Transcript for Conspiracy to Commit Presidency
0:00:00 Marc
[Music] This is Truth and Other Lies. "President Joe Biden is not fully in charge of the country due to cognitive decline, and a shadow presidency is controlling him." According to an article in Newsweek published on December 23rd, this article follows one published by the Wall Street Journal on December 19th, confirming what independent observers had long suspected. Joe Biden was never in control during his four years behind, or wandering around, the Resolute Desk.
Joe's frailty emerged as early as March of 2021 when he turned to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and said, "I'm happy to take questions if that's what I'm supposed to do, Nance. Whatever you want me to do." Those are not the words or attitude of a person who is in control of themselves, much less an entire country. Not since the post-stroke presidency of Woodrow Wilson have the American people been the victims of such power-hungry, subterfuge, and intrigue. Duly elected president, Joseph Robinette Biden, has been mostly present, but definitely not in command of the executive branch of American government.
If not Joe, then who?
At what point did the White House staff, the vice president, or the Speaker of the House, inform the American people of the president's diminished capacity? Why did a neurologist who specializes in the treatment of Parkinson's disease visit the White House ten times in the period prior to the presidential primaries? Members of Congress and the presidential cabinet have been denied audiences with the president to the point that they stopped asking. In most cases, the president's wishes have been conveyed by unidentified presidential aides, which raises the question, "Who was informing the aides of the president's wishes, and who was making the decisions?"
If not Joe, then who?
It is a federal felony for a person to attempt to deceive a sworn officer of the federal government, punishable by five years in prison. The Biden administration has lied repeatedly to the American people about the ability of the chief executive to fulfill the duties of his office, and more egregiously, relied upon unelected members of the executive, and perhaps even private citizens, to make decisions that are the sole domain of the president of the republic, all while concealing the president's illness and the identities of the decision-makers.
If not Joe, then who?
What law will hold the perpetrators of this crime against the people accountable? What officer of the court will convene a grand jury to present the people's case for consideration and indictment? Which legislators will heed the call of the people for laws that demand the transparency from the executive branch? And more immediately, what consequences shall be held in store for those who deceive the people in the pursuit of power, position, and privilege?
I am Marc Jacobin. Today's guest commentator is Matthew Stone. This is Truth and Other Lies.
You will remember Matthew from his appearance on the Waking Up! Jacobin presentation of Election Day 2020 with James Jacobin, available at wakingupjacobin.com.
Matthew, four years ago, you said that the Biden presidency would be uneventful. The first thing newly minted president Joe did was betray the Afghani people, and especially Afghani women, by turning tail and running away from Afghanistan, leaving the fate of millions of peasants to the whims of rapists and murderers. Now that Joe has proven himself to be a coward, a liar, and a tyrant – when he is not wandering into the woods – what led you to that statement in 2020? And how do you reconcile it now?
00:04:34 Matthew
First off, I don't believe that I said it be uneventful. I said it be underwhelming. I think if you remember back to 2020, this is a build is the most important election of our lifetime. The soul of democracy was at stake. We had to get Trump out of office and put the adults back in control, getting control. All the adults did such a good job being in control that four years later we're running back to our act, so I don't know what else you could call it besides underwhelming. I think the better question is, what about it wasn't underwhelming? Because you brought up the way we left Afghanistan was underwhelming and disgraceful, and left thirteen Americans dead. Our response to the Russian-born Ukraine has been underwhelming, despite what 312 economics majors say, why economics is underwhelming? Because for normal people, the cost of milk and eggs is pretty important, it's been a complete failure. I think the only thing about the Biden administration that hasn't been underwhelming is the amount of legislation that's been passed. That's their pride and joy that waving at our faces is some great accomplishment. I don't know when passing legislation became the mark of a great administration. I wonder if these are the same bills I hear about every week, or 10,000 pages long, have to be passed to find out what's in them. I guess that's some big accomplishments.
00:05:47 Marc
Someone once said, if you send lawyers to Washington, you will have laws as a result. And I guess it also depends on the context of the word underwhelming, because many of the things about the Biden administration have been in fact overwhelming. Inflation has been overwhelming. The Southern border has been overwhelmed by folks who don't care to use the front door. I would say that it's been underwhelming in its performance according to traditional American standards, but it's been overwhelming with regard to the negative effect that has had on society.
00:06:24 Matthew
It's traditional to blame the president for the economy.
00:06:27 Marc
I never do, especially because there are so many things beyond the control of the president. But what this president has not done is taken responsibility, or I wouldn't even say that. The president has not even acknowledged that the economy is a problem, and that in itself is a huge problem.
00:06:47 Matthew
It's hard to argue with anything you said there. I think you're right. It is traditional that every campaign is over-billed and undersold. That's just kind of the whole market-weight thing is working now. Once the promises are made and none of them are kept.
00:07:01 Marc
Let's move on to the topic of today's show, which is the conspiracy to commit presidency. As if committing presidency were a crime, I think we're going to demonstrate today that it certainly could be and perhaps should be. The theme of today's show is the fact that the president has not been running the country or fulfilling the duties of the chief executive as we have come to expect them to be performed. When did you first suspect that the lights were on, but nobody was home?
00:07:32 Matthew
I think I was ahead of the wave on this one here. I first suspected back in June 2017, Mr. Biden was in Delaware giving a commencement speech at a pool. At this time he thought that the best thing to do was to tell a story about how he armed himself with a chain and kicked a group of young African-American kids out of the pool, led by a man by the name of Cornpop. For presumably for committing the sin of getting their Jerry Curl oil all over the good white folks down there. Now despite the timing of this story being odd, the moral of it seemed to be that Mr. Biden was a champion of race relations. Right there I started to suspect that something wasn't quite clicking upstairs. But then when I knew, it was on the campaign trail in 2020, when Biden infamously appeared on the breakfast club announced to the world that if you didn't vote for him you're not black. After that every time he introduced a dead person, a stager, forgot a foreign prime minister's name. I wasn't particularly surprised.
00:08:35 Marc
Yes, the signs of age-related decline were ever present even before he assumed the Oval Office. Once you get beyond forty or fifty, momentary mental lapses are pretty common for most of the population. And I think it was easy for people to assign it to age-related mental climb, you know those those moments of senior moments as they're called. Certainly for his supporters would look the other way. There wasn't enough evidence for an indictment, if you will. Sarah Palin says she visited the country of Africa. We all have those moments.
00:09:11 Matthew
Obviously there's a difference between, you know, some slight decline in the gaps and the completing competence.
00:09:18 Marc
And I think what we're seeing now is that by the time he got to the Oval Office in 2021 that had progressed to not only a mild to moderate case of senile dementia. But as we mentioned that White House was visited ten times by neurologist. There is only one group of people and one person in particular who are bound to the White House and who have service workers come to them. And that is the president and the president's immediate family. That neurologist wasn't there to see the chief of staff. They weren't there to inspect the West Wing to see how well they were vacuuming the carpets. They were there to examine the president himself. And that cannot be denied. That cannot be equivocated. And those visits. What were the results of those examinations? The American public has a right to know.
00:10:09 Matthew
Well, and the White House is refusal to comment on it. Their silence is, I think, damning. It certainly opens the door to anyone to make whatever assumptions they presume. And at any time they could be transparent about the nature of those visits and the findings of them. And put our minds all the ease, but I think they're refusal to do so speaks pretty clearly is to what the results were.
00:10:34 Marc
Now, my next question is a question of speculation. We don't have enough information to say anything that might approach the truth. But let's speculate. Who do you suspect has been acting as Biden stand in in terms of making decisions?
00:10:50 Matthew
I certainly don't know the names of people who run shadow governments. I think that's entirely the point of it. But I can't tell you the people that are responsible for it. One of their names is Vice President Kamala Harris. The others are the members of the cabinet. They're all in position to prevent this. And quite likely one, if not all of those people are involved in making the actual presidential decisions. They have every power at their fingertips to prevent something, you know, otherwise they've all been fooled between the Vice President and the cabinet members. They're either implicit or ignorant. Now, I don't know which one would be worse for the state of our country.
00:11:26 Marc
And you make a good point. If in fact Vice President Kamala Harris were the one standing in for Joe, that at least would be consistent with the structure of our democracy.
00:11:36 Matthew
The Vice President was elected by the people, the Vice President acts when the president is incapable. And even if it were an informal, that I think would at least be forgivable, at least for a short period of time.
00:11:49 Marc
But when you have other people that might may or may not have been making decisions such as the White House Chief of Staff, which is not an elected position,
00:11:57 Matthew
the president's wife Jill Biden, if she was acting as the gatekeeper to Joe and simply reeling what she said, Joe said to do, this is where you have a presidency that is betraying the foundations of the Republic. Whoever it is that's calling the shots, you know, as you said, at least somewhat forgivable if it is the Vice President, there's one critical question that they either didn't ask themselves or they didn't answer it correctly. And that was what is best for the country. I think that the question that they asked themselves is what is best for the party? They all wanted to save the party, the embarrassment of admitting that there is a declining president of enacting measures to remove him. I think that that would have been a huge embarrassment to the party and their primary goal was to save face for the party. And yet in hindsight, that was probably the worst thing they could have done. Every conspiracy, the cover up is worse than the crime. But not only that, if we had had a Vice President who had been acting president for two years or the actual president for two years, the incumbent has a tremendous advantage in an election.
00:13:07 Marc
And right now, the popular vote separating, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is fewer than two million. And if she had had an opportunity to be president for two years, she comes into the 2024 election with a tremendous advantage. And we might be looking at a reelected president, Kamala Harris, elected to her own term as opposed to Donald Trump. If the Democrats had bothered to think in the long term and not simply try to, as you said, look after the interests of their own party.
00:13:38 Matthew
Well, sure, if she'd had a resume of her own to stand on, it well could have been a bit of difference in this election. Had the on the job experience would have been wonderful for her campaign.
00:13:49 Marc
Exactly. Assuming that she did an acceptable job as the president. But if she didn't, that would tell a story too.
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00:14:44 Marc
To what extent do you think the president's cabinet is obligated to invoke the 25th Amendment?
00:14:54 Matthew
I know you like to invoke cousin Eddie on your show. But I'm going to invoke Uncle Ben with great power comes great responsibility. I don't know the list of powers that the cabinet holds. But I don't know if there's any that are much higher than the power to remove a sitting president from office. That's a huge power. And firstly that must also be a huge responsibility. The failure to use that responsibility. It feels treasonous. And I know it doesn't meet the definition of treason. But I just I don't know another word that invokes the sense of betrayal there. It feels like the ultimate betrayal.
00:15:28 Marc
Betrayal I think is a great word. Treason has a legal framework behind it that probably the actions of the administration don't meet but a betrayal of the American people is a perfect expression.
00:15:39 Matthew
Complete failure to enact one's duty. You know, Marc, if I walk into a hospital the doctors there are morally ethically and legally required to render aid to me. You know regardless of my age, sex, creed, religion, if I have social security card insurance, they're required to give me aid. And if they failed to do so, they would be prosecuted. And it would seem that at the highest levels of our government it doesn't work the same way that they've refused to render aid to the country. There should be an investigation at the very least. Congress seems to have a hearing about the weather in Montana every other week. I highly doubt that we'll ever get any answers to what's been happening in the White House the last four years. I agree we probably won't. I also have some additional bad news is that based on the way the 25th Amendment is written, it would not be applicable in this situation.
00:16:30 Marc
The 25th Amendment has been thrown around in movies and television for the last 40, 50 years. And so the American people have a misunderstanding of how it works because Hollywood has a misunderstanding of how it works or they simply don't care and shape it to what fits their story. But the way the 25th Amendment works is that the vice president and a majority of the cabinet so the VP has to be in on it, send a letter to Congress. As soon as that happens, the vice president becomes the acting president. The president becomes fired. If the president becomes no longer incapacitated, re-capacitated if you will, the president then sends a letter to Congress saying he is no longer incapacitated and the president gets his job back. I should have said if the VP and the majority of cabinet deem the president to be incapacitated. Because Joe Biden was not incapacitated in the manner anticipated by the 25th Amendment, all Joe has to do because he can still walk and talk and sign a letter, presumably, is dictate a letter to Congress saying, "Hey, I'm fine. Give me my job back." As a person who is potentially experiencing senile dementia, he would certainly have moments of clarity where he could say, "Hey, I'm going to keep my job." In that case, the cabinet will have performed their responsibility, "Hey, the president is not all there. Let's try to remove him." The president says, "No, I want to keep my job." Let's say that the cabinet looks at Joe again and says, "No, Joe, we're sorry. This is elder abuse. If we continue to let you execute your office, you've got to go." If the cabinet sends another letter to Congress, a second letter that says, "We still believe the president is incapacitated, it now goes to Congress and only Congress can then remove the president." That requires a two-thirds absolute majority of both houses. An absolute majority means two-thirds of 435 and two-thirds of 100 as opposed to a relative majority for other votes such as impeachment.
00:18:46 Matthew
Well, certainly a high bar to me, which I think it should be, and absolutely fair in such a critical matter as a coup will be sitting in the White House, sans an election. Whether or not it would have met the mark, it would have given transparency and allowed the American public to know what is happening in their own country.
00:19:04 Marc
Absolutely. To your point, the cabinet had a responsibility to inform Congress and through Congress the American people, the inability of the president to execute the duties of his office. They may not have had the power to remove him, and maybe Congress doesn't muster the votes to remove him, but now you have full transparency. And the people can now hold the members of Congress responsible for failure to act through the power of the vote. The system would be working as it's supposed to, where our elected officials at all levels are doing their job, answering to their constituents who voted for them rather than a singular person or group of people taking matters into their own hands and doing as they pleased with the situation. And this actually highlights a perennial problem that we have had with human beings and government. Irrespective of the system, irrespective of the thousands of laws and procedures that you might put in place, every system succeeds or fails based on the loyalty and the allegiance of the people that are implementing it. And if you have an incapacitated president and you have a cabal of unelected bureaucrats who are protecting that president, it doesn't matter what system is in place, whether it's a parliamentary system, bicameral system, federated system, a dictatorship, the people have limited options for addressing that situation to their satisfaction. Because once the overclass has asserted power or usurped power, as in this case, the people can't do much about it.
00:20:51 Matthew
Well, I'd have to say that our history shows that not only can the people not do much but don't seem to want to do much. You know, we continually grant the executive branch more and more power. I think that the people collectively have said we want to monarch in the office. We want someone who makes unilateral decisions. It takes away the personal decisions from people and allows them with the freedom not blame themselves for the state of their lives.
00:21:18 Marc
Well, I would certainly like to have someone to blame.
00:21:21 Matthew
It's much easier when it's somebody in the White House rather than having to look at do some introspection and look at what you've made of your own life.
00:21:29 Marc
It's always easier to blame them and they, whoever them and they are. But that also raises a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did the people become apathetic or did the government conspire to engineer a society where people relied upon the government? And the evidence for that certainly goes back through the 1930s.
00:21:51 Matthew
Well, I certainly don't know when it changed, Mark, but I know that some 250 years ago we created the closest thing to a true democracy of the world has seen. The model for Western government in 250 years. I think that if you put it on the ballot, we might vote ourselves back into England.
00:22:09 Marc
Well, why not? They have great public health care, right?
00:22:12 Matthew
Exactly. They have a wonderful system there where if you vote wrong, they bench it, they reintroduce to vote six months later and they do this again and again until you get the vote rights.
00:22:23 Marc
That sounds like a great way to govern. And there are countries now for those people that don't know that have actually implemented thought crimes. They haven't called it a thought crime, but they actually do it and we'll cover that in a future episode. Matthew, do you have any final thoughts on the conspiracy to commit presidency?
00:22:41 Matthew
I guess to wrap it up, we can talk about Mr. Biden and the sweeping pardons or maybe not full pardons, but acts of clemency that he's granted. He's been doing right now. I don't have a problem with the president having the authority. It's well established that the president can do these things, but in light of recent events, you know, mainly this New York Times article that confirms what all of us with. One eye, you know, could have seen how is it still happening? We've got this group of people up there that are either either pulling the strings on his hands and signing these pieces of paper, you know, not, not, not elected.
00:23:23 Marc
Well, to be fair, some of them are elected.
00:23:25 Matthew
They were not elected to be the president or are granting clemency to these people. Or they're standing by while a person that we all know should not be making decisions is doing this. Somebody who wasn't elected or shouldn't have the power is allowing these to commute the sentences of these rapists and murderers.
00:23:44 Marc
Without compelling evidence of their innocence, and I think that's a great crime here. The power of clemency is granted to the president for the purpose of maintaining peace and serenity in the country. And we have seen that used to that effect after the Civil War, after the Vietnam War, when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.
00:24:04 Matthew
It seems to be a personal crusade, something to do with Mr. Biden's disbelief in the death penalty.
00:24:11 Marc
Exactly. That's where the crime against the people comes in.
00:24:15 Matthew
Joe Biden is ruling according to his own personal philosophies and not according to the laws that were laid down by the people. And that, my friends, is called a dictator. And I guess to wrap it up, as of today, if I've done my math right, there's 17 days that Mr. Biden has left in office. The power is the beast in perfectly content to allow those 17 days to roll out with him in power. With the evidence that we have, I don't know how, I mean, 17 days is too much. In 17 minutes is too much to allow this system to continue being in place. I don't think anyone's going to do anything about it. And the people probably never get any answers, but I think we've all been done a great injustice.
00:25:00 Marc
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00:25:20 Marc
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00:25:44 Marc
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