March 11, 2024 • 40 mins
Between Super Tuesday and the State of the Union address, a lot has happened in American politics this last week.
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(00:01):
I'm Stephen Monteeth and I'm here totalk about politics in the United States for
the week of March the third.I've I skipped over the week of the
twenty fifth of February. It's Ido that sometimes. I sometimes just take
(00:25):
little breaks. It's I don't liketo get into it. But this one
was shorter than most. It wasonly a week and a day. But
I'm going to catch you up onthis last week. There wasn't too much
going on in the week before.The week of the twenty fifth. There
was a big ruling on in vitrofertilization in the state of Alabama, but
(00:53):
I'm going to cover that in aseparate podcast because there is a lot to
cover on that issue and I don'treally think I could squeeze it into this
one, especially since a lot happenedthis last week as well. First of
all, it's March now, andMarch is Women's History month, and a
(01:18):
woman actually made history in the UnitedStates this last week. Nikki Haley became
the first woman to win a Republicanprimary. See Super Tuesday was this last
Tuesday, Tuesday the fifth, andthere were sixteen states and territories that voted
(01:47):
in the in either the Democratic orRepublican primaries or caucuses that were held,
and Nikki Haley won in Vermont.She got just over fifty percent of the
vote. Donald Trump got only aboutforty six percent. That's that would be
(02:13):
a more embarrassing loss if it were, frankly, if it were a bigger
state than Vermont, or if justif it were a different state than Vermont.
It's different in Vermont. Sorry,Vermont. I don't mean anything by
that. But anyway, like Isay, there were quite a few that
(02:38):
there were quite a few contests thattook place that day, including here in
the Commonwealth of Virginia. Now Ivoted for Nikki Haley here in Virginia,
and I'll tell you why. Firstof all, let me make it clear
(02:59):
that I'm not a Republican, I'mnot a Democrat. I'm not a member
of any political party at all.I'm not even registered as a Democrat really.
But here in Virginia, you canvote in either primary. You can
(03:21):
when you show up on election day, you can pick whether you want to
vote in the Democratic primary or youwant to vote in the Republican primary.
And I chose to vote for NICKIHayley. I don't support her. Our
politics are there's too much of adivide between us. If she actually did
(03:44):
become the Republican nominee, I wouldnot vote for her in the general.
Plus I have I have some questionsabout her character, but we don't have
to get into all of that.You can probably guess why I voted for
her. It was so I couldvote against Donald Trump. Now, as
(04:05):
you may also have guessed, shedid not win in Virginia, nor did
she win in any of the otherstates that voted on Super Tuesday except for
mont Like I said, Trump wonpretty much everything else. And after he
(04:27):
after Super Tuesday, Nikki Haley decidedto ent her campaign or suspend it.
Rather, you don't really end apresidential campaign. You always suspend it for
some reason, I guess in case, in case the nominee drops out for
(04:48):
some reason or another and they haveto pick somebody else, you can say,
well, I'm here, I atleast have more delegates than Chris Christy.
So I didn't. So I didn'tvote in order to secure her candidacy,
(05:10):
and I wouldn't vote for her inthe general. I voted in protest
of the fact that Donald Trump,a man who is under indictment in four
separate jurisdictions for ninety one separate felonies, and who may end up being indicted
(05:31):
for even more judging by how thingsare going in Arizona right now they're doing
their own election interference investigation, andMichigan too, I believe so he could
end up with even more felony indictmentsin the future. Between that and his
(05:53):
violation of his oath of office onJanuary sixth, twenty twenty one, I
will not I cannot wait to registermy protest of the fact that he is
even allowed to run. And yes, according to the US Supreme Court,
he is allowed to run. LastMonday the fourth, when they were when
(06:19):
the Supreme Court got together, theyfinally ruled on whether Colorado or any other
individual states could decide on their ownto keep Trump off of their state ballots.
(06:39):
And they decided unanimously, which Iwould never have guessed. Ever,
they decided unanimously to allow Donald Trumpto stay on the ballots. Now,
I mean, they ruled basically thatCongress needs to decide whether or not a
(07:04):
person gets disqualified under the terms ofthe fourteenth Amendment. But the Fourteenth Amendment
does not say that Congress needs tomake that decision, and the tenth Amendment
says that any power is not explicitlygranted to the federal government are reserved for
the states. So I I cannotunderstand why they would decide that Congress has
(07:31):
this power that was not explicitly grantedto it. It should be the state's
decision. But the Supreme Court decidedthat they ruled that Congress should be the
ones to disqualify people under the termsof the fourteenth Amendment. And since Congress
(07:53):
did not, Trump stays on theballot. And since Trump is on the
ballot, I and every voter whowho loves this country and believes in the
rule of law should take every opportunityto protest the fact that he is allowed
(08:18):
to continue running. So I votedagainst him in the Virginia Republican primary.
It didn't make any real difference,Like I said, but I've always believed
that you should vote regardless of whetherit makes a difference, because it's your
(08:43):
vote, it's your voice, andif it's the only thing you have,
if it's the only way to showpeople how you feel, then they can't
take it away from you. Youshould all ways use it, even if
it doesn't always work. Now,just a little word about the vote totals
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on Super Tuesday. Obviously some peoplewere protest voting against Joe Biden as well.
I mean, he's he's the president. No president who has ever run
for re election has failed to berenominated by his party. So it's not
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like we can expect the Democratic primariesto come up with any other candidate than
Joe Biden. But that but likeI say, that didn't stop people from
protest voting. And the way itthe way it shook out. The results
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from Super Tuesday, Joe Biden gotabout seventy percent to about ninety percent of
the vote in each state, soabout so about ten to thirty percent of
people in each state registered some kindof protest vote against him. He got
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eighty nine percent here in Virginia.The one outlier was the American Samoa caucus,
in which in which only ninety onepeople total participated and some guy that
no one's ever heard of got fiftyone votes because he kept doing he kept
(10:43):
doing teleconferences with you know, peoplein American Samoa asking them to vote for
him, and and he got fiftyone votes and Joe Biden got forty,
So I'm sure that'll be an interestingfootnote in presidential history. And by comparison,
Donald Trump's totals of the vote rangedfrom about sixty percent to about eighty
(11:09):
percent, So he lost about fortyor about twenty to about forty percent of
the vote in just about every state. The highest percentage he got was from
Alaska, where he got eighty sevenpercent of the vote. He got sixty
three percent of the vote here inVirginia, and like I said, he
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lost Vermont to Nikki Haley. Sowhile people have been saying for a long
time that that voters don't want tosee a rehash of Biden versus Trump,
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they don't want to rematch between thetwo of them. If they really didn't
want to see it, then theyreally should be going out to vote.
Because Trump's still getting sixty to eightypercent of Republican votes and Joe Biden still
getting seventy to ninety percent of Democraticvotes. If you don't want to see
(12:20):
them have a rematch this fall,then you need to vote. Like I
said, it's your voice. Yougot to speak up. Okay, now,
Like I said, my vote onTuesday was against Donald Trump. That's
(12:43):
why I voted the way I did. But you shouldn't think from that that
when I vote in November that I'lljust be voting against Trump, because I
do actually think that Joe Biden shouldbe re elected. And the reason I
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do is because of what happened thislast Thursday. He President Biden gave his
State of the Union Address, theyearly address that the president gives before the
full United States Congress. It's anopportunity for the president to get up in
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front of in front of all allof the congressmen and Senators and Supreme Court,
and of course the American people aswell, and talk about how things
stand in the United States and theworld and what he intends to do about
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it. He talks about what he'sdone, what he plans to do,
what he wants to do, andwhat he wants Congress to do. Now,
now, a lot of people havebeen talking about Joseph Biden's age.
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He's eighty one years old, andthey like to talk about how he avoids
public appearances, and he stutters andhe stammers and he mixes things up.
And they were expecting the same thingto happen at the State of the Union.
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But while he may have muttered alittle bit here and there, he
gave more than an hour long speechthat was that was so focused and so
fiery in the name, in thewords of a lot of people who watched
it, that that a lot ofpeople were wondering, Hell, hey,
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where's Sleepy Joe, as Donald Trumplikes to call him. You know,
where's the old man that you know, we've that we were told has been
languishing in the White House for thelast three years. Where's the where's the
doddering old fool who who can't evenremember where he is? He was not
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in front of that microphone. JoeBiden gave a fantastic speech. Now,
some people say that it was apartisan speech. It's true. He did
call out things that Republican members ofCongress have done and have promised to do.
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He did call out things that hispredecessor, Donald Trump has done in
office. And some people say it'sinappropriate, that it sounded like a campaign
speech and that State of the Unionshouldn't be about a campaign speech. But
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really, what should a State ofthe Union be? And like I said,
it's a chance for the president totalk about the state of things in
America and what he intends to doabout them. And like I said,
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when you've got Congress in front ofyou, you got to call them to
action. And as a simple rhetoricaldevice, you draw a contrast between what
you want to do and what otherpeople want to do. I mean,
that's speech, that speech giving oneO one. You know, you get
(17:08):
up there, you say, thisis what I want to do, this
is what other people want to do. He would say, he would say
what Republicans in Congress have have triedto do, what proposals they've put forward,
and Republicans and there'd be booing fromthe crowd, presumably from Republicans,
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and he'd say, no, that'san actual proposal that Republicans in Congress have
put forward. And he would talkabout about differences between his policies and Trump's
policies, which you know, againit's a way to emphasize the differences between
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his administrations and past administrations. Henever actually mentioned Trump by name, by
the way, he doesn't. Hewould keep calling him my predecessor, which
emphasizes that he is drawing a distinctionbetween his presidency and Trump's presidency. And
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he would mention it in instances likewhere he would talk about the role of
the United States in standing behind Ukraine, providing them with the means to stand
up to Vladimir Putin to continue theirdefense of their country. He would talk
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about America's role as a world leaderand how he believes in the kind of
leadership that FDR and Reagan presented,but not in kind of leadership that Trump
presented. And he would and hewould talk about NATO. Of course,
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he called it the strongest military alliancethe world has ever seen. He noted
that one of his guests at thespeech was the Prime Minister of Sweden,
ol Christensen. Sweden had just joinedNATO earlier that same day, so he
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so he talked about how the UnitedStates needs to continue its role in NATO.
And he contrasted that with things thatTrump has said about how if,
for example, a NATO country,this is Trump, this is things that
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Trump himself has said that if aNATO country would get behind on its on
its obligations, that we would nolonger defend them against an enemy, and
that and that's just really it's reallyimportant to draw that kind of contrasts when
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Joe Biden says that we're not goingto retreat from our role as a world
leader. When he says that we'renot going to walk away, that we're
not going to bow down, thathistory is watching us, and then he
segued to say, just like historywatched us three years ago on January sixth,
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and he got more booze from thecrowd at that point. But he
reminds, but he reminds Congress thatmost of them were there that day and
that they saw with their own eyeswhat took place that day. So it's
not like so it's not like hewas trying to gaslight anybody into believing something.
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He was just reminding them that theywere all there and that they shouldn't
be trying to bury the truth aboutJanuary sixth. He said, this is
the moment to speak the truth.You can't love your country only when you
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win. It's a variation on atheme, a theme that presidents often put
out there that says that basically theysay, you can't be just president of
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the people who voted for you,or you can't love only the parts of
the country that support you. Youhave to be president of the full country.
For him to say you can't loveyour country only when you win,
that that drew the starkest contrast Ithink between him and Trump, and he
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went on to say, I askall of you, without regard to party,
to join together and defend democracy.Remember your oath of office is to
defend against all threats foreign and domestic, respect free and fair elections, restore
trust in our institutions, and makeclear that political violence has no place in
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America. Even the Republican Speaker ofthe House Mike Johnson, had to applaud
when he said that, you seewhen you're when the president is up there
giving the speech, the Vice presidentis sitting behind him to his right,
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and the Speaker of the House sitsbehind him to his left, and Speaker
Mike Johnson had some interesting responses tosections of his speech. You could see
him sometimes he would be shaking hishead, or he'd be trying to not
shake his head. You can seehim struggling. At times. He would
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have like this this weird smirk attimes when the President would talk, and
then you would see him applauding.Sometimes sometimes he would applaud kind of tepidly.
Sometimes his hands would be just outsideof the camera, but you could
tell he was still clapping a littlebit. Sometimes his hands would be right
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out in front and you could telleverybody could see clapping, and and I
don't know, it was kind ofhard for me to tell if he was
if he was if he was deliberatelydeciding when to clap and when to shake
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his head, or if it wasgenuine reactions on his part, because Speaker
Johnson told before before the State ofthe Union, he told Republicans in Congress
that he didn't want anybody heckling thepresident. It's been it's been an issue
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in the past, both with JoeBiden and with other presidents. They've been
heckled at times by members of Congress. And he said that he didn't want
anybody in the Republican Congress to beto be heckling. But but at the
same time, he, like Isaid, he's just up there shaking his
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head sometimes and it's it's kind ofsilent heckling. It's like, like,
dude, do you you remember thatthe camera's on here? Right? Yeah,
he could. The President covered alot of stuff during the State of
the Union. He recovered, hecovered a lot of issues. He covered
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the IVF ruling in Alabama. Uh, Like I said, I'll be getting
into that in a separate podcast,but he he also talked about how about
how it was part of a largerissue where the Supreme Court just a couple
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of years ago had overturned Rophy Wadeand basically erased abortion protections for women in
the country, and and the likeI said, the Supreme Court was there
and they were doing their best toappear nonpartisan at all. They didn't clap
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or boo or shake their heads throughoutthe entire speech. As far as I
could tell. It's like they wereIt's like they were chess pieces, just
sitting there, and it's like,well, why bother show up at all?
But anyway, this, like Isaid, the President was talking about
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abortion, and he talked about Hepointed out that there were many in Congress
who wanted to enact a national abortionban, and he said to them,
the women in this country are notwithout electoral or political power. I believe
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he was quoting the Supreme Court whenhe said that. And he said,
you're about to realize just how muchyou were right about that. Those bragging
about the overturning of Roe v.Wade have no clue about the power of
women. But then he pointed outthat later on in twenty twenty two,
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and then again in twenty twenty three, women did indeed vote when abortion rights
were on the ballot, and hepromised that we'll see it again this year.
And he promised that if we geta fully democratic controlled Congress that and
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if he's reelected, that he willmake Roe v. Wade the law of
the land. He went on thento He went on then to talk about
a bunch of other stuff. It'sreally a it's really a long speech.
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Like I said, it was.It was over an hour, and I
don't have time to get into allof it or even to highlight a lot
of it. But like I said, it's one of the best speeches I've
heard. And I've listened to alot of State of the Union addresses.
They're all written by good speech writers. Of course, the White House only
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hires the best, well the bestthat they think, and and I've listened
to other political speeches as well,and I think this is one of the
best ones because it showed us theevolution of Joe Biden. Like I said,
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a lot of people talked about himbeing old, and he brought it
up himself near the end of thespeech. He talked about about how being
old has allowed him to view alot of a lot of how history has
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shaped the United States and how it'sshaped him as well. He was around
when Martin Luther King Junior was alive. He was around for a lot of
different wars and a lot of alot of public health crises in the in
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the United States and the world.He knows Vladimir Putin. He's written a
lot of laws as senator, andhe's and he pointed out that he has
been privileged to be part of twoseparate administrations, one that had the first
(30:19):
black president of the United States andone now that has the first black woman
vice president, and he's He saidthat, He said that being around that
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long has given him the opportunity toto grow as a person and as a
servant of the people, because that'swhat the president should be. They shouldn't
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be somebody who wants power. Theyshouldn't be somebody who's there to to just
make the law and enforce the lawaccording to, you know, their own
personal whims and desires. It shouldbe somebody who understands the value of service.
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And he's been in service for basicallyhis entire adult life. I four
years ago when Joe Biden was runningfor president. The primaries were still taking
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place, and I actually had intendedto vote for Pete boodhag Edge. I
wanted him to be the president.And I still believe that if he had
been elected, he would have beenan outstanding one and perhaps he will someday.
But but when Pete boodag Edge leftthe race, he endorsed Joe Biden,
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and I started uh and I startedredirecting my attention to the kind of
person Joe Biden is. I had. I had sort of sort of an
opinion about him at the time,not a real firm one, but but
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there was a lot going on andI was certain of and I was certain
of just one thing about him,that he was better than the remaining Democratic
candidates. It wasn't it wasn't enoughto vote for him yet at the time,
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I was just voting against other candidatesthat I didn't think would be as
good. And then at the twentytwenty Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden gave
a speech and I covered this onmy podcast. At the time, listening
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to him then was a lot likelistening to him now. There were concerns
back then that he was too old, and that he was just running out
of ego or whatever, and thatwhen people voted for him, they would
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just be voting against Donald Trump.So history's kind of repeating itself for a
lot of people now, and itrepeated itself for me, because at the
twenty twenty convention, Joe Biden gavehis speech, he gave his acceptance speech
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for the Democratic nomination, and Iremember listening to it and listening to him
speak so clearly and so forcefully,and so knowledgeably and so wisely, so
compassionately, and so full of strength, that I knew then that I wouldn't
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just be voting against Donald Trump.I knew then that I would be voting
for Joe Biden. And it wasthe same thing again this last Thursday.
I voted against Donald Trump in theprimaries. But then I listened to Joe
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Biden speak at the State of theUnion, and I heard a man speak
up there whom I could support,whom I could actually cast a vote for.
See, I've voted for a lotof different people over the years.
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Like I said, I'm not amember of any party. I've voted for
Republicans, I've voted for Democrats.I've voted for independents, and each time
it's somebody. It's been somebody thatI personally believed in, somebody who could
inspire me, somebody who could makeme believe that they were actually the right
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person for the job. It wasn'tI'm sure there were a couple of times
when it was a protest vote againsta particular candidate, but the people that
I picked were always people that Icould believe in, people that when I
(36:21):
listened to them talk, and whenI read what they had to say in
their posts and in their speeches,that it actually made me believe in them.
A lot of people think I'm acynic, and I've given them plenty
(36:43):
of reason to think that. I'msure, but I'm not cynical. If
I were, I wouldn't even havethis podcast. I raise my voice because
I believe it's important. And whenI hear a politic speak, somebody who
inspires me, somebody who makes mebelieve that they are the right person for
(37:07):
the job, that's when I supportthem for it, and I support Joe
Biden. I encourage all of youto go and find the recording of the
State of the Union. It's onit's on YouTube. It's on various various
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news organization's accounts. I watched iton PBS's YouTube channel. It's it's over
an hour long, like I said, but it's well worth listening to.
And like I say, he doeshe does stammer a little bit here and
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there, but not so much thatyou'd really notice it unless you were listening
for it. And if he doesmake a mistake, he notices it,
and he corrects it, and heand if your politics doesn't allow you to
(38:12):
vote for somebody who believes in thethings that Joe Biden does, abortion rights,
unions, lots of other things thathe spoke about, then at least
finds somebody that you do believe in, not somebody that you're voting for because
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they have made you angry or tappedinto your hatred of the other side.
Somebody who, when you listen towhat they have to say, makes you
think this person is a good leader, this person cares, this person is
(39:00):
about more than just themselves. Ican never support somebody if I thought they
were in it just for themselves.Fortunately I don't have to make that choice,
(39:24):
not this year. There were otherthings that happened this week, but
but there's not much time left onthis episode anyway, and you know those
were the big ones Super Tuesday Stateof the Union. And like I said,
(39:47):
I'll be getting into abortion and IVFin a separate podcast, but for
now, that's pretty much all Igot for you. Thank you for listening.
I'll talk to you more later
I'm Stephen Monteeth and I'm here totalk about politics in the United States for
the week of March the third.I've I skipped over the week of the
twenty fifth of February. It's Ido that sometimes. I sometimes just take
(00:25):
little breaks. It's I don't liketo get into it. But this one
was shorter than most. It wasonly a week and a day. But
I'm going to catch you up onthis last week. There wasn't too much
going on in the week before.The week of the twenty fifth. There
was a big ruling on in vitrofertilization in the state of Alabama, but
(00:53):
I'm going to cover that in aseparate podcast because there is a lot to
cover on that issue and I don'treally think I could squeeze it into this
one, especially since a lot happenedthis last week as well. First of
all, it's March now, andMarch is Women's History month, and a
(01:18):
woman actually made history in the UnitedStates this last week. Nikki Haley became
the first woman to win a Republicanprimary. See Super Tuesday was this last
Tuesday, Tuesday the fifth, andthere were sixteen states and territories that voted
(01:47):
in the in either the Democratic orRepublican primaries or caucuses that were held,
and Nikki Haley won in Vermont.She got just over fifty percent of the
vote. Donald Trump got only aboutforty six percent. That's that would be
(02:13):
a more embarrassing loss if it were, frankly, if it were a bigger
state than Vermont, or if justif it were a different state than Vermont.
It's different in Vermont. Sorry,Vermont. I don't mean anything by
that. But anyway, like Isay, there were quite a few that
(02:38):
there were quite a few contests thattook place that day, including here in
the Commonwealth of Virginia. Now Ivoted for Nikki Haley here in Virginia,
and I'll tell you why. Firstof all, let me make it clear
(02:59):
that I'm not a Republican, I'mnot a Democrat. I'm not a member
of any political party at all.I'm not even registered as a Democrat really.
But here in Virginia, you canvote in either primary. You can
(03:21):
when you show up on election day, you can pick whether you want to
vote in the Democratic primary or youwant to vote in the Republican primary.
And I chose to vote for NICKIHayley. I don't support her. Our
politics are there's too much of adivide between us. If she actually did
(03:44):
become the Republican nominee, I wouldnot vote for her in the general.
Plus I have I have some questionsabout her character, but we don't have
to get into all of that.You can probably guess why I voted for
her. It was so I couldvote against Donald Trump. Now, as
(04:05):
you may also have guessed, shedid not win in Virginia, nor did
she win in any of the otherstates that voted on Super Tuesday except for
mont Like I said, Trump wonpretty much everything else. And after he
(04:27):
after Super Tuesday, Nikki Haley decidedto ent her campaign or suspend it.
Rather, you don't really end apresidential campaign. You always suspend it for
some reason, I guess in case, in case the nominee drops out for
(04:48):
some reason or another and they haveto pick somebody else, you can say,
well, I'm here, I atleast have more delegates than Chris Christy.
So I didn't. So I didn'tvote in order to secure her candidacy,
(05:10):
and I wouldn't vote for her inthe general. I voted in protest
of the fact that Donald Trump,a man who is under indictment in four
separate jurisdictions for ninety one separate felonies, and who may end up being indicted
(05:31):
for even more judging by how thingsare going in Arizona right now they're doing
their own election interference investigation, andMichigan too, I believe so he could
end up with even more felony indictmentsin the future. Between that and his
(05:53):
violation of his oath of office onJanuary sixth, twenty twenty one, I
will not I cannot wait to registermy protest of the fact that he is
even allowed to run. And yes, according to the US Supreme Court,
he is allowed to run. LastMonday the fourth, when they were when
(06:19):
the Supreme Court got together, theyfinally ruled on whether Colorado or any other
individual states could decide on their ownto keep Trump off of their state ballots.
(06:39):
And they decided unanimously, which Iwould never have guessed. Ever,
they decided unanimously to allow Donald Trumpto stay on the ballots. Now,
I mean, they ruled basically thatCongress needs to decide whether or not a
(07:04):
person gets disqualified under the terms ofthe fourteenth Amendment. But the Fourteenth Amendment
does not say that Congress needs tomake that decision, and the tenth Amendment
says that any power is not explicitlygranted to the federal government are reserved for
the states. So I I cannotunderstand why they would decide that Congress has
(07:31):
this power that was not explicitly grantedto it. It should be the state's
decision. But the Supreme Court decidedthat they ruled that Congress should be the
ones to disqualify people under the termsof the fourteenth Amendment. And since Congress
(07:53):
did not, Trump stays on theballot. And since Trump is on the
ballot, I and every voter whowho loves this country and believes in the
rule of law should take every opportunityto protest the fact that he is allowed
(08:18):
to continue running. So I votedagainst him in the Virginia Republican primary.
It didn't make any real difference,Like I said, but I've always believed
that you should vote regardless of whetherit makes a difference, because it's your
(08:43):
vote, it's your voice, andif it's the only thing you have,
if it's the only way to showpeople how you feel, then they can't
take it away from you. Youshould all ways use it, even if
it doesn't always work. Now,just a little word about the vote totals
(09:13):
on Super Tuesday. Obviously some peoplewere protest voting against Joe Biden as well.
I mean, he's he's the president. No president who has ever run
for re election has failed to berenominated by his party. So it's not
(09:39):
like we can expect the Democratic primariesto come up with any other candidate than
Joe Biden. But that but likeI say, that didn't stop people from
protest voting. And the way itthe way it shook out. The results
(10:01):
from Super Tuesday, Joe Biden gotabout seventy percent to about ninety percent of
the vote in each state, soabout so about ten to thirty percent of
people in each state registered some kindof protest vote against him. He got
(10:22):
eighty nine percent here in Virginia.The one outlier was the American Samoa caucus,
in which in which only ninety onepeople total participated and some guy that
no one's ever heard of got fiftyone votes because he kept doing he kept
(10:43):
doing teleconferences with you know, peoplein American Samoa asking them to vote for
him, and and he got fiftyone votes and Joe Biden got forty,
So I'm sure that'll be an interestingfootnote in presidential history. And by comparison,
Donald Trump's totals of the vote rangedfrom about sixty percent to about eighty
(11:09):
percent, So he lost about fortyor about twenty to about forty percent of
the vote in just about every state. The highest percentage he got was from
Alaska, where he got eighty sevenpercent of the vote. He got sixty
three percent of the vote here inVirginia, and like I said, he
(11:33):
lost Vermont to Nikki Haley. Sowhile people have been saying for a long
time that that voters don't want tosee a rehash of Biden versus Trump,
(11:56):
they don't want to rematch between thetwo of them. If they really didn't
want to see it, then theyreally should be going out to vote.
Because Trump's still getting sixty to eightypercent of Republican votes and Joe Biden still
getting seventy to ninety percent of Democraticvotes. If you don't want to see
(12:20):
them have a rematch this fall,then you need to vote. Like I
said, it's your voice. Yougot to speak up. Okay, now,
Like I said, my vote onTuesday was against Donald Trump. That's
(12:43):
why I voted the way I did. But you shouldn't think from that that
when I vote in November that I'lljust be voting against Trump, because I
do actually think that Joe Biden shouldbe re elected. And the reason I
(13:09):
do is because of what happened thislast Thursday. He President Biden gave his
State of the Union Address, theyearly address that the president gives before the
full United States Congress. It's anopportunity for the president to get up in
(13:35):
front of in front of all allof the congressmen and Senators and Supreme Court,
and of course the American people aswell, and talk about how things
stand in the United States and theworld and what he intends to do about
(13:58):
it. He talks about what he'sdone, what he plans to do,
what he wants to do, andwhat he wants Congress to do. Now,
now, a lot of people havebeen talking about Joseph Biden's age.
(14:22):
He's eighty one years old, andthey like to talk about how he avoids
public appearances, and he stutters andhe stammers and he mixes things up.
And they were expecting the same thingto happen at the State of the Union.
(14:46):
But while he may have muttered alittle bit here and there, he
gave more than an hour long speechthat was that was so focused and so
fiery in the name, in thewords of a lot of people who watched
it, that that a lot ofpeople were wondering, Hell, hey,
(15:09):
where's Sleepy Joe, as Donald Trumplikes to call him. You know,
where's the old man that you know, we've that we were told has been
languishing in the White House for thelast three years. Where's the where's the
doddering old fool who who can't evenremember where he is? He was not
(15:35):
in front of that microphone. JoeBiden gave a fantastic speech. Now,
some people say that it was apartisan speech. It's true. He did
call out things that Republican members ofCongress have done and have promised to do.
(16:00):
He did call out things that hispredecessor, Donald Trump has done in
office. And some people say it'sinappropriate, that it sounded like a campaign
speech and that State of the Unionshouldn't be about a campaign speech. But
(16:22):
really, what should a State ofthe Union be? And like I said,
it's a chance for the president totalk about the state of things in
America and what he intends to doabout them. And like I said,
(16:47):
when you've got Congress in front ofyou, you got to call them to
action. And as a simple rhetoricaldevice, you draw a contrast between what
you want to do and what otherpeople want to do. I mean,
that's speech, that speech giving oneO one. You know, you get
(17:08):
up there, you say, thisis what I want to do, this
is what other people want to do. He would say, he would say
what Republicans in Congress have have triedto do, what proposals they've put forward,
and Republicans and there'd be booing fromthe crowd, presumably from Republicans,
(17:33):
and he'd say, no, that'san actual proposal that Republicans in Congress have
put forward. And he would talkabout about differences between his policies and Trump's
policies, which you know, againit's a way to emphasize the differences between
(17:56):
his administrations and past administrations. Henever actually mentioned Trump by name, by
the way, he doesn't. Hewould keep calling him my predecessor, which
emphasizes that he is drawing a distinctionbetween his presidency and Trump's presidency. And
(18:18):
he would mention it in instances likewhere he would talk about the role of
the United States in standing behind Ukraine, providing them with the means to stand
up to Vladimir Putin to continue theirdefense of their country. He would talk
(18:44):
about America's role as a world leaderand how he believes in the kind of
leadership that FDR and Reagan presented,but not in kind of leadership that Trump
presented. And he would and hewould talk about NATO. Of course,
(19:11):
he called it the strongest military alliancethe world has ever seen. He noted
that one of his guests at thespeech was the Prime Minister of Sweden,
ol Christensen. Sweden had just joinedNATO earlier that same day, so he
(19:33):
so he talked about how the UnitedStates needs to continue its role in NATO.
And he contrasted that with things thatTrump has said about how if,
for example, a NATO country,this is Trump, this is things that
(19:53):
Trump himself has said that if aNATO country would get behind on its on
its obligations, that we would nolonger defend them against an enemy, and
that and that's just really it's reallyimportant to draw that kind of contrasts when
(20:19):
Joe Biden says that we're not goingto retreat from our role as a world
leader. When he says that we'renot going to walk away, that we're
not going to bow down, thathistory is watching us, and then he
segued to say, just like historywatched us three years ago on January sixth,
(20:44):
and he got more booze from thecrowd at that point. But he
reminds, but he reminds Congress thatmost of them were there that day and
that they saw with their own eyeswhat took place that day. So it's
not like so it's not like hewas trying to gaslight anybody into believing something.
(21:07):
He was just reminding them that theywere all there and that they shouldn't
be trying to bury the truth aboutJanuary sixth. He said, this is
the moment to speak the truth.You can't love your country only when you
(21:30):
win. It's a variation on atheme, a theme that presidents often put
out there that says that basically theysay, you can't be just president of
(21:51):
the people who voted for you,or you can't love only the parts of
the country that support you. Youhave to be president of the full country.
For him to say you can't loveyour country only when you win,
that that drew the starkest contrast Ithink between him and Trump, and he
(22:22):
went on to say, I askall of you, without regard to party,
to join together and defend democracy.Remember your oath of office is to
defend against all threats foreign and domestic, respect free and fair elections, restore
trust in our institutions, and makeclear that political violence has no place in
(22:48):
America. Even the Republican Speaker ofthe House Mike Johnson, had to applaud
when he said that, you seewhen you're when the president is up there
giving the speech, the Vice presidentis sitting behind him to his right,
(23:11):
and the Speaker of the House sitsbehind him to his left, and Speaker
Mike Johnson had some interesting responses tosections of his speech. You could see
him sometimes he would be shaking hishead, or he'd be trying to not
shake his head. You can seehim struggling. At times. He would
(23:34):
have like this this weird smirk attimes when the President would talk, and
then you would see him applauding.Sometimes sometimes he would applaud kind of tepidly.
Sometimes his hands would be just outsideof the camera, but you could
tell he was still clapping a littlebit. Sometimes his hands would be right
(23:56):
out in front and you could telleverybody could see clapping, and and I
don't know, it was kind ofhard for me to tell if he was
if he was if he was deliberatelydeciding when to clap and when to shake
(24:22):
his head, or if it wasgenuine reactions on his part, because Speaker
Johnson told before before the State ofthe Union, he told Republicans in Congress
that he didn't want anybody heckling thepresident. It's been it's been an issue
(24:44):
in the past, both with JoeBiden and with other presidents. They've been
heckled at times by members of Congress. And he said that he didn't want
anybody in the Republican Congress to beto be heckling. But but at the
same time, he, like Isaid, he's just up there shaking his
(25:07):
head sometimes and it's it's kind ofsilent heckling. It's like, like,
dude, do you you remember thatthe camera's on here? Right? Yeah,
he could. The President covered alot of stuff during the State of
the Union. He recovered, hecovered a lot of issues. He covered
(25:30):
the IVF ruling in Alabama. Uh, Like I said, I'll be getting
into that in a separate podcast,but he he also talked about how about
how it was part of a largerissue where the Supreme Court just a couple
(25:56):
of years ago had overturned Rophy Wadeand basically erased abortion protections for women in
the country, and and the likeI said, the Supreme Court was there
and they were doing their best toappear nonpartisan at all. They didn't clap
(26:22):
or boo or shake their heads throughoutthe entire speech. As far as I
could tell. It's like they wereIt's like they were chess pieces, just
sitting there, and it's like,well, why bother show up at all?
But anyway, this, like Isaid, the President was talking about
(26:48):
abortion, and he talked about Hepointed out that there were many in Congress
who wanted to enact a national abortionban, and he said to them,
the women in this country are notwithout electoral or political power. I believe
(27:14):
he was quoting the Supreme Court whenhe said that. And he said,
you're about to realize just how muchyou were right about that. Those bragging
about the overturning of Roe v.Wade have no clue about the power of
women. But then he pointed outthat later on in twenty twenty two,
(27:37):
and then again in twenty twenty three, women did indeed vote when abortion rights
were on the ballot, and hepromised that we'll see it again this year.
And he promised that if we geta fully democratic controlled Congress that and
(28:04):
if he's reelected, that he willmake Roe v. Wade the law of
the land. He went on thento He went on then to talk about
a bunch of other stuff. It'sreally a it's really a long speech.
(28:26):
Like I said, it was.It was over an hour, and I
don't have time to get into allof it or even to highlight a lot
of it. But like I said, it's one of the best speeches I've
heard. And I've listened to alot of State of the Union addresses.
They're all written by good speech writers. Of course, the White House only
(28:48):
hires the best, well the bestthat they think, and and I've listened
to other political speeches as well,and I think this is one of the
best ones because it showed us theevolution of Joe Biden. Like I said,
(29:12):
a lot of people talked about himbeing old, and he brought it
up himself near the end of thespeech. He talked about about how being
old has allowed him to view alot of a lot of how history has
(29:34):
shaped the United States and how it'sshaped him as well. He was around
when Martin Luther King Junior was alive. He was around for a lot of
different wars and a lot of alot of public health crises in the in
(29:56):
the United States and the world.He knows Vladimir Putin. He's written a
lot of laws as senator, andhe's and he pointed out that he has
been privileged to be part of twoseparate administrations, one that had the first
(30:19):
black president of the United States andone now that has the first black woman
vice president, and he's He saidthat, He said that being around that
(30:41):
long has given him the opportunity toto grow as a person and as a
servant of the people, because that'swhat the president should be. They shouldn't
(31:02):
be somebody who wants power. Theyshouldn't be somebody who's there to to just
make the law and enforce the lawaccording to, you know, their own
personal whims and desires. It shouldbe somebody who understands the value of service.
(31:26):
And he's been in service for basicallyhis entire adult life. I four
years ago when Joe Biden was runningfor president. The primaries were still taking
(31:52):
place, and I actually had intendedto vote for Pete boodhag Edge. I
wanted him to be the president.And I still believe that if he had
been elected, he would have beenan outstanding one and perhaps he will someday.
But but when Pete boodag Edge leftthe race, he endorsed Joe Biden,
(32:21):
and I started uh and I startedredirecting my attention to the kind of
person Joe Biden is. I had. I had sort of sort of an
opinion about him at the time,not a real firm one, but but
(32:46):
there was a lot going on andI was certain of and I was certain
of just one thing about him,that he was better than the remaining Democratic
candidates. It wasn't it wasn't enoughto vote for him yet at the time,
(33:09):
I was just voting against other candidatesthat I didn't think would be as
good. And then at the twentytwenty Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden gave
a speech and I covered this onmy podcast. At the time, listening
(33:31):
to him then was a lot likelistening to him now. There were concerns
back then that he was too old, and that he was just running out
of ego or whatever, and thatwhen people voted for him, they would
(33:51):
just be voting against Donald Trump.So history's kind of repeating itself for a
lot of people now, and itrepeated itself for me, because at the
twenty twenty convention, Joe Biden gavehis speech, he gave his acceptance speech
(34:12):
for the Democratic nomination, and Iremember listening to it and listening to him
speak so clearly and so forcefully,and so knowledgeably and so wisely, so
compassionately, and so full of strength, that I knew then that I wouldn't
(34:44):
just be voting against Donald Trump.I knew then that I would be voting
for Joe Biden. And it wasthe same thing again this last Thursday.
I voted against Donald Trump in theprimaries. But then I listened to Joe
(35:09):
Biden speak at the State of theUnion, and I heard a man speak
up there whom I could support,whom I could actually cast a vote for.
See, I've voted for a lotof different people over the years.
(35:30):
Like I said, I'm not amember of any party. I've voted for
Republicans, I've voted for Democrats.I've voted for independents, and each time
it's somebody. It's been somebody thatI personally believed in, somebody who could
inspire me, somebody who could makeme believe that they were actually the right
(35:57):
person for the job. It wasn'tI'm sure there were a couple of times
when it was a protest vote againsta particular candidate, but the people that
I picked were always people that Icould believe in, people that when I
(36:21):
listened to them talk, and whenI read what they had to say in
their posts and in their speeches,that it actually made me believe in them.
A lot of people think I'm acynic, and I've given them plenty
(36:43):
of reason to think that. I'msure, but I'm not cynical. If
I were, I wouldn't even havethis podcast. I raise my voice because
I believe it's important. And whenI hear a politic speak, somebody who
inspires me, somebody who makes mebelieve that they are the right person for
(37:07):
the job, that's when I supportthem for it, and I support Joe
Biden. I encourage all of youto go and find the recording of the
State of the Union. It's onit's on YouTube. It's on various various
(37:31):
news organization's accounts. I watched iton PBS's YouTube channel. It's it's over
an hour long, like I said, but it's well worth listening to.
And like I say, he doeshe does stammer a little bit here and
(37:52):
there, but not so much thatyou'd really notice it unless you were listening
for it. And if he doesmake a mistake, he notices it,
and he corrects it, and heand if your politics doesn't allow you to
(38:12):
vote for somebody who believes in thethings that Joe Biden does, abortion rights,
unions, lots of other things thathe spoke about, then at least
finds somebody that you do believe in, not somebody that you're voting for because
(38:37):
they have made you angry or tappedinto your hatred of the other side.
Somebody who, when you listen towhat they have to say, makes you
think this person is a good leader, this person cares, this person is
(39:00):
about more than just themselves. Ican never support somebody if I thought they
were in it just for themselves.Fortunately I don't have to make that choice,
(39:24):
not this year. There were otherthings that happened this week, but
but there's not much time left onthis episode anyway, and you know those
were the big ones Super Tuesday Stateof the Union. And like I said,
(39:47):
I'll be getting into abortion and IVFin a separate podcast, but for
now, that's pretty much all Igot for you. Thank you for listening.
I'll talk to you more later
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