6-2-25 - 9am - 'Original Sin' Book Report

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning Michael, Good morning Dragon. Well he caught me
in mid workouse. Sorry about the breathing.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Dragon.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
I'm a little disappointed to hear your going on vacation
and you're not going to be able to hear the
iHeart Music Festival reveal. Don't worry, We'll hear about it
for the next four months every segment, every commercial.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
See boys, fear not.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
That reveal is tomorrow at six am. I don't leave
until Thursday, so I will be here right along with
you guys with bated breath to know exactly who's going
to be at the iHeart Music Festival.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh so that's what the reveal is. Who's going to
be at theeart Yeah, tomorrow, six am. Dude, I haven't
seen any emails. Are we supposed to do anything about that?
Not us?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
They typically relegate that to the FMS. Well, there's a
hard roadblock at roughly that time, I would bet.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah. I'm just shocked that I had no clue that
we didn't know or cared who was.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Going to be at the iHeart Now, yeah, tomorrow tomorrow
to be a big deal.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Okay, yeah, all right, big deal because when I think
back of all the other acts that have been at
the r Heart Music Festival. I couldn't name you one.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Uh they played as well as them?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Oh they've played too. Yeah, I didn't realize they were there.
Had I known they were there, I would have gone
to see them. And we can't forget about him. Oh
but will she be there? Misurprise appearance? Who knows? Well?
But the biggest question is will Z be there or

(01:47):
is it her z? I R will be there? Right? Oh, right, right?
I got nothing as dumb enough as it is as
we are. There's uh no, I'm not ever known that path.
So I did I confess that I bought Tapper's book?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yes, you, before you even left, you said that you
had got it. I think it was like a day
or so after it came out, but or maybe even
the day of, because you were asking listeners as to
what to do. You did say that you were you
bought it. You read a couple of chapters.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh that's right, I'd read like maybe thirty forty pages
or something exactly. Okay, we're going to have a full
book report when you came back. Yes, this is the
book report session. But I need to kind of I
need to play the groundwork for it, so I did.
I forget what day it was, but one day before
I left on vacation, I drove over to the first

(02:46):
not that I don't trust my producer, but I don't
trust my producer, who had told me that the Barnes
and Noble return policy was that as long as you
have your receipt, you can return any book. Well the
thirty days I think it was. There's a thirty day
wind though. However, not trusting my producer, which I don't

(03:08):
understand why I don't, I thought maybe I should read
the return policy myself because if i'm will show out
call with taxes. I think it was like twenty nine bucks.
I want to make shreck get my twenty nine bucks back,
because even though I thought about giving the book to
like Tamera's school or what, I decided, no, I'm not. No,

(03:28):
I want to be able to give them money and
take away the money. So I drove so I checked
and hang on real quick.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I just want to let you know that because we
kind of talked a little bout about seeing if the
listeners would pay us in order to go.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Oh yes, right right, we we got, we got, we
got money. You said you got like nineteen cents or something.
In twenty seven, you got thirty three three.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Cents from Mike. Oh, Mike or Michael's Venmo is still
unknown to me. Here's some sense for you to give
to Mike or Michael for that book or not. It's
yours now, okay.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Okay, Well, I want you to keep that in your
Venmo account, so that when you're in Tokyo, the most
expensive city in the entire world, you'll have what was
it sixty cents, you'll have which will not get you
anything that I know of in Tokyo, but enjoy. So

(04:28):
the return policy is, uh, it cannot be read or
appear to have been read. The dust jacket has to
be in pristine. I don't think they use the word pristine,
but you know, it can't have any tears or smudges
or copy stains on or anything like that. The book

(04:49):
binding has to be it can't be cracked. So how
does a book not appear to be read? Well? Apparently
apparently I succeeded in doing that because I took I
took the book, I get the book, I take it
out to the car, I set it in the back seat.

(05:10):
I don't want like if I have to slam on
the brakes. I don't want this going into the floor.
Super careful, I'm super careful. I get home, I take
the dust jacket off, put it down in my office,
and then I take the book to New Mexico and
I read it. You know, you know how you tend
to you don't even crack the spine. I don't crack
the spine at all. It was really difficult because I'm

(05:33):
just I'm holding the pages down, and I'm also because
it was really rainy. So and the light in the
undisclosed location is not the greatest. It's not like the
crappy lights we have in here. It seemed crappier down there.
But I do have a floor land next to my chair.

(05:54):
But I'm having to move to get the like you know,
I got these old fart eyes and I can't see
that way. But I read the book, bring it back home,
put the cover on, put the receipt in. I walk
up to the counter and I said, I'd like to
return this book. And she's no problem. She takes the book.

(06:15):
She glances at it and she goes, oh this one again. No,
But after all the care I took to make sure
that there was no question that it was in pristine condition,
she said. She pulled the receipt out, she takes the book,
and she tosses it into a box. Yes, and then

(06:38):
she said, may I ask why you're returning it? And
for that nanosecond in my brain I wanted to say
because the book sucked, But I said, well, I bought
it for a friend and the friend already had it.
She means, You're like, oh, okay, just whatever do you
do you want store credit or do you want back

(06:58):
on your credit card? So I just I want to
credit on my credit card. So she gave me my
twenty nine whatever it was back, So Jake Tapper got
no money from me, and I got to read the book. Now,
having said all of that, I'm really pissed that I
read the book. I'm really pissed at myself having read

(07:19):
the book. Asked me what I learned that I did
not know? Michael? What did you learn that you did
not already know the names of the four or five
members of what they referred to as the polit bureau
that was running the White House. You think back during
those four years, Dragon, how many times did we say,

(07:42):
aren't we curious who it is, it's actually running things.
Two yeah, time or two. Well, now we know who
it is, and I would say it's probably some of
the former staffers that work for Barack Obama that are
now on the Biden staff. And sure enough, thy of
them were Anita Dunn and a couple of others. But

(08:03):
the really you're the pullet bureau was a guy by
the name of Raschetti or Racketti or something to that effect,
who was Jill Biden's I'm I'm so sorry, I'm out
of practice. I've been on vacation. Some guy named Roshetti
who was doctor Jill Biden's chief of staff. He became

(08:24):
the titular head of this pullet bureau. It was running everything,
and everybody was scared of him, and so they all
pretty much just did whatever he said. If there was
a decision to be made, and he did it, he
just did it. So you had doctor Jill Biden's chief
of staff, you had three members of the old Obama team,
and you had ron Klain, who was kind of in

(08:47):
and out, who was Biden's chief of staff. I think
he was gone for the last year or so, but
he was still part of the pulot Bureau that still
helped him make the decision. So that was the only
thing I learned. With some names, the book was such
bull crap. But here's what I really want you to
comprehend about it. Let me just describe the book in general.
First of all, I seriously, seriously recommend you not buy

(09:14):
this book. And unless you're just a total political method
like I am, don't read the book, because you really won't.
I don't know. I take that back. Having worked in
the White House myself, having worked for a president, having

(09:34):
you know, been in that in the sub cabinet, I
understand how things work, and you not having that experience,
there might be some interesting things in there. So I
can't tell you do not go read it, but check
it out from the light, from from the library or something.
Two hundred. Just listen to this for a minute. Here's

(09:56):
here's what I wrote down about the book. It draws
on two hundred interviews with Democrat insiders, interviews with White
House staffers, congressional leaders including Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jefferies,

(10:22):
Congressman Climber. I'm sure there's some others. Come off the
top of my head. Uh. Donors Democrat donors, including the
big wigs like George Clooney and other just you know,
random political people. Now, why do I spell out who

(10:43):
they interviewed? Well, why would you interview these people unless
they knew something? They all knew something. Oh, I left
out another group. There's another group. I forgot to mention.
They also listed Cabinet member nine, number one, Cabinet member

(11:03):
number two, Cabinet member number three. They talked to or
tried to get some information out of Cackle and Kamala Harris.
They did interview some of her staffers. Every single one

(11:30):
knew what was going on. They all knew. Now, in particular,
I want to emphasize the cabinet members because of the
twenty fifth Amendment. Now, if for the just for the
sake of argument, if three dragon, if three people in
this building know something that those three people are trying

(11:54):
to keep confidential, how many people in this building really
know about what they're trying to keep confidential? More than half,
if not all, so, at least fifty one hundred people
or something. Yeah, if three cabinet members know something, how
many cabinet members know something? All of them, all of them.

(12:15):
If a vice president knows now, granted she's a little schizophrenic.
But if if one part of Kamala Harris's brain knows something,
oh never mind, the other parts of the brain probably
don't know anything. She'll never forget that one. That one
doesn't really work. The point is they all knew. There

(12:35):
was really nothing new in this book. When I think
back on four years of talking about Joe Biden, there
was nothing in this book that to me was new,
other than the specific names that some of the people involved.
They never named the three cabinet members. Cabinet member in
one and two are mentioned quite often. Cabinet member number
three is not really mentioned until near the end of

(12:57):
the book, and it was so innocuous I don't really
remember much about it. They do go into some detail
about the process that led up to Biden withdrawing from
the race, and the only thing I shouldn't say the

(13:17):
only thing, but one of the things I did find
interesting was Chuck Schumer's his description of his drive to
either Rehobe or Wilmington. I forget which place they went
to Delaware, because Chucky had decided he had to tell

(13:39):
his good friend he shouldn't be running the staff. Remember
when those times that Joe Biden would talk about, well,
the poll numbers are good for me. You know, I
can beat Trump. Everything's looking good. He honestly believed that
because the staff kept the three main Democrat pollsters who

(14:06):
kept trying to get meetings with the Politbureau because they
were hearing what Biden was saying on TV. They were
trying to protect their reputations because what Biden was saying
on television or radio or in speeches was one hundred
and eighty degrees opposite of what they're polling data showed,

(14:26):
and they kept trying to get in to speak to
Biden so that they could describe to Biden, Hey, listen,
mister president, you can't beat him. Things are a lot
worse than you've been told. Well, they kept them at Bay,
so I guess that's something else I learned that might
be a little different. They provide a little bit of

(14:51):
granular detail about Biden's decline. They go through all of
the ones that we talked about, the ones about the
discussion about with Jake Tapper about him talking about the
most transparent president ever in terms of his health, He'll
be telling all the truth about that. Tapper talks about
that they talk about they saw exactly what we saw

(15:17):
at D Day, that what we saw at the G
seven or the G twenty, whichever it was all And
remember when they were all doing the it was it
was Black History Month or whatever it was, and they
were all dancing, you know, and you know, driving around,
and he was just standing there. They talked about how
he was always gaping with his mouth just you know,

(15:38):
not no clueless. That when they would have cabinet meetings
that those some cabinet members had not seen the president
for more than a year. That's unfathomable to me. But yes,
that those who had not seen him for a year
near the end, when they would have those televised cabinet meetings,

(16:00):
that they would describe themselves as in total shock and disbelief. Now,
let me talk briefly about the autopin. Everybody's making a
big deal out of the autopin. I think they are.
They're they're chasing they're they're chasing their own tails. And

(16:21):
the reason for that is the use of the autopin
to sign things, even other than proclamations or letters to constituents.
You know, you write the right or birthday greetings, whatever
the kind of crap. Course mean, there's there's hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of pieces of correspondence that come out
of the White House that are autopin with President's signature.

(16:45):
I've never said anything to my My sister has a
She and Ronald Reagan shared the same birthday, and Reagan
sent her a really nice letter. It's autopin. You can
you can if you've ever had, like I had an
autopen when I was the undersecretary, you can tell an
autopin signature from a real signature because what they do

(17:10):
now autopans have vastly improved since I had You know,
when I had an autopan, it was twenty years ago.
The technology has vastly improved. But you can tell an
autopen signature from an actual signature in many different ways.
You know, every time you sign something, uh, pressure points
are different. You you know, you're it's not always exactly

(17:33):
the same. Well, autopins are all exactly the same. But
chasing this as some controversy, I'm not really sure there's
a controversy there. Explain why.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
Hey, Michael, I'm really surprised you didn't go for the
audible version of Jake Tapper's book, Original Son. I got
it the other day, and well, here's the first sentence.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
What I some books I like the audio versions, but
some books that I really want to read, I prefer hardbacks.
I hate reading on my iPad or Kendall for that
matter of tame, I just don't like them. But the

(18:22):
last thing I wanted to do was listen to Jake Tapper.
So Jake Tapper, the I think probably the first major
interview that he did post publication was, in fact, let
me look at the date of this, I think it
was with Megan Kelly, and she started, she didn't hold

(18:45):
any punches. I listened to the entire interview because having
read the book, I was curious what his reaction would
be to many of the questions that I had heard
that Megan Kelly had asked. And one of the first
questions was, and I'm just paraphrasing here is first with

(19:09):
regard to Alex Thompson, his co author. Alex had been
planning to write a book about Biden, but I forget
what the topic was. But the publisher rejected that book.
But Thompson continued to keep notes about what he observed
as he continued to report on the Biden White House

(19:32):
for Axios. So the point I'm making is he's watching, observing,
and making notes about what's happening, anticipating that he would
write a book. Now, he didn't know at the time
that he started his original book that that would get
you know, deep six by the publisher and that he'd

(19:53):
have to turn to Jake and he and Jake would
partner up to do this book. But Tapper admits that
he was doing a book too. He was going to
to keep he was keeping all these notes about what
he was observing. So these two s heads, these two
dirt bags, continue to lie as much as the administration lied.

(20:16):
So Megan's first question was, and again paraphrasing, so conservative
media was observing all of these things, Georgia Molonia at
D Day, trying to get the president to come back,
Obama leading him off the stage. And in fact, one
of the interesting parts of the book was the backstage

(20:38):
encounter that George Clooney had with Biden before they did
the you know, the interview out front with Jimmy Kimmel
or whoever it was, I don't care, and Clooney talks
about how he was literally shocked by what he saw.
So Megan goes through this whole lengthy question about we

(21:02):
all saw this, the conservative media, conservative news sources, Fox News,
an Newsmax, everybody is reporting on it, even you know,
at some point even the New York Times makes a
few comments about it.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
But you.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
And the left wing media continued to say that we
shouldn't believe our eyes. Cheap remember, cheap fakes whatever they
called some of the videos. So why is it that
we saw it but you didn't, and why didn't you
report on it?

Speaker 5 (21:43):
It's a tough and fair question. I would say that
Alex and I after election day interviewed more than two
hundred people, two hundred mostly Democratic insiders in all these
interviews were almost all of these interviews were or after
the election, and they justified to themselves what they had

(22:06):
done in terms of misrepresenting how the president was, not
just to me and Alex and other reporters, but also
just to each other.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's a subtle shift to blame. Oh, we were keeping notes, Yes,
he admits they were keeping notes, But all these insiders were,
as he says, justifying what they were hiding from us.
So what's he doing? He's trying to blame other people,

(22:38):
not himself.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
Into the world and to Democrats into the cabinet, etc.
By saying that there was this existential threat of Donald
Trump and only Joe Biden could be Donald Trump, and
that justified everything in their minds. After that existential threat
was over, because the election was over and Donald Trump won,
they were We found Alex and myself remarkably willing to
talk to us, either off record or on background or

(23:01):
in some cases on the record about what they saw.
One of the things that emerged was that there were
two bidens. One was the fine Biden, serviceable, adequate, and
the other one was as a non functioning Biden. And
that's the one we saw the night of the debate,
and that's the one we saw some clips up here
and there that you just showed. And that non functioning Biden,

(23:24):
the one that lost his train of thought in a
significant way, not in the way just that every human
loses their train of thought, but in a way that
shows that he's having trouble articulating his very views. And
the one who forgot the name of close aids, who
was not able to come up with George Clooney's name,
didn't seem to recognize him.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
All.

Speaker 5 (23:45):
That sort of thing that non functioning Biden was, according
to our reporting, showed up as far back as twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Twenty fifteen, according to our reporting, showed up as far
back as twenty fifteen.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
After the death of bo or One. Top Aid said
that that tragedy, the loss of bo was like watching
somebody pour water on sand.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
That was the effect on his psyche.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
And there were other moments twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
You hear some the her report.

Speaker 5 (24:18):
One of the reasons he came to that conclusion was
because of the recordings they heard of Joe Biden in
twenty seventeen talking to his ghostwriter, in which he was
similarly inclined. Obviously, in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, there were
other moments like that. Most of his campaign staff and
others would say that he's you look, he's seventy eight,
he's seventy nine, He has senior moments, but he's fine,
he's fine, he's fine.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, he wasn't fine.

Speaker 5 (24:39):
And throughout his presidency, that non functioning Biden would show
up more and more and more, and he was worse
and worse and worse.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Really deteriorating tremendously.

Speaker 5 (24:54):
The next time, there was a really horrible family incident,
which was when Hunter Biden's pleading all fell apart in
the summer of twenty twenty three, and then obviously in
June he was convicted, and the thought the fear of
losing his son, not to jail, but maybe to another
to a relapse, to an overdose, to a suicide, who knows,
was a very real fear, and the threat of losing

(25:18):
a third child who really just diminished him tremendously, according
to top aides. So all which is to say that
this was a deterioration, was a this was a progression.
And look, knowing what I know now.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
This is really key right here. Look knowing what I
know now, but you you kind of did. Obviously.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
I feel tremendous humility about my coverage that Laura Trump interviewed,
for example, et cetera. She saw something, she saw something
that I did not see at the time, one hundred percent.
And I own that I did ask Joe Biden to
be transparent about his health records in an interview in

(26:05):
twenty twenty I did ask him about the fact that
voters then he was thought that he power balls, and
indeed he wasn't at all.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
He wasn't transparent about it at all. So they're trying
to shift the blame. And now he's trying to claim humility,
because well, as long as I can claim humility, then
I get a pass. I learned my lesson. You know,
I read all of that as an admission, surrounded by

(26:39):
all these words that I knew what was going on,
but because of my network, because of my job the
host of what is it, the lead with Jake Tabber,
whatever is program. I mean, he's an anchor on CNN.
He's probably right now other than Wolf blitzerly, in fact,
he may be the Dean of the Sea and then

(27:00):
crew for all I know, I only Will Blitter may
be ahead of him. He's just trying to shift the blame.
This is the cabal in operation. This is precisely when
I talk about the cabal and how they're all intertwined.
All these people that he refers to, that he talked to,
that he interviewed some on the record, off the record. Well,

(27:21):
if I recall the book correctly, most of it was
off the record because they're still afraid or for whatever
reason they want to say anything, and I think they
don't want to say anything because they know precisely how
dangerous it was for the country and for come. I
think this kills I don't think she could have made it.
I don't think she could have gotten the Democrat nomination anyway.

(27:43):
But I think this kills any any chance of Kamala
Harris getting the nomination because she was an active participant
in the cover up of Joe Biden's decline. Now real quickly,
when we get back, I just want to touch on
the autopin because many people believe the autopin is some

(28:06):
sort of smoking gun that's going to destroy everything that
Biden did for four years. I think they're wrong. You know,
I could be wrong, but I just kind of think that.

Speaker 6 (28:20):
This free Palestine, pro Palestine, pro Homas wing of the
Democrat Party is going to damage the Democrat Party in
ways that we haven't seen yet and ensure that they're
a losing party going into the at least the near future.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Could be. It's all a matter of timing and how
fast things degenerate versus how quickly Republicans can get their
freaking act together and do stuff right, which is always questionable.
Real quickly. So the Department of Justice has what's called
the Office of Legal Counsel. It's basically the lawyers for

(29:02):
the lawyers, and they issued an opinion back in two
thousand and five that concluded that the use of an
auto pen to sign legislation is constitutional. And they claim
it's constitutional because Article one, section seven requires the president
to quote sign a bill to approve it, but does

(29:23):
not specify that the signature must be manually affixed. And
they go on, I mean, it's a somewhat complicated legal opinion,
but talks about how the president still needs to authorize
the use of the autopen so that we can know
the intent. Now, that gets us to the issue of Biden.
Obama used it to sign legislation. In fact, he signed

(29:47):
an extension of the Patriot Act in I think twenty
eleven twelve, I forget, I think it's twenty eleven when
he was overseas, and did he authorized it to be
signed by autopin And of course Republicans threw a fit
about it and said no, no, no, you got to sign
him in person, which I don't allow him. They could
a fed extra to him, and they could a fed
extra back. I don't get what the big deal was,

(30:09):
but anyway, he usually all appended to do it. But
here's the problem with the Republicans going after this. It
will be fairly easy for everybody in the Biden pilot Bureau,
as described in Tapper's book, to claim that, yes, the
President authorized us to do this, and then they're going

(30:30):
to go ask Biden if they could ever get him
to you agree to an interview, which he probably wouldn't,
which kills the whole issue there. But if they were
to agree to an interview, Biden could simply say, uh, yeah,
I told him they should use the pen, and they

(30:51):
always came and told me when they use the pin,
so I knew about it. How are you going to
prove that he didn't know about it? How are you
going to approve that they use it without his authorization?
How's that going to happen? How are you going to
prove the negative? So I think this chase is pure political.

(31:13):
In fact, I would offer to Congressman Comber, move on.
Move on, and if you and if you think or
believe that it's unconstitutional for the president to sign legislation
or an executive voter with an auto pen, then pass
a law you have a majority in the House in
the Senate, pass a law that requires the President to

(31:36):
do that, and then let that get to the US
Supreme Court to be tested. Otherwise, focus on taxes and
spending and defense.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Please