that, after looking at what he did about
the Middle East, in which he successfully traversed, as I
said before this wire, this balancing act over a bottomless
pit of some kind, I suspect they said, let's not

(37:01):
go further into the Middle East. Clear Magenta on YouTube
asks where you disappointed that he did not spend the
entire hour focusing on Trump's danger to this country as
you had hoped he would. No, I was not. One
of the things I actually do think that often happens
is that the president of the United States knows a
lot more than I do. So my thought was, if

(37:24):
you're going to give a speech and it's not perhaps
going to, based on recent results, move the needle quite
as much as you would like it to that, perhaps
you know, let's shoot the works here. Do the speech
entirely about Trump. He did not spend the entire hour
focusing on Trump's danger to this country, and only spent
the first seven minutes, during which, as I said before,
if it had been a boxing match, it would have

(37:45):
been stopped. Lord Barrell asks, what does he think? I
presume that's me, since I'm the only one out here.
What does he think of trying to build a Mulberry
port in hostile territory and do so without us putting
people on the ground to build it. It's off twitch,
you know. It's again if you have seen some of
the things that the millilitary does. And I'm not a
military man. My father was, but I'm not an expert

(38:08):
on any of these things. But I do know that
often some of our great civil engineers, future civil engineers,
started and honed their skills in the military. I would
not put this past them when they say they're not
going to put any boots on the ground or putting
Americans in harm's way by building this humanitarian port to
get relief aid into Gaza and get the thing up

(38:29):
in a matter of weeks, I suspect they are talking
about assembling it somewhere else in the Middle East, in
a friendly zone, perhaps an ally, perhaps an ally with
a gun pointed to their head, helping us out by
giving us the space to do so, and I think
those things can be accomplished. And again I will I
know this doesn't sound like me. I will defer to
other people's expertise on this particular issue. Lord Barrow, that

(38:53):
borrowing nut bars right. Steve Boyd from YouTube do you
think the President was able to reach a healthy cross
section of all Americans DM, GOP and independent or was
he just preaching to the choir? Again, as I said before,
there was some backfilling necessary here. There was certainly some weakness,
as I have discussed on the podcast recently, even among
personal friends of mine who have known for forty years

(39:15):
and who I consider absolutely arch and staunch liberals who
were beginning to get a little bit worried about whether
or not the president could give that speech that almost
the content of it was secondary. What he managed to
pull off was to give the speech reassure anybody who
had any doubts that he could do it, not just
do it at this extraordinary Shakespearean speed and eloquence for

(39:39):
seven minutes, but continue it for the full hour and eight.
Not only did he do that, but the content of
the speech was inviting to those who were not of
the democratic faith. I think particularly this will apply to independence,
some disaffective GOP. And again I keep teasing this and
I don't mean to, but the questions are good and
they're relevant. There is stuff in the Emerson College poll

(40:02):
that suggests uptick in Biden's popularity and an uptick in
his favor in terms of what is happening in the
polling and what is happening in the presidential campaign. This
uptick began on Tuesday or after Tuesday, when Nicki Haley
ended her campaign. We'll get to those numbers in a moment.
In fact, let's do that right now. We're going to

(40:24):
do that right now, because those are the questions we
wanted to get to immediately. The Emerson poll, I did
not see it covered anywhere, And obviously I could not
watch everything this afternoon. I was at home with the dogs,
but I did watch a good deal of cable television,
and after taking the necessary shower, I finished with a
few of my preparations for this appearance tonight for this

(40:48):
live podcast. And I did not see the Emerson poll
mentioned anywhere. The fundamental number off the Emerson poll is
Biden and Trump were tied as of Wednesday afternoon, when
polling ceased at forty five, forty five, and ten percent
going to essentially uncommitted, to use a phrase from the primaries,

(41:08):
or undecided. When those undecideds were pressed, the number changed significantly.
When they were said, they were asked, you have to
make a choice, who do you take? Well, most of
them did, one percent apparently did not, But the final
number turned out to be just about Biden fifty one
Trump forty nine. Trump had been ahead in this particular poll,

(41:30):
the Emerson Poll, since last September. They've conducted it every month.
It is pretty good. It yets I believe an a
rating off the five thirty eight poll of polls. As
late as December, it was Trump by four forty seven
to forty three. Biden had not even been even since
last September. Why did this happen? This was done Tuesday,

(41:51):
It was done Wednesday. Obviously it was not done after
this speech. We await polling, probably won't get any of
that until Saturday. Sunday, the Sunday Shows. God help us,
Kristen Welker can say that Biden is allegedly president. But
what we saw was this Hailey, voters are breaking sixty
three to twenty seven for Joe Biden. And again that

(42:12):
probably is an inflated number because many of the Hailey voters,
if they're not being separated out in the polling numbers,
many of the Hailey voters were either independents or Democrats.
They weren't just disaffected Republicans. Even though throughout the primaries,
including the closed primaries that the Republicans have held so far,
Trump has lost thirty to forty percent of the Republican vote.

(42:33):
And as I keep harping on in this context of
the podcast, if he loses thirty percent of Republican votes
in November, if he loses twenty percent of Republican votes,
Joe Biden will get four hundred electoral votes. Voting strength.
This is a surprise to me. Out of the Emerson poll,
eighty three percent of Trump voters say they will definitely
vote for him, an impressive and strong and reliable number,

(42:57):
except it isn't eighty seven percent of Biden voters say
they will definitely vote for him. Other bullet points that
Biden can take from this, And again, where was this
on CNN? Where was this on NBC? Where was this
on the BBC? It wasn't he leads Trump. Biden does
in voters under thirty by forty three to thirty seven,
with twenty percent undecided. Press them, press the twenty percent

(43:21):
in the youth group under thirty, and they break for Biden,
and suddenly the voters under thirty are pulled accordingly Biden
fifty eight, Trump forty two, which is in keeping with
what happened in twenty twenty. This is actually interesting. Voters
who call themselves independent Trump forty two, Biden thirty nine,
undecided nineteen. When they pressed these undecided and my hat

(43:44):
is off as a skeptic of polling since I started
in this in nineteen ninety eight, they pressed undecided people
to give them a goddamned answer. When the n answers
are included, it goes from Trump forty two, Biden thirty
nine to Biden fifty two, Trump forty eight. And this
is amazing. Thirty percent of Biden's voters poll as recently

(44:06):
as Wednesday said they were supporting Biden because they opposed Trump.
The reverse the percentage of Trump voters who support him
because they oppose Biden, which is supposedly the key. How
Joe Biden is destroying this country and how Joe Biden
is this and how Joe Biden is too old and
could not possibly give a record breaking State of the

(44:27):
Union addressed for an hour and nine minutes. Twelve percent
of Trump voters are supporting Trump because they oppose Biden.
It has almost nothing to do with what Biden does
here or tonight. We're going forward. No wonder the Republicans
are so desperate to dirty up Joe Biden as they
will start to do when Robert Hurr, the former Special

(44:48):
Council who was actually a Trump operative, is still scheduled
to speak to a House committee next Monday about Joe
Biden's age and infirmity and inability to make himself clear
or understand things that had happened before. I suspect that
some of the Democratic members of that committee will simp
Please say, I'd like you to watch this tape of
this speech that he gave last week. Mister her, what

(45:11):
kind of life has a man whose name is her? Ben?
Ask her who him her? Emerson's pulling that's a joke
about gender. I'm sorry. Emerson's polling is not seriously altered
even by the presence of third party candidates in the
multi party universe, of multi candidate universe, Emerson has Trump
forty three, Biden forty two, Kennedy six West TOI Jill

(45:33):
Stein one seven percent undecided. So it is still essentially
a tie even with the other candidates. On issues, and
the economy is first at twenty nine, immigration twenty, threats
to democracy at fourteen, healthcare at twelve, and way down
behind crime and housing costs abortion access at five percent.
One thing to note, when ever, you see the list

(45:55):
of issues and what's important to the American voters, these
are not either or polling is done that way, which
is your most important issue? As if nine percent of
the country is worried only about the economy and could
not give a rats ass about any other topic, including
access to abortion. In other words, a democracy threat, healthcare,

(46:16):
abortion access worried voter, those would be those people would
like me be at around thirty one percent. Those who
are obsessive about immigration and the border would only be
at twenty percent. There was the age question that I
referenced earlier, that it was not a serious consideration forty
three percent. Compare that to the Trump indictments, forty six
percent said that raised doubts about Trump. To them, only

(46:39):
forty six percent underscoring once again that the Biden campaign
will need to do a lot of analysis, at a
lot of pressing of the points of what Trump is
being indicted for, and perhaps perhaps the courts here will
do something that will help us in that regard. There
is a pattern in most polls Trump is slightly ahead
with a lot of undecided This is the first poll

(46:59):
I've seen in which they press them and they go
the undecideds two to one or three three to one
for Joe Biden. What does it all mean? It means
that and again this does happen. Some politicians were right
and this guy was wrong. The Biden campaign has been
insisting this would happen, that the independence would break for them,

(47:23):
that he not only gets the undecideds and the independence,
he will get them in droves. They have described this,
and I'm quoting them, as the oh shit theory that
most independents and undecideds that they found in their own
internal White House polling or Democratic polling in this case,
really did not believe that Joe Biden would be facing
Donald Trump. They did not believe and have not believed

(47:45):
until this week, that Trump will actually be the Republican
nominee for a third time, and when that reality hit
them in the face, as it did when Nicki Haley withdrew,
they would go to Biden. And that number was once again,
Haley voter is breaking sixty three to twenty seven for Biden.
Almost no news organizations hit this poll because news organizations
are territorial about their polls. You can't change the narrative

(48:08):
before the speech that we just saw tonight. Their viewership
depends upon it. And I did, however, see that the
age issue was the only one that mattered. Who was
covered by somebody who had fallen asleep on the air
twice in the last two years, and somebody else who's
had two facelifts. So that is where we are with
the Emerson pole that I've been hyping, and now I
can't hype it anymore. I did want to play one

(48:29):
more clip and then I would begin to wrap this
up because I've taken almost an hour of your time
the recent moves, and Ran Paul addressed this yesterday. I
believe that Social Security and Medicare must be on the
table and must be cut. There was at no point
in this speech anything that Joe Biden said in a

(48:50):
half asked manner All of it was strong, all of
it was designed to get the point across thou shalt
not pass. But perhaps he was at his strongest talking
about this issue. Social Security and Medicare gets cut. As
you'll hear the President say now over his strenuous objections.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Tonight, let's all agree once again to stand up for seniors.
Many of my friends on the other side of all,
I want to put social security on the chopping block.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
If anyone here.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Tries to cut Social Security, Medicare or raise the retirement age,
I will stop you. The working people, the working people
who built this country, pay more to social Security than
millionaires than billionaires do.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
It's not fair. We have two ways to go.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Republicans can cut social Security and get more tax breaks
to the wealthy. I will that's the proposal. Oh no,
you guys don't want another two trillion dollar tax cut.
I kind of thought that's what your plan. Well, that's
good to hear. You're not going to cut another two

(50:10):
trillion dollars for the super wealth.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's good to hear.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
I'll protect and strengthen social security and make the wealthy
pay their fair share.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
I do wonder whether or not the President brought all
those rakes the Republicans kept standing on and hitting themselves
in the forehead with, or if they just happened to
be on the floor of the House Chamber when everybody
walked in. A couple of more questions, a little other
news to close it out with, and then let's just
dive for a second into the other universe and get

(50:41):
the reaction from Fox News to tonight's speech. Biden State
of the Union blasted as nakedly partisan campaign speech, utter disgrace.
Biden mentioned former President Donald Trump numerous times during his speech.
Actually he never said the name Trump first. He didn't
say it at all, Andrew Mark Miller, Fox News ten

(51:02):
twenty nine pm Eastern Time. Biden State of the Union
speech was trashed by prominent political pundits for its political nature,
with some likening it to more of a campaign speech
than an overview of the state of the country. This
you handed me the script to this. This is the speed.
This is what I heard him say. He said all
these things and he didn't really add lib off this.

(51:24):
This was the state of the Union. Well, they have
to do stuff like this, that's what they're paid for
because they couldn't get work anywhere else. I know many
of them. There are good people there. They're the ones
who have their resumes out every other place in the country.
Attacking his opponent directly in the first minutes of his
speech is unprecedented and perhaps the most partisans start to
a State of the Union address in modern his memory,

(51:45):
AEI senior fellow and former speech writer for President George W.
Bush Mark Tiessen wrote on X during Biden's Thursday night speech, Well,
if Mark Tison hated it, it was an a plus. Congratulations, mister.
President Biden criticized former President Donald Trump. Blah blah blah.
This man should never be allowed to take the rostrum
of the House and deliver a State of the uns
You an address again, Tisen posted on X moments later,

(52:08):
while we're covered through the election, Mark, you can dry
your pants now. There's another bit of Fox News, by
the way, and it does pertain to Joe Biden's age.
This just in Rupert Murdoch is getting married again. Rupert Murdoch,
who is Joe Biden's senior by eleven by one hundred
and eleven, by two hundred and eleven years, is going

(52:29):
to marry a retired I can't even say it. He's
going to marry a retired biologist who is sixty seven
and again, Rupert Murdoch is two hundred and six. From
Jessica Dwyer on YouTube, I have a question I will
answer for you. Do you think Trump will actually get
on a debate stage with Biden at this point after
his lack of GOP attendance. I'm wondering, and I've been

(52:51):
thinking about this in particular, so thank you for asking me, Jessica,
because this has been much on my mind of late.
I'm wondering if he is trying to get Biden to
refuse to debate him. He's already proposed debating him now,
rather than waiting until the actual, say months before, directly
before the election. He's trying to have a debate now,
and I suspect it is there to try to get

(53:13):
Biden to refuse to do it so he can say
Biden has refused to do it now, and then at
the time of year when the debates would actually get
the attendance and get the attention of those who do
not follow this as we do, some sort of September
October range, that he could then come back and say, well,
you didn't want to debate me in April. I'm not

(53:34):
going to debate you now. On the other hand, we
do have to address that whatever it is that's wrong
with him, whether it's aphasia or whether it is dementia
or something else, that's wrong, and there's another theory as
to what is going on and why so many of
the things that he says sound like the word he
is trying to get but don't quite get there, like
ballet and billet or something along the nis lines. There

(53:58):
is a theory that there are a thousand theories and
they've been working for twenty years, that there is something
not functioning correctly in his brain. And he may just
think that what he just saw in the State of
the Union address from President Biden is something that he
could clean the table with, and that would be a
first evidence that there is something very wrong with Trump's brain,

(54:19):
because no one on the Republican Party, including Nicki Haley,
including Chris Christi, including George W. Bush, including Ronald Reagan,
dug up and propped up, could have competed with Joe
Biden tonight. Question for Keith from kat Z on YouTube.
Do you think he missed a great opportunity to highlight
the GOP's plan to cut spending for police. I think

(54:42):
that's an extraordinarily good question. In fact, had this in
my list of was he going to do this? He
did not do it. I suspect that to bring attention
to it again goes back to that culling process. If
you wanted to, as I face every day, and as
you do too, if you wanted to analyze everything the
Republicans were doing, that you could grab from them, row

(55:04):
up and then poke one of their eyes out with
You could just analyze it for twenty four hours a day,
and you're never actually get get around to do it.
I suspect that some things were put over here in
this other pile for let's do this next month. From
twitch Megan two fifty seven. Keith, if Trump's cognitive gas
continue and or worse than this year, do you think

(55:24):
it would benefit or hurt Biden's image if he called
it out. I think he is a man who knows
when to do it himself and when to let others
do it. And I would say something else. This is
another but behind the scenes picture about Joe Biden that
I don't think I've ever told before. In any kind
of detail. I was the moderator for what was not

(55:45):
officially called a debate. It was called a candidate's form
at Soldier Field in Chicago during the height of the
Democratic race in two thousand and seven, in August, last
week of August in Chicago outside Now what the temperature was,
It was one hundred and fifty two degrees. It was
actually something like eighty nine degrees and equal humidity and
the red of thunderstorms. And it was the AFL and

(56:07):
CIO and thirty five thousand guys from mostly the Midwest,
from mostly Chicago were sitting out behind us, drinking beer,
and we were having this little debate. It was me
as the MC. I swept so much through my suit
that I had to have help peeling off my jacket
when the show was over. In any event, at some

(56:27):
point a question was asked of all the candidates, and
either I did not go to then Senator Biden for
his reaction to whatever this question was, or he felt
that someone had missed. I believe somebody had misquoted him
one of the others. And this was when they were
all still in it. John Edwards was still in it,
and obviously Hillary Clinton was still in it, and Bill

(56:49):
Richardson and Dennis Kucinich, and they were all out there
with the eventual nominee, of course, President Obama and the
eventual a vice President Biden, and in we took a
break and Joe Biden came over to me and said,
when next time you come over to me, I'm going
to go in and and address that subject where I
was misquoted and you didn't give me the opportunity to
correct that. And I went, don't do it, and he said,

(57:12):
what do you mean, don't do it? I said, it's
going to make bad television. I'm not going to talk
to you about the issue, but don't do it. We
have coming up in the next segment, and you know
this because I just said it. We have the widow
of a man, a miner who had just been killed
in a mine accident I believe in West Virginia, and
she's going to ask a question from the audience, and
you're all going to get a chance to talk about it.

(57:33):
You're the working man's candidate. I see you're on the
list of who gets to talk about this. I can't
have you all do it, and you'd be the natural
one to do it, and he said, I still think
I'm going to bring that up, and I went, don't
do it? Sure enough, she asked the question. Everybody in
a crowd full of afl CIO members went. The pain

(57:55):
was both palpable and professional. It was personal, and it
was something that they had experienced firsthand in their blue
collar jobs throughout their lives. And Joe Biden knew it too.
And Joe Biden could not stop himself in two thousand
and seven and went off topic, consoled the woman on
her loss, and then went back, I'd like to go
back to And it was at that point that I
knew that his candidacy for president was over. At that point,

(58:19):
today and in the years since, one of the things
in his elder years, and we can't say old age,
because he's got another five years in him. Clearly after
tonight he may have another fifty years in him. But
clearly he has learned when to let other people do
the dirty work for him and when to leave a
less than perfect situation alone and have others handle it.

(58:41):
And I believe what he would do in this is
to just sit back and go accept in the debate
format in which it might be necessary to point out
that the man had just started speaking in tongues. I
don't think it would serve him at all to mention
Trump's increasing imbecility. That's my job, awakening death right, Awakening death,

(59:07):
awakening death right. So on twitch. How many of you
responded to mister awakening death in the chat rooms here? Okay?
Can we get the Olderman poll calculation conversions on an
upcoming podcast? The poll calculation conversions? Oh, the Olderman number.
I could do that again, Yes, thank you, Awakening Death

(59:36):
from b p J on YouTube. Do you think that
President Biden should address or comment in more detail about
the developing criminal cases against Trump. Frankly, I'd like to
see more of that. Most people are uninformed. They are uninformed.
We noticed this that about the all the comments you
saw this polling. It was done in the swing states
of potential Biden voters. In other words, everybody who disbelieved

(59:58):
the twenty twenty election, everybody who said they supported Trump.
We've thrown out of this internal calculation, internal polling that
was done for the Democrats. They came back in three
swing states with an indication that the total number of
people who had heard all of the truly frightening dictatorship,
and violent quotes and poisoning, the blood quotes and everything

(01:00:21):
else that Trump was doing. Thirty one percent had heard
these statements. And when they were told these statements, apparently
for the first time, the negativity score for Trump jumped
by seven or eight points during the polling. So one
can assume, and I haven't seen polling on it, that
there is perhaps a similar although I wouldn't think it
could possibly be thirty one percent. But if it's fifty

(01:00:43):
one percent, if half the public is fully unaware of
the criminal cases against Trump, both by the Special prosecutor
and in New York, and even the case in Georgia,
perhaps there should be more efforts made in getting those
things out. But the answer, like the answer about Trump's instability,
the answer is how much money did they put into
those swing state ads online and on television and on

(01:01:05):
radio for the last couple of months of the campaign?
Was it one hundred and two hundred and forty million?
Put them in ads. They're much more effective that way,
And all you have to do is run the tape
of Trump. If you don't have to have anybody saying anything,
least of all being President Biden, or at the end
you can just have him go in like this. I'm
Joe Biden and I approved that message. Does God help us?

(01:01:27):
It's true, Paul Dolan. Did he go hard enough on
the Supreme Court justices? Well, it was hard to say.
I've had my own negative comments, and I've been misquoted.
I did not tell any of them to fu, but
I've had my own comments about what the three liberals
remaining on the on the Supreme Court did not do
in the Colorado case, which was to state sort of

(01:01:48):
the obvious that the other six were apparently incapable of
actually reading and could not see what the fourteenth Amendment said,
nor the fact that that since there was a Senate
and House overright of the fourteenth Amendment, it meant that
it was automatic. And yes, the Senate and the House
were the venues in which something could be done about
someone being called disqualified for the presidency, but that thing

(01:02:10):
would be to override it. Did he go hard enough
on them? The ones who did the damage were too
chicken shit to show up tonight, so it wouldn't have
made that much difference. Celtic Ray Film Works from YouTube.
What the hell was Mike Johnson's deal. It was like
he was spot welded into his seat. Again, you're looking
at probably what I saw, which was the second half

(01:02:31):
of that speech when he realized perhaps someone sent him
a text, perhaps someone in the crowd from the Republican
Party held up a big sign saying you're nodding in agreement, moron,
and he decided the next best opportunity was just to
sort of sit there and, as you suggest, not only
weld but seemingly melt into his seat like this. There's

(01:02:53):
something very odd about Mike Johnson. And that's quite a
quote to say when you consider his predecessor and the
other people who were candidates for that job. There's something
really odd about Mike Johnson, really really odd. One last question,
then we'll close with the other news before we sign
off for the night. Twitch comment Ray MM three eighty

(01:03:15):
five to two underscore zero one. You chose that or
was it assigned to you? Mister Olderman. Thank you for
the formality. I'd like to hear your spicy thoughts on
how MTG others acted. I'm not going to resort to
something that was sent to me by an actual respectable
member of the media, which was a picture that was

(01:03:36):
supposedly of Neanderthal woman, and it looked exactly like Marjorie
Taylor Green. Although I have called her congresswoman cave woman before,
and I think that fits. There's nothing out of character
for that. The House won't do anything to her for
violating the regulations against wearing a campaign insignia, especially not
just on the House floor, but especially in the occasion

(01:03:56):
of the State of the Union address. The only people
who will be able to take care of her would
be a Democratic state legislature in Georgia by redistricting that area,
which apparently consists entirely of people with IQ's under forty.
All right, let's close with the other news. I mentioned
Rupert Murdoch getting married again, and I should mention that

(01:04:18):
we are expecting him to get married again. Number one,
he is ninety two years old. Two The last time
he was engaged to I believe a woman who lost
a bet it didn't happen. She called it off. Perhaps
there was family intervention. Here's the other news. If Trump
disappears over the weekend, check to see if he has

(01:04:38):
faked his own death because Judge Lewis Kaplan denied his
bid on Thursday, to stay the depositing of the eighty
three million he now owes Egen Carroll or forfeit his
right to appeal that finding. That is five hundred and
forty eight million dollars that Trump has to come up
with by the end of the month. But don't worry,
he boasted on Fox that he has enough money to

(01:04:59):
do anything he wants, so he better want to pay
up to Egene Carroll. And also this of New York
all right, second of six stories to close with. MSNBC
and CNN both sold time to a Trump super pack
to attack President Biden's age. The first running of this
jungular commercial was during Biden's favorite show, Morning Joe. I

(01:05:20):
love your President, Biden, but that's what you get for
watching Joe Scarborough. I mean, I worked at both networks,
so I get it. The network sales divisions, commercials divisions
are brothels. But once again, I'd like to apologize for
MSNBC number three. I'm sure you saw this, but I
had a thought. Biden tweeted out highlights of a zoom
call with actors who have portrayed presidents in movies, ranging

(01:05:42):
from Geena Davis to Bill Pullman to Morgan Freeman. Somehow
they left out Marty Sheen, my friend Martin Sheen from
the West Wing. Of all of the guys who portrayed presidents,
who's better known for it still than Martin Sheen from
the West Wing? And I might add Martin Sheen alone
among all of these distinguished actors who gave something to
that role, he was the one who just happened to

(01:06:04):
have fleece jackets and letterhead stationary that reads the acting
President of the United States to me, one of the
great troll jobs of all time. Here's happy news from
retiring Democratic congress and Derek Kilmer of Washington. He's filing
a bipartisan bill instructing each member of the House to produce,
upon taking office, a list of five backup congressmen, one

(01:06:27):
of whom would be immediately appointed to their office to
serve out their term, or at least until a special
election could be arranged if they get assassinated. Congressman Kilmer
is very worried about political violence in this country, and
I really don't know on this one story whether to
laugh or cry. Eileen Cannon, the former yoga correspondent of
the Miami Nuevo Herald, and now Trump's concierge. Federal judge

(01:06:51):
ruled on Thursday that there will be a hearing a
week hence next Thursday, to address Trump's motion to dismiss
counts one through thirty two of the Stolen Document's case
on unconstitutional vagueness. That was the filing from the Trump attorneys.
It's not an evidentiary hearing. It's also not likely to
lead to such dismissals, just to more evidentiary hearings unconstitutional vagueness.

(01:07:14):
We are told I'm waiting for a jack Smith filing
in reply citing legal snideness. And lastly, perhaps the highlight
of the day, other than the President kicking the shit
out of the Republicans. Since he left the Navy to
run for Congress, doctor Ronnie Jackson has referred to himself
as a retired rear admiral. Trump has called him that

(01:07:37):
as recently as last week. It turns out that when
he left in twenty nineteen, shortly thereafter he was busted.
He was busted in rank to captain from rear admiral
because of misconduct while he was White House physician and
the world's only actual living breathing vending machine that spewed

(01:07:58):
out ambience if you put in a quarter and frankly,
and I'll close with this. Ronnie Jackson is lucky, but
the Navy did not make him walk the plank. So
thank you for being with us. It's being eleven forty
three Eastern time. Those of you who like to get
the podcast at twelve oh nine am on Friday morning,

(01:08:19):
you may have to wait a little bit. I hope
this was valuable to you. We will meet with the
entirety of management and iHeart five thousand different people and
discuss in the next few days how many more of
these we will do in the future. We may have
a guest, although I have surprised myself because I have
talked longer than the President did. Have I not? I

(01:08:39):
just got over that, did I. I thank you for
your support on the podcast. As you know, there is
an award ceremony over the weekend in which we will
not win Political Podcast of the Year. However, the nomination
really does count and I'm honored by it, and I
am honored by your continuing support for the podcast. And
I'd also like to say that I finally found a

(01:09:00):
boss that I like most of the time. Me So
on behalf of everybody, including the dogs who contributed my
not being home doing the podcast in my suit closet
where I normally record it. I must do a video
for you on what that looks like. Maybe not. I
thank you and I wish you all of the good luck,

(01:09:21):
and I hope this was of use to you. I
hope you agree with me on everything that I say,
because why else would I say it?

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
Thank you, good night, I had good luck? Well, wasn't
that exciting? Live?

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
And then on tape. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening to this special
edition State of the Union Postgame Show Countdown podcast. Our
musical directors, Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. That's because they're musical directors.
Mister Ray on good our base and drums. Mister Chanelle

(01:10:06):
handled orchestration in keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball

(01:10:27):
stadium organists ever. Our announcer today was well, I guess
it was President Biden, wasn't it. Everything else was pretty
much my fault. That's countdown for this two hundred and
forty third day before the twenty twenty four presidential election.
One one hundred and fifty seventh day since dementia J
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of

(01:10:48):
the United States. Use the Fourteenth Amendment, the Insurrection Act,
the justice system, and the mental health system to stop
him from doing it again while we still can. The
next schedule countdown is Monday. Bulletins is the news warrants
Until then, I'm Keith. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production

(01:11:26):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.