Chapo Trap House - 330 - Hunter on the Loose feat. Will Sommer (7/8/19)

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

We check in with Will Sommer for a first-hand account of Trump's wet 'n wild Tank Day celebration. We then spend the majority of the episode introducing Hunter Biden, a noble & troubled soul fighting to bring light into this dark world. Tickets to our August 23rd live play of Call of Cthulhu at Necronomicon in Providence, R.I. on sale now! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-house-plays-call-of-cthulhu-live-tickets-62234533164

Will, did you pick up on at all the little thread about the fireworks company that Trump used for this event? Oh, yeah, yeah. Grouchy. Grouchy. Grouchy main fireworks. So Grouchy, the idea was that, so they got the free fireworks from Grouchy and this other guy who are secretly lobbying the administration for some various schemes of theirs, but they

couldn't. They filled out a contract with the regular fireworks people, and they said, okay, we're going to make the fireworks flights as long. But then because of the weather, and it was just like the air wasn't moving, it was just like really sitting on the city, as a result, and there was a huge smoke cloud, and it, you know, you couldn't see the fireworks at all. And then the smoke just sat around D.C. I mean, I had to go inside, it was like, you don't smell it.

And then, you know, except the D.C. air quality plummeting, it was the worst in the country. So you know, you have this big fireworks display, no one can see it, you poison the city, big triumph. And the other thing, it's like it wouldn't be anything to do with Donald Trump and contracting without, you know, ludicrous New York area corruption and incompetence. The Grouchy fireworks, mainly famous for an explosion at their fireworks plant in Long Island that killed two, injured 24, and set a neighborhood on fire in the 1980s. That's what we call Italian excellence.

But yeah, and speaking of which, Matt, they are also allegedly deeply mobbed up as because would you imagine, would you be shocked to find out that the Grouchy fireworks company of Long Island reportedly has ties to the business and industry? That is my favorite Trump thing that until about 2012, about every time he was interviewed, he would brag that he knew the mafia. Well, it's like when he first started doing the apprentice. Yeah. And he's like, you know, and I was reluctant to have cameras in here because I do deals

with the mafia all the time. And he's just like, never even had to like talk to a cop about that. It's so awesome. Well, I mean, at this point, like, this is one of my most controversial political opinions, but I think the government should stop going after the mafia because it's like, they've had a rough past few decades, let them rebuild, let them put a roster back together. It's like the mafia. Okay.

The mafia gave New Yorkers activities to do that didn't force them to drink. It gave them a sense of community or some shit. It did amazing things for the McMansion economy. They were nice. Classic movies that we wouldn't have if they weren't out there grinding. Oh, great movies about them. And they also made great movies because they had to launder their money. Are you sick of seeing fucking horror movies called like obliteration that are about like

a monster that represents global warming society? Yeah, you are. Don't you want to see like mid tier action movies again? Yeah, you do. Let's get the mafia back, baby. And a lot of people love to think back to that golden age of porn when they had stories and production value. Guess who bankrolled all of those classic porn movies because it was all their nephews

who majored in English. They actually work cable guys before that. Yeah. And they were too pussy to work in the mafia. So they're like, why don't you write a story for my movie where, you know, a woman gets just fucking dick down on a bark along here. Let's have the mafia back, baby. Let's do it.

Donald Trump. I know you're listening. There are all prosecutions on the mob here. Hello friends and happy Independence Day weekend. I hope you've had a wonderful holiday full of fun fireworks, friends and bbq. So on the 4th of July, I slept in really late. I didn't get up to like very late in the afternoon, bleary eyed, got up, immediately went to my feet.

I had to know one thing and one thing only. How did Trump's salute to America's tanks and heroes go? How did it? What was going on in the National Mall? What did it look like? Was it like Pyongyang on, you know, Kim Jong-un's birthday? Didn't look like a Soviet. I wish.

Was it like Fury Road? And I went to one man's Twitter account to get the real scoop on that and he's with us now. Friends, you already know him. It's Will Summer. Will, welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me. So Will, like I said, I woke up, I checked, basically you and Ocita, two friends of the

show were on the National Mall, covering Trump's salute to America, Independence Day celebration. And I got to say, it was better than I could have possibly imagined. It was magical. It's like, man, like people were like, oh, North Korea, blah, blah, blah, blah. It looked like complete dog shit compared to Macron's Bastille Party, which is where he got the idea. Yeah. Not from dictators or anything, but from neoliberal poster boy, Manuel Macron is the guy who gave

him the idea. But no, it looked like a really shitty county fair. I saw some stills. My main thing was that if they weren't moving, I didn't care. And apparently that had to do with the road quality or road stability. Yeah. In the days leading up to the event, it became very clear that the roads and bridges of D.C. would have literally crumbled under the weight of our mighty tanks.

First of all, what is happening to this country that we don't even have the infrastructure for a tank parade? Democrats are blocking infrastructure week. They are. They are. Trump goes back to the spreaders. You know what this was? The St. Elzear's Feast, when Paulie wouldn't pay for the crown for St. Elzear.

And the entire, that entire episode was about the degeneration of the mob and America. Same shit, baby. Well, literally can't run the train tanks over the streets, 60 year olds, going into insulin shock, sitting in puddles, clapping while Trump goes up there and, you know, talks about how Madonna never, never had the range to play a Vita or what he was talking about. So one person who did see not instill images, but in full three dimensions, actually fourth dimensions, if we're including sound, time as well, Will, did you see any tanks? So the tanks, incredibly, were really, really far away.

So they were like, hidden behind a VIP area, making it basically impossible after, you know, all this to do about the tanks. You know, unless you had a VIP ticket, there was no chance of seeing the tanks. And who are the people who got the VIP tickets? Because I know there was some controversy about that, like whether or not these were just sort of Republican bundlers and, you know, fundraisers and stuff like that, which should be technically a no-no. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, it was basically given away to Republican donors. I mean, at the last minute, it's, you know, apparently the White House realized that they just weren't going to have enough people in the VIP area, so they sort of started giving these tickets away willy-nilly. And so, you know, it basically ended up with a lot of kind of DC VIP types posing for pictures with the tanks. That's a lot like Yankee Stadium. That's why it's always half empty, because the seats are too expensive.

Well, we know Donald is a big fan of the pinstripes. So Will, why don't you start at the beginning? Like, why don't you set the scene for us of like how your day went on the National Mall? Like, you know, what was the first thing you did, like, just describe the scene to us when you got there? Sure. Like, I would describe the day as hellish. It was consistently pouring rain and 90 degrees in DC, really cool.

So first thing I did, of course, I went to the White House where there was supposed to be a flag burning. Now, this is a little early for the flag burning. Then I went to the Trump Hotel where I ran into a couple of women who were convinced that JFK Jr. was going to announce himself and reveal that he had faked his death. Yes. This was supposed to be a big QAnon holiday, and I saw a lot of pictures of people with JFK Jr. masks and Q hats and things like that.

So one of the ladies at the Trump Hotel told you, you know, she was there to take part in, I guess, a historic moment when I guess, like, what, you know, what was their idea that like, you know, Trump would take the stage, then he'd be like, I got a surprise guest for you all. You may know him as a guy who died in the 90s, but guess what, he didn't. It's JFK Jr., everybody. He's now an ugly guy in a rumpled suit. Was the guy, what's that, the Vincent Fuchsia, or whatever, was he there?

He was there. Yes. Yeah. He probably got so much from him. Trump supporter that they have become convinced that QAnon people believe is JFK Jr. in disguise, and so they, like, analyze the two phones and stuff, and, you know, sometimes he's photographed with this blonde woman, and they're like, oh, it's JFK Jr.'s life she's back to. And so, but he, he has this weird thing where like, you won't say he's JFK Jr. or not, but

he's certainly not like, he seems to really enjoy people thinking he's JFK Jr., so he was in town and posing for pictures with people and everyone was going, oh my God, he's here. And in QLore, like, I mean, what was the idea here that JFK Jr. is Q, he's the guy who's been working behind the scenes the whole time to expose this, you know, global cabal of these elite sex offenders, which, by the way, we'll be talking about that shortly as well. But yeah, how does JFK Jr. figure into this? Yeah. So, I mean, there's like, there was this period where Q stopped giving clues, and then someone

named R showed up and sort of tried to steal away. R word showed up. And basically that kind of, and they would, they'd grown on this whole JFK Jr. thing. The idea being that like, JFK Jr. fakes his death and has sort of been working hand-in-hand with Trump. So, you know, these people are obsessed with JFK Jr. that go through back issues of George magazine, looking for clues, stuff like that. So today was supposed to, excuse me, July 4th was supposed to be, you know, the big day.

And so, you know, I ran into these women and there was a lady with a kind of a big like British like fascinator hat, and she had a big JFK Jr. in it. And I said, you know, you know, what's the deal with your hat? And she goes, just, he's alive. The classic Larry Cohen film, RIP. So I actually have one question about this too. I mean, like never mind the, you know, how these people feel when, you know, apocalypse doesn't come, but is the debate at all getting sectarian about interpretations of Q?

Because like that always inevitably happens. I know someone who went to like a flatter festival and like saw the first kind of sectarian divisions sort of coming across and people started shouting at each other, has that started to happen to Q yet? Oh, yeah. Very much so. I mean, you know, there's, there's so many divisions in it, you know, some people go the full lizard people route, you know, some of them think, you know, obviously there's

JFK Jr. faction, which is sort of that war with these people who don't think JFK Jr. faked his death. So it's, I mean, there's a lot of cute going on. That's great. That's great. See, it just starts out with a, you know, as my colleague said, I do believe that JFK Jr. is alive. However, I don't think he's the only person behind Q and then someone screams like, how

fucking dare you? Like it starts out very collegial and then eventually like all of this stuff goes apart. So I can't wait for the online Q flame wars. I honestly don't think that any two Q people, if you sat them down and had them explain to you what it was, would have the same idea. I think that it's totally personal. But whether they fight about it or not, whether they get really hostile towards each other, that's when she gets good.

I mean, what matters is the degree to which somebody is going to come forward to be a leader of one of these factions and monetize it. Then we're going to see the real schism. Then you're going to, you're going to see some real great Western schism shit happening. Q is going to take up residency in Avignon. I mean, there are too many moving parts for any two people to have the same idea. Like they, like it's too open source. Like anyone could just say they're Q and these fucking people will believe them more or less.

But this is the weakness of horizontalism, like the fact that everyone can sort of like pop in and like kind of the idea of internet sourcing. I'm always saying that about horizontalism. It's like, you know, if you're going in a direction, up or down, you can always go back down, but left to right, you have to go the whole direction of back right over, not fun. Will, so then you saw the JFK junior ladies, you know, when you made your way to the National Mall, what next? Yeah, so then I headed down to the mall for, you know, you had to go through the security

corded, which was a real mass, you know, he basically locked off the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. So you had to go through there. And then my first stop, of course, had to be with the resistance protest, the big Trump baby. So I saw the Trump baby. And more importantly, they had a giant statue of Trump taking a poop and people just had to get pictures with this.

This was kind of the star of the show. Get wrecked, motherfucker. And, you know, what, like, of the resistance counter protest, I mean, obviously, their take is that, you know, this whole thing is like a big, you know, horrifying spectacle. But again, it didn't really seem like there was any spectacle to be had there. Mostly seem like people on sort of camping chairs, just kind of sitting on the National Mall and, you know, feted human stinking heat. Yeah, I mean, it was basically just like really miserable, it was sort of like shitty wood

dock or something, kind of get down to the reflective pool, and it just started, it basically rained for, I would say, three hours straight, really steadily. So you have all these people, you know, they had their Trump gear, there was a whole family in QAnon shirts, there was just, you know, it was all kind of the sights of a typical Trump rally. And then it just started just pouring and people were leaving and it was, I mean, so finally Trump takes the stage. And you know, he goes through this, as you guys saw, this kind of bizarre, like Wikipedia

speech where he's like, you know, let me tell you about another great America that just kind of on and on. And I will say the flyovers were pretty sick. I mean, yeah, Trump's speech, of course, another highlight. We all know that the airport's line, which was incredible, but it was made instantly unbearable by like every media blue check who turned it into an unbearable hashtag joke within about 30 seconds of it happening. I would like also like to say the better gap for me is when he said, and then they achieved

nothing but victory over Cornwallis of Yorktown, where he thought like Lord, it was like Lord Cornwallis of Yorktown and not at Yorktown. And then he confused the battle in the War of 1812 that the Star Spangled Banner was for McHenry. Yeah. Yeah. But he called it for McHenry or something like that. Yeah.

And it was during the Revolutionary War because it was all just one big thing. It's just in the past. But I did like the footage of him giving the speech where it looked like he was using some sort of glass cube that was all sweated up and it honestly looked like a dog in a hot car. His favorite music is on there. To me, it looked like it like the still image of him in the glass cube and like streaked with liquid.

It looked like it was just an eight by 10 glossy of Trump that someone did a come tribute on. But that would have been, I got to say that it made me think that, man, they really could have gone in a different and much more interesting direction with that Blade Runner sequel. Folks, things I've seen, you wouldn't believe. You wouldn't believe them. I moved on her like a bitch. I got the mobile unit and I took her out to my patio.

Very nasty woman stomped on her and I lost my hologram. But what like the whole thing leading up to this is that it's going to be parade. It's going to be a victory parade. It's going to be a salute to our military. It's going to be tanks and soldiers marching in our streets. Was there anything even remotely approaching a parade at this event? So there was the usual July 4th parade that happens every year, but there was nothing. There was no like military parade or anything.

I mean, the whole idea was, you know, we're going to show off the, you know, American military might, particularly with the tanks. I mean, it's not that impressive to kind of lug in tanks that can't even move and just like in this case, the Sherman tanks that are like 60 years old. And I mean, they just kind of card them in. So as it turned out, no, there was no, no, like, you know, there's a lot of concern that there's going to be like a North Korean military parade, but instead it was, you know, it kind of fizzled out.

It's really indicative of the entire Trump presidency. You've got this guy who thanks to quirks in history and the decay of our institution legitimately could hypothetically abrogate a lot of our, you know, constitutional systems and shit and like really pose a threat to do what we consider democracy in this country. But he's just too fucking lazy and stupid and crooked to even bother to come close to actually pulling that off. So instead of some monstrous display of totalitarian might, it's just like a fucking camo ATV doing donuts in front of 15 divorced fucking tan assholes from Boca Raton.

It's also the perfect Trump thing because the lead up and then I guess like people after it, they spoke of this thing that, you know, we have done before in this country and other countries do like, it's just like, this is the, this is when we became an authoritarian state. This is it. When like it happened because like Trump partly probably wanted to impress Macron. He partly probably always liked this idea and partly, yeah, it was probably some misremembered bullshit from like 1982 where he's like, Graydon Carter said, I'd never command a parade.

Who's laughing now? Like it's literally, it just, his thing is it just all like dementia and resentment and people like, he's actually signaling this is the exact same thing that Hitler did. Trump is a student of Hitler. I love the, my favorite thing that Trump said afterward, as he said, there's going to be a huge boost in military recruitment because I wasn't going to join the military. But then that I saw you, I could just drive my $300 million vehicle, three city blocks in front of a bunch of diabetic 65 year olds.

It's kind of, kind of nice with it. Yeah. Please allow me to be turned into fucking Purina dog chow while invading Iran for this. Well, outside the, the Q and like, did you talk to anyone else on the mall, like, what was some other like interactions or observations that you had, walk again, being miserable? Yeah. Well, let's see, you know, when one of my, I was a reporter, she, they kind of figured it out because I had a notepad and I was interviewing people and this lady came over and just said,

you know, don't you feel terrible about what you do? And he was like, you know, well, every day, but yeah, not really relevant today. Yeah. It was just a lot, you know, you see a lot with these political events, a lot of kind of like, staged arguments or things that people, you know, like, like a liberal will come and kind of like confront the person with a bag of hat, there were a lot of like, little like scuffles on the mall, but just generally, it was sort of a lot of people who were just insanely hyped to see Trump.

There was one fellow who was dressed as a, as like a revolutionary war guy and I was trying to interview him about, you know, Trump's age and Biden's age and stuff for a story. And he just kept, he kept insisting that he was 250 years old. And everyone was like, yeah. And then, you know, he really ran through it all here. So, you know, it was a lot of a colorful cure. I like the idea that the woman who asked, well, if he feels terrible about what he does, didn't know who he was or what his job is, just asking that to everybody.

I mean, and well, one of the other things I noticed is like, the, yeah, the, the physical separation between the VIP area around the Lincoln Memorial and everyone, and everywhere else, which seemed like most of the people were at, and I saw this one image of like a chain link fence that like extended into the, into the reflectable so people couldn't sort of walk around it. And it's just like, if you were that far away, like, could you see or hear anything of, of the man himself? Well, yeah, I mean, pretty much no.

So, I mean, this fence really sort of symbolized, uh, it's pretty obvious symbol, if you want to talk about Trump's America or whatever, how he treats his supporters. So there was this big fence going across the reflecting pool. So even into the water, so you couldn't like wade through and people were, you were pretty far back if weren't in the VIP area. And so there was one point where it was just pouring rain and all the people who weren't in the VIP area, a bunch of them, like hundreds of them, decides they're going to line up at the fence as though they're going to be admitted.

So it's just, I mean, it's also like, you know, there was no cover. So even if they got through, they still would have been wet, but they're just kind of waiting for Trump or one of his acolytes to come and open the gate for them. But there's no gate. It's just a fence. So these people just kind of stand there for like an hour waiting to get in. Doesn't happen. I really enjoy just, yeah, you can't satirize anything.

You can't do symbolic representations of everything because everything is just out in the open. Just his supporters, his regular smooth brain supporters standing there, like fucking Russian peasants waiting for the czar's carriage to go by, assuming surely someone will tell the czar that we love him and he'll come and touch us and heal our scrawfula. And meanwhile, three hundred yards away, he's palling around with a bunch of Mar-a-Lago iguana men and looking at the beautiful tanks and not giving two shits about them. If they all drowned in the fight, like if the fucking reflecting pool just flooded because of the rain and they all drowned, he wouldn't even notice.

It's so perfect. Will, there was eventually a flag burning in front of the White House. Did you see that? And there's another scuffle involving, yeah, someone tried to save the burned flag. Right. So the revolutionary communists, which I believe is Bob of Eighth... Hell yeah, baby. Yes.

Chairman Bob. So in honor of Chairman Bob, they decided to burn a flag. And I mean, this is, you know, so many vile groups. So the proud boys were nearby at a bar and they heard that there was a flag burning. And so the proud boys kind of rushed over to the White House and there was this scuffle where one fellow who later this weekend would go on a big rant at a rally about how he'd been banned from Tinder. This fellow kind of waved in and kind of does a scuffle to the flag.

And then, you know, the proud boys sort of declared victory over the revolutionary communists and that kind of thing. But, you know, if you look at the picture, the flag was pretty well burned. I mean, they sort of have like, you know, it looks almost like a ripped up tissue or something. And they claim that they have the flag. So that was probably like the most excitement of the day. Well, I mean, you bring up the proud boys, like probably even more pathetic than the

rally for America or whatever. Like, was it a day or two after they had like another, like one of these free speech I've been banned from Twitter rallies that seemed to sort of degenerate into sort of allegations of sort of a cocaine fueled love triangle between Omar Navarro, his girlfriend and the proud boys. Could you explain? Yeah, so this is, you know, these are the kind of fun stories you get to write. They're basically Omar Navarro is this guy who's this kind of like perennial challenger

to Maxine Waters. He gets like savagely owned every time he runs. I think she beat him by like 70 points last time. But nevertheless, like Republicans are convinced that, you know, this is the guy who's going to get Maxine Waters. You know, in the past, you know, he's had a lot of kind of like hapless moments. He had a fundraiser featuring a comedian, Dan Ninen, and so in this case, this guy was getting scheduled to speak at this rally, uh, among the likes of Laura Loomer and Milo

Unopolis and Gavin McIntyre. But then sort of right before the rally, he starts tweeting, you know, like the proud boys, you Coke and they stole my girlfriend and, you know, I don't want anything to do with these guys. So basically this, he was dating this pro-Trump relationship expert named Deanna Lorraine. And then she dumped him and then he kind of went on this Twitter rant and, you know, there was this scuffle. They all hang out at this like really vile tourist bar called Harry's.

And so there was this big scuffle there with the proud boys. And so that is, you know, then I went on this big cocaine rant. So he's accusing the former girlfriend and, uh, MAGA relationship expert of doing like, you know, sort of a Coke fueled, uh, orgy with the proud boys or just one proud boy in particular. Yeah. I mean, I think there's one probably in particular. I mean, for what it's worth, it seems as though Omar Navarro is not exactly the most

reliable guy. Um, so, you know, she denies that the proud boys, uh, on the other hand, are thrilled to have crossed out them stealing girlfriends and doing cocaine. I didn't, uh, Omar, after this started, didn't his ex-wife come up, pipe up and talk about how he cheated on her a bunch with all these MAGA sweeties. Right. There is this. Okay.

So the other twist is that Omar Navarro is married to the other one who is, uh, you know, he's divorced in her. And so he keeps referring to her as my soon to be ex-wife and then she's like, you know, leave my soon to be ex-husband alone. And you know, she got kind of goes after Deanna Lorraine and it was, it was a real mess. But he really has it all figured out him and Vincent Fuchsia just running around the country doing a MAGA Hell Homer sex tour. Um, I guess like it's slightly related to these, uh, events on the national mall, but

what did earlier this week, um, a bunch of sort of, uh, meme Smiths get invited to the White House, including again, and this is like, I'm pretty online, but I had never heard of any of these people. Like I kept hearing about this guy, like Count Doncombe. Well, Count Doncombe has been retweeted by Trump a bunch of times. He's a spimp. No, that guy's cracked. Who is Count Doncombe?

So this guy is, this is really a good kind of a grim moment of politics, but usually Carpe Doncombe is this guy who is a self-described meme Smith. Uh, and while you would think like who cares, I mean, Trump loves this guy. He posts this guy's videos all the time. I mean, basically the, this guy's like signature moves is, you know, taking a video of let's say like a Trump moment from Rocky or something, and then he just edits Trump's head on it. And then it gets like 50,000 retweets and they love it. Oh yeah.

No. So him, Ben Garrison, who of course, you know, famous pro-Trump cartoonist, he's invited. Um, there was actually a lot of drama over who wasn't invited because kind of like the real hardcore bands people like or a Luma, Milo, you're anapolis, they were not invited and they're really mad about it. And then Jackie Silvick, the pizza gate guy, he was invited, but now reportedly got disinvited. So it's a, you know, there's a lot of drama. So let's try my God, who gets invited to the, whose party it's like, I know, I know Laura

Loomer didn't get in there. Even though she's the most banned woman online, it would ruin Laura Loomer's brand at this point to be led into anything like her, like she has unique market position as the person who's like locked out of an event while yelling. We saw it in person, it's fucking, it's like, dude, it's like seeing Prince live, you can't explain it to people. I guess the, to close out here, Will, my thoughts about the Trump's salute to America is that like obviously in the weeks leading up to it, I saw everything was just about the tanks

and the troops. And I saw so many people sort of darkly intoning that like this is yet another, you know, step on the road to like outright fascism and dictatorship in America because, you know, this is the sort of thing that's done in the Soviet Union and North Korea, et cetera, et cetera. And then you see it and it's like, you know, the fire festival, it's like the MAGA fire festival. It's just like a completely incompetent croc and, you know, all these people were ripped off.

However, I'm sure all drove home in their cars thinking, that was great. We, it's like, I don't imagine the experience people had going to this event was similar to the feeling I and my like, you know, 12 or 13 year old friends had when we left the theater seeing the Phantom Menace for the first time and spent a good 15, 20 minutes being like, yeah, that was, that was pretty good. I mean, No, no, I disagree. They loved it.

They loved it. I mean, despite the horrible weather, I mean, the vibe were good at least, at least for Trump supporters. I mean, they were doing the wave across the reflecting pool. And you know, I should say there was one incident I saw where this big bearded guy was getting at a big argument with an old guy and he kept saying like, he slapped me in the face. And I thought these guys weren't, they were like, it's great or it's scuffled. But in fact, it was his grandfather and so the great, the guys just like, he snatched

me and they were shut up like Trump's coming on and all that. And the grandfather was just eating his sandwich. So I mean, these are the kind of like slice of life views you get at this kind of thing. Now they will, they will, they, they will walk away from that soaking wet, sun stroked, having seen nothing, having stood in the rain and looked at and squinted through chain link at nothing, watched half of a fireworks display until the smoke got too bad that you couldn't see any more of it. And they're going to go home and they're going to drive back to their fucking split

level in suburban Raleigh Durham and they're going to think it was the greatest day of their life. They love it because they love him and they do think he's better than them and they, they think they're better than us, but they definitely think that as a, that he is better than them. And so he should spit in their mouth. He should keep a chain link fence between the two of them because otherwise then he's just a grubby human instead of the God Emperor. Will Summer, I want to, I want to thank you for braving the all around misery to, yeah,

again, make my Independence Day weekend by providing coverage of this just absolutely wretched event. Do you have any closing thoughts or final observations or anything we didn't get to that you saw that from the salute to America? Yeah, I mean, it was just a huge mess. It was a mess. It was a big fat mistake. Would you say, Will, that it is in any way metaphorical of the state of American culture

and politics in 2019 or should we not read too much into that? No, I think it's a pretty good metaphor. I mean, you know, they were kind of, kind of feckless liberals and, you know, just that it turns kind of running rough. Will Summer, once again, thank you for watching the Watchmen and parading the parade men. Thanks for having me. Will Summer, everybody. Cheers.

Thanks. All right, so once again, thanks to Will Summer's for attending that abomination. But I just, one more thing I want to talk about about the July 4th parade and, you know, non-military display of power. It highlights an interesting split on the right because, like, obviously, we had referenced earlier all of the takes I saw from liberals, you know, intoning darkly that this is, you know, authoritarianism come to America. Yeah, this is the moment, actually, when that happened.

But comparing this shit to Tiananmen Square or North Korea. They grow up. I'm sorry. OK, to compare it to North Korea, it's like, obviously, we don't have our shit together to put off, pull off a parade anywhere near as sick. Fucking gymnastics, dude. Dude, to, like, have one of those things where, like, 500,000 people all turn over cards to reveal, like, the leader's face in a gigantic stadium, nobody in America has their shit

together enough to do that. They're not going to look up from their dang smartphones long enough. Literally, if we, if Trump tried to get, like, the people there to do a North Korea thing, that would be, like, that would be the margin that he won the Midwest by, would die, just from heat exhaustion of trying to do those acrobatics. And then the Tiananmen Square thing is even more offensive because it's just like, to see anything like that, I'm sorry, the American populace is way too cowed and subservient to ever get to the point where a tank would be running them over in D.C.

I mean, like, no, like, I don't even think that's, I just think there's, like, literally no comparison. It's just these people are fucking, half of them are hysterical. The other half are histrionics and just making hay. But like, this is, couldn't even make the tanks run on the, and you know, I wanted to see that. We all wanted to see the tanks, Amber. Like, I was rooting for him.

And another, I can't do it. He can't pull it off. Moving over to the right, another person who was very excited to see the tanks was old friend of the show, David French. You remember him as the guy who, you know, volunteer, has the mustard. He volunteered to be a lawyer in Iraq and, you know, told his wife not to email anyone while he's gone. But he, you know, he, he was just like, listen, tanks are cool.

Kids love them. And adults too. Like, so that, that was his take. He was like, we all want to see the tanks. We do. Everyone loves seeing a tank. But. Don't email my wife.

On the other side of it is this guy. I mentioned him on the last episode. So Rob Amari. He's the New York Post guy and that there has been this kind of beef between him and David French over the sort of the direction of the right now in this kind of post Trump. Yeah. And I just really hate it when two of my friends don't like each other. It just really makes me feel bad.

So, you know, David, again, they largely share all of the same policy goals, but the split really is over the tone or sort of strategy. And I want to highlight our friend, so rab right now, because he was replying to a kind of like some of the, the never Trump types who were sort of poo pooing the idea of this grand military parade, famously Eisenhower, you know, who was a general, but as president said, you know, America will never do that because that is, you know, to display military might in public like that is evident is sort of, it's a sign of weakness. If you're a great power, you don't need to parade tanks and missiles through the streets.

So so rab is sort of replying to that general line of thinking and he says here, these nonsense claims that only insecure states demonstrate martial power epitomize are too sophisticated a feat elites. We can't show off our national power, we must only subtly hint at it. It's the mindset of people on the Upper East Side who'd sooner be disemboweled than reveal how much they paid for the art on their walls because doing so would be gauche. That's absurd, though. Those people always brag about how much it costs.

I think he lives on the Upper East Side too, so he goes, but that's not how the Chinese think and it's not how American power used to think. That's the refreshing side of Trump. Yes, a vulgarian from Queens whose mindset is in some refreshing ways locked in the past. This is what I meant when I wrote that Trump is tipping the balance toward continuity or what my friend Rusty Reno calls. Rusty Reno. Okay.

You took a moment away from the gay porn set to comment on this shit. My friend who works at the Mafia. Rusty Reno calls it national consolidation. Now Sorab I think represents a kind of a thin, thin sliver of like it's like the pond scum on top of like a feted lake of the kind of intellectual conservatives, like that Journal of American Greatness thing that we've talked about, that other incredibly prissy, fancy boy who dresses in suits all the time, who did the Flight 93, Michael Anton, who wrote an entire book about how Machiavelli would dress to go to the office.

They have to come up with these pseudo-intellectual justifications for Trump's idiotic bluster and his, we're going to love the tanks. Well, additionally to like a masculinist rationalizations for utter foppishness. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So my question for Sorab now is how is that national display of power? You feeling pretty good about how America projected its military strength to the world

after this weekend? Yeah. It's like maybe the reason we don't flaunt it is because if we tried we would reveal ourselves to be a nation of just like barely cognizant, like diabetic coma inflicted dipshits. Also, there's the old, you know, if you have to brag about the size of your dick, you're probably lying thing. It's like America this past weekend, we put on a glow in the dark condom. There's no lying about it anymore.

You can't hide it. It's like if Iran was our neighbor across the street and we just did like 10 push-ups on our knees, but gave up at number eight. They call that the false scenario. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just making a face that looks like you're just going. So even funnier to me than the people who sat behind the chain link fence on camping

chairs and then went home soaked in heat stroke and was like, we were part of a historic moment. Even funnier to me than them. This is like Woodstock for patriots. Is people like Mr. Amare who has to come up with an even more tortured explanation for why this is good and cool and not a utter embarrassing. It was actually really cool. And how we were not owned. All right.

That's the last thoughts on the Salute to America and Independence Day. But there is another news item that happened this weekend that I think you guys may enjoy. Just yesterday, friend of the show, Jeffrey Epstein arrested for sex trafficking. All right. I feel like everyone kind of knows what we're going to say, but like, I mean, just say this right now, like just get this out of the way. What if he's changed in the last few years? Wouldn't you feel stupid?

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. So again, a lot of people getting a lot of panicked phone calls, I would expect last night. I want to highlight one of my favorite reactions to this so far comes courtesy of Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Nancy, I believe, who quoted here, it says here, this Epstein case is horrific, and the young women deserve justice. It's quite likely that some of our faves are implicated, but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may, whether we're on Republicans or denig Democrats hashtag

we said enough. Some of our that is the most nothing you stopped other people from talking. That is the most insane fucking tweet at our faves. She hasn't deleted it. Talk about telling on yourself, just like being so enmeshed in elite Democratic politics that you just have to take for granted that if there's any sort of meaningful investigation of rampant sex crimes, you know, a couple of us are going to take it on the chain. Some people aren't going to be there for the Christmas party.

Like the description of like, you know, major powerful figures in, you know, politics and finance and policy in the NGO world, referring to them as faves. Yeah, this is all of that. Like everything put together about that. This could be the tweet that like, I just lost 15 points of sanity. I'm out of the game. Well, what's so fascinating, including from Christine Pelosi, it's like, if this were just some random, like, you know, stand with her, Hillary, mom, eight, seven, four, five,

nine, six, 10 account saying some of our faves, meaning like, I don't know, Bill Clinton and everyone around him. That's like still weird and insane. But this is someone who presumably knows these people. And it's like you're saying, well, I've long suspected people in my social circle to be ghastly sex criminals, guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens now. And it's like, Christine, I care to elaborate on who these names are. I mean, who, no, go on.

Who are your faves, Christine? Yeah, man, this is tough. This is the year I cut out everyone from my life who does child rituals, you know, like some of my favorite people, but like, you know, times come. There was another, there was a really good one. It was just from like some, like it was just like a nobody. It was like a Sam B writer or some shit who was like, you know, listen up, y'all, white person, obviously, listen up, y'all.

I love Hillary like his sister, but the best thing that could happen to her is Bill Clinton going to prison for life. And it's like, yeah, for sure. He's looking at like world politics and major power struggles the way I watch, you know, big little lies or like a lifetime movie when you're like, you have to get away from him, honey. Like Hillary didn't spend the nineties running interference for fucking Bill and undermining the people who were claiming that he'd made, uh, uh, he'd abuse them.

That was like her job was undermining them and saying that they didn't have credibility of that. They were just looking for money or whatever. But if imagine if she didn't like have to spend time doing that, she could have like really gone in. Yeah. No, I mean, like that, that, that is, I guess this is like, if you had to pick one thing to show how disease people's relationship with politicians is it would be this case

because the Q and on people on the other side, like literally the joke that we made, it's like Donald Trump sting operation and succeeded. They were literally pro Trump, people are posting pictures of Trump with Epstein and they're like, he'd undercover operation. No, no, it was like, keep your friends close, keep your enemies close. Awesome dude. He's setting it up perfectly. This is one of the most mentally ill eras.

Oh God. American politics. Like you would have to go back to an era where like, you know, uh, people thought their mailman was a Russian agent or like people thought that like one of the greatest threats to political progress was the devil tricking people into being horny. Like it just, this is such a diseased fucking time. Well, I mean, it sucks. It is so funny now with this Epstein thing because we're going to get to see, uh, both

sides of the political spectrum pretend that like, oh, this is going to make you, you, the other one look really bad. Yeah. Okay. So hell, hell outcome, right? Funniest and worst outcome. It turns out Donald Trump was lying about knowing Jeffrey Epps, like, so the first mention of Epstein, like possibly being up to something very skeevy is a profile of him in New York

Mag in 2002 where Donald Trump says the words, Jeff's a very fun guy. He loves the social life. Some have said he likes girls even younger than me. So literally this is one of those dumb New York magazine articles that they used to have about like how cool some rich guy is. And the first like actual, like famous person they talked to was like, Jerry is a pedophile. But what if it turns out like those pictures, like Trump didn't even like really talk to him.

He's never, he lied about being on the jet and he, he just did it because someone was like, oh yeah, great and Carter's been on that you have. And he's like, yeah, I have, I did all this stuff on there, but it turned out every Democrat was on it. Right. And somehow, Ilyn Omar, like the worst outcome possible, Trump's like, I'm sorry I lied. Well, I mean, we should point out that there are like affidavits and court documents coming back to the 1994 of a sworn court affidavits, suppose alleged victim and her friend that

she told that Donald Trump raped her when she was 13 in Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan apartment, but I mean, like everyone's involved in this, but however, like the Clintons have way deeper ties to absolutely Donald Trump, Trump never actually was on any of the flight logs. Whereas fucking, I mean, I think they, they figured out he was a talker. Yeah. Bill was on that. I mean, he probably did that.

I don't know. We'll find out. Like bill is on that fucking flight log, like over 20 times. I mean, he's got frequent fire miles on the Lolita Express along with Stephen Pinker, Stephen Pinker. I don't know how many times he's done there, but also other favorite of the show, Alan Dershowitz. Oh boy.

And he was reached for comment today. Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has been caught up in the scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, is taking a wait and see stance towards new allegations of sex trafficking against the billionaire. I'll wait to see what the evidence is. Dershowitz told the Daily Beast on Saturday when asked to comment on Epstein's arrest. All I know is what I've read in the Daily Beast website, the Harvard Law professor added, I haven't been in touch with Epstein for a long time.

Remember the last time he made a comment on this? He was like, yes, I got a massage at his house, but it was only from an elderly Russian woman and my child was there at the time. Nice dude. Wow. Well, you know, like actually Epstein, like, like his whole thing was like, he would say like, oh, he had a modeling agency and he would interview girls and then like they would give him massages or whatever.

And then he would have them recruit other girls. Donald Trump ran a modeling agency in the nineties that did basically the exact thing. And he bragged about like peeking on girls, changing and shit. Yeah. So you're talking about the hell outcome. I think the real how I'll come in also the most likely outcome is, is that he pleads out, takes some sort of sentence, like not as light as the one he got last time, real jail time.

And so it's, so people can see, ah, we're actually taking this stuff seriously, but not that long and nothing else gets revealed. Yeah, I agree with you. It gets stitched up and nothing is going to come out. I agree with you because like the real insanity of this political age isn't so much outrageous things keep happening, it's that no one goes away. Nothing stops happening. We're just doomed to this purgatory forever.

So there's no reckoning. Yeah. No, he just loved that happen. If we could just get Dersh though, I would love to get Dersh. Just getting Dersh would be amazing. I hate to break it to you, but Alan Dershowitz is probably like, what is he like 80? Yeah. Alan Dershowitz is somehow going to live another 25 years.

He'll go on TV. He'll go on TV. He's going to die comfortably in his bed. Yeah. He's going to go on TV. And then suddenly devolves into dust. Yeah, he's going to go on TV every few months to either defend an NFL player who decapitated his maid with a sword or say that Israel has a right to literally bulldoze over a family.

It's like, yeah, no, the same shit will just keep happening forever. And then they'll write weird society piece profiles about how someone was rude to him at Martha's Vineyard and people are like, well, we're really showing him. So I guess stay tuned for that. Can we talk about a feel-good story? Yeah. Let's move on. I mean, there's a lot of darkness in the world.

But we've introduced some light into the world by, I think, giving some necessary profile to Mary Ann Williamson and her positive vibes. You guys are going to hire any poisoning people and devoting for her. And then we're going to have another narcissistic new age boomer. And she's going to like bomb Pakistan for being anti-yoga. I'm sorry. There's no way that this is going to turn out okay. Okay.

Well, okay. Amber, let me allay your fears. Let me allay your concerns here by introducing another feel-good character who I hope that we can give adequate light and attention to. We are talking about, of course, Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. Out of nowhere. I didn't even know. I knew about Bo when he had the brain cancer.

Like he was kind of his joke, Kennedy Jr. He was going to be the president or something. And then his brain exploded. I didn't even know he had another son until like, yeah, he had a son, another son. And he's dating the widow of his dead brother and also smokes crack. It's like when a walk on from the first season becomes a really important character arc in the third. You just didn't see it coming.

Yeah. I love Hunter and I love Hunter because what is every other sort of child of a famed political actor in America? It's, you know, just this fucking ADIQ idiot male married to a fail hedge fund guy who in her spare time tries to impress conservative teens by, you know, trying to get a Muslim Congresswoman killed. It's to Rook assault on the view. It's just the, the Trump kids who are just, there's just nothing going on there.

There's just, there's a little funny stuff with Don Jr. and his, the pathos of his, his desire for his dad to like, yeah, and his divorcateness there. But there's really Abby Huntsman, just no, just nothing. There's like resume nitwits who spent, who just like all of them. It's like, you have a life guaranteed. You will never be at want. You never have to actually perform to any specification. So here's the thing that I think consolidates Hunter Biden's quality.

His name is actually Robert. Really? Hunter is his middle name. But one day someone was like, no, you are clearly a hunter. You are the most hunter guy in the world. No one has ever been more of a hunter. Hunter Biden did not go to a homeless encampment and score crack for a week. Hunter Biden did.

Oh, absolutely. He did. So ever, we're going to get into the broad strokes of Hunter, like the reason that he got profiled, but we're going to get into it later a little bit. I think he's like a better person than any presidential kid and I'm dead serious. We'll get into that. The New Yorker had a big, big piece about Hunter Biden and I want to go through it with you guys a little bit.

And like the thing is like, I wouldn't say it's like a tragic story. He's experienced tragedy in his life, but I think the word is pathos. There's a certain kind of American pathos to his character that Felix described as like an Alexander Payne movie. And I think that's exactly right. That there's something about him that I don't know that there's a messy character. He has flaws. So you know, with Hunter Biden, I think we have a guy who could be, you know, a breakout

star from 2020. And quite honestly, I wish he was running instead of Joe Biden. He should be like, we're talking about how America is just like, it just never ends. We're condemned to each other in the same cycles forever. Every day is like a small, awful crisis, but it doesn't change anything. Who is more perfect to manage that than a guy whose life has been that every day? Every day of Hunter's life is a little crisis he's created for himself. I'm just imagining him because the way he responds to any setback or stress in his

life. I just imagine him on the debate stage and, you know, he gets, he gets owned like the way Kamala Harris owned his dad and he just like says, fuck this and just like takes the mic off and just takes out like a fucking travel thing of Kahlua and just starts chugging. He's like texting his fucking dealer as he's striding off the podium. Hunter, his immediate profile is like that of an Alexander Payne, but I think he's more than that. He's like an FX character.

He's like someone on Nip Talk. He's like someone on Son's Vanarchy. He has the same like moral- He's an FX character that thinks of himself as a USA network guy. He thinks he's on burn notice when he gets drunk and punches someone at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Yes. He thinks he's on suits. Yes.

Absolutely. He's getting menaced by the Sam Crow for like, because he's like, he's selling drugs outside the back of his fucking sporting goods store or something. He's the guy who, who Jax is like, I know a lawyer who can help us do another motorcycle deal. And it just, it just, it shows up, no tie on to shovel sweating with like half his face is shaved. He's like, sorry, I was in a rush.

It's like, we can't pay you, but we could take you to watch the Porto get shot in our Porto warehouse. He's like, hot dog. So I want to go into the this big profile of Hunter Biden and the New Yorker. It's settled. Will Hunter Biden jeopardize his father's campaign? Couldn't be further from, no, I'm maxing out to Joe Biden now. It's like the only positive thing about a Biden presidency would be Hunter, Hunter

Biden running around the world, making like deals with like fucking foreign dictators and warlords and like personally smuggling diamonds up his ass. When's the last time I mean, like, there is a diamond involved in this story, by the way. Clinton had a messy brother. Yes. Carter had it. Billy Carter.

But no one's ever had like a wild and wacky son. Yeah. No, they haven't amazingly enough. The kids tend to be relatively, but hey, Patty Davis, Patty Davis is probably the best example. I would always point out that she was adopted Alice Roosevelt, maybe Alice Roosevelt. Yes. That was like cool.

She was like, she was like, you know, wild like she was sort of like forward thinking. What about a Rosemary Kennedy? Okay, so let's jump into this New Yorker profile here. It goes. George W. Bush, but they took care of him. Yeah. Yeah. So it starts out talking about, you know, Joe Biden, you know, his presidential campaign.

He's leading the polls, but like, yeah, like, you know, he has some, he has some weaknesses, shall we say. And he goes, get the family story that Biden tells him, quote, promise me, dad, a year of hope, hardship and purpose, because we all know that the bow story figures very largely in his campaign narrative, the tragedy of losing his son and the prime of his life. Again, the elder, good son who was just like Joe described him as all of my strengths and none of my weaknesses. Let's be honest.

I got kind of a dud in one and one son boy, I'll tell you, he was everything with the bells on. What, Joe? So he goes largely glosses over a central character in Biden's life. Biden writes, I was pretty sure Bo could run for president someday. And with his brother's help, he could win. With his brother's help? Doing what?

Hunter Biden, who is 49, is described as a supportive son and sibling. In the speeches, Biden really talks about Hunter, but news outlets on the right and mainstream media organizations, including The Times, have homed in on him, reprising old controversies over Hunter's work for a bank, for a lobbying firm, and for a hedge fund and scrutinizing his business dealings in China and Ukraine. There is little question that Hunter's proximity to power shaped the arc of his career. And that as the former aide told me, Hunter is a super rich terrain. Yes.

I agree. He is a rich terrain. He has peaks. He has valleys. He has tributaries. He's marbled, you could say. And it goes on. The gossip pages have seized on Hunter's tumultuous private life.

He has struggled for decades with alcohol, addiction, and drug abuse. He has went through an acrimonious divorce from his first wife, Kathleen Buell Biden, and has had a subsequent relationship with Bo's widow, Hallie. He was recently sued for child support by an Arkansas woman, London Alexis Roberts, who claims that he is the father of her child. He's basically every R relationship post in one person. He's not the guy Raylin Givens is after, but he's the guy who Raylin goes up to and he's like, God, I don't care about whatever bullshit you have going on, Hunter.

You're going to tell me you stole those microchips. No, he is like the guy who marries Raylin's ex. Yes. Totally fucks up with the Kentucky mob and then has to flee. Yes. Yes. Okay. So it goes here.

Talking about a rally. On stage at the rally, Jill Biden introduced her husband. The Biden family is ready, she said. We will all do as we always have as a family. Seated in white chairs to the side of the stage were Ashley Biden, Hunter's half-sister, Ashley's husband, Howard Crane, Bo's children, Natalie and Robert Hunter, Hunter's three daughters, Maisie, Finnegan and Naomi, and Naomi's boyfriend, Peter. The last seat in the row with a piece of paper on it that said reserves remained empty.

In one of my early conversations with Hunter, he told me about his sadness at having missed his father's event. Bo and I have been there since we were carried in baskets during his first campaign, he said. We went everywhere with him at every single major event and every small event that he had to do with his political career. I was there. In baskets up until we were 20 years old. I've never missed a rally for my dad.

The notion that I'm not standing next to him in Philadelphia, next to the Rocky statue, it's heartbreaking for me. It's killing me and it's killing him. Dad says, be here. Mom says, be here, but at what cost? So already, I mean, my heart is breaking for this guy. Okay. So all those other presidential kids, like it's entirely transactional or they're just

fucking dollars. They're just automatons. Right, right. I think of Chelsea. They're either Chelsea. Chelsea was raised in like a vat. Right. It's either like Chelsea and Eric or Abby Huntsman or like just a fucking monster like,

you know, you know, Megan McCain or someone like that. But Hunter is like, Hunter legitimately thinks that like, no, my dad, my dad has to save this country. I have to help him, but I'm just too fucked up. Like this is tragic. It's his tragic, it's like, yeah, the son of a vice president who's like, works for some scummy influence, but battling law firm thing, but like he's, I like the guy. I'm sorry, man.

I'm saying like, but he's like, he's been through dark. He's walked in shadow. Yes. Walked in darkness, you know, like, like a lot of people making McCain's formative tragedy is like, oh, my 900 year old father. Yeah, exactly. And she still hasn't gotten over that. She's still milking that.

This guy watched his fucking brother. His mom died. His fucking brother died. So he's walked through darkness. No, he says he's had some, he's actually had travails and he goes, he wanted to protect his father from a trickle of disclosures and to share a personal narrative that he sees no reason to hide. Look, every family faces pain.

He said, everybody has trauma. There's addiction in every family. I was in that darkness. I was in that tunnel. It's a never ending tunnel. You don't get rid of it. You figure out how to deal with it. I don't know that there's addiction in every family.

In many families, in many families, but that's the kind of, you know, normative statement that betrays. Yes. Well, that's the thing about this guy is that he's very incredibly, he does had problems in his life and he has had real trauma. Look, it's normal. But he's also. Everyone has wrapped a car around a tree sometimes.

He's also incredibly self-serving and self-absolving because he's always been able to get out of all the problem because of his family. And now the article then proceeds to go through like a lot of his early career that follows like a similar path from a lot of career. Yeah. A lot of people from his background in that, you know, he gets a law degree and then gets these jobs that are not like, while not at least compared to the Trump era, not as ludicrously openly corrupt as that, at least if not like by the letter of the law illegal, at least

raise some eyebrows about, you know, how close your lobbying and legal work is to, you know, your dad's job as a senator. He got hired right out of law school by the biggest, at the time, the biggest bank in Delaware that was also the top contributor to Biden. And that's what's funny about Biden because he's famously, and we've talked about this, how he's one of the poorest senators. He never personally got rich by being the handmaiden of all these awful companies in Delaware.

Because he's not good at it. If Biden shows, but Hunter shows you is that the real value here isn't even necessarily your own wealth because at a certain level of your senator, certainly, you know, you're going to get enough comps that you're going to be able to live relatively high on the hog, even if you're not actually taking cash. But more importantly, your fucking dumbass kids are never going to be a huge burden on you. You are guaranteed that they will be able to have careers that keep them from, you know,

having to live in the basement or whatever. That's the real value of having these connections. I feel like there's, in this sense, there's like this weird mirror between Hunter and Don Jr., right? Where they both are like, no, I'm good at this thing that I do, that I've gotten entirely because of who my dad is with Don Jr. It's like, I'm a business man, I just say, put the building over here and sometimes it goes up.

And, you know, I'm helping my dad get elected by just going up to a crowd of 65 year old men and telling them about Groyper. And for Hunter, it's like, no, yeah, I'm a great lawyer. I worked really hard on this. And his job is like to put together a conference call between like the Chinese military and like some fucking surveillance company or whatever. But there is a pathos in both of them. But Don Jr.'s pathos manifest and like, all right, I just got to be this like racist,

nasty asshole. I have to kill elephants. I have to do all this shit to like make my dad like me. And Hunter doesn't know what he's supposed to do. There's this tragedy in Hunter that throughout the story there, you see that he does things that he does really good things sometimes, like the homeless woman, right? He like, there's this homeless woman that he would always give money to like get cigarettes in Dupont Circle and be like, yeah, keep the change, give her like $100.

And he let her sleep in his two bedroom. But he, it's the sense that he wants to be a good person, but he doesn't know how to do it. What, yeah, what I, since I got from reading this article, there's this very clear path laid out for him. It's like, you know, it's there regardless of any of his effort or will or like self-awareness. It's just there for him. And he's filled into that, like water finding its own level when you're the son of someone

like I said, someone like Joe Biden. And he's always done it, but he's never, he's never questioned whether or not that's the thing for him. He's still lost the entire time and has like, you know, gone from one thing to another, never really fitting into this path. And then like very occasionally spinning wildly out of it. Like Hunter played high school football and considered quitting once because he wanted to take a creative writing class or something, brought it up to his dad, his dad laughed

at him. He never thought about it again. Right. The villain of this story is in no way Hunter, it's Joe. But Joe seems like a fucking asshole, the father, not in the sense that he was like abusive, but just like, he didn't pay attention. He's a too hard a handshake guy. Yeah.

He just didn't fucking pay attention. So since you're going on, Joe Biden grew up around relatives with alcohol problems. And at a young age, he decided to abstain again, very similar to Donald Trump, whose brother was an alcoholic. And he's always associated drinking with being a loser and with being weak, more important than anything. The greatest generals in history all drink soda. So it said, Hunter, who spoke frankly to me about his struggles with addiction, started

drinking socially as a teenager. While he was a student at Georgetown in the early nineties, he took up smoking Marlboro red cigarettes and occasionally used cocaine. Once hoping to buy cocaine, he was sold a piece of crack, but he wasn't sure how to take the drug. I didn't have a stem, Hunter said. I didn't have a pipe improvising. He stuffed the crack into a cigarette and smoked it.

It didn't have much of an effect, he said. In 2001, Hunter, Kathleen and their children moved back to Washington to be closer to the rest of the Biden family. And Hunter connected to Washington on Amtrak, as his father did. Sometimes he missed the train and stayed in a rental room at the Army Navy Club. When I found myself making the decision to have another drink or get on the train, I knew I had a problem. Now, Hunter Biden's drug abuse figures largely in this story, and his use of crack cocaine

is also like a major, probably like the bold thing that everyone talks about. Again, I bring this up not because Hunter is a villain here. Many people struggle with drug addiction and have come out of it or still are still dealing with it. I bring it up because once again, Joe is the villain because while this is all going on in the background, Joe Biden was the guy rigorously escalating the war on drugs and is the guy who, with Strom Thurmond, is responsible for the mandatory minimum disparity in sentencing between powder and rock cocaine.

And it's one of Joe Biden's most underrated crimes is his roles in architecting the modern war on drugs. Everything that seems fucking insane to you now about how we treat the opiate crisis, about how we will sentence users of crack versus users of cocaine or whatever, it's Joe Biden. It's fucking Joe Biden working at Strom Thurmond. And like throughout this story, Hunter goes in and out of rehab and relapses a lot to cocaine and alcohol, similar to the way, again, many people have, but he never went to jail for

20 fucking years and had his life destroyed as basically an entire generation did as a result of the crack hysteria, the quote, epidemic in the 80s and 90s in America. So again, the article goes into very long detail about his business dealings with a company in the Ukraine and also China that Hunter would be along on these official delegations. Again, not very clear, you know, what the overlap between public and private and family and business is, especially when your dad is in the government and the vice president. I totally believe, by the way, what he says in this thing of how he never really, he was always very confident, conscious of the appearance of impropriety and he never wanted to do it.

But at the end of the day, those were the jobs that were available to him. Those was the way to get money to keep his multiple families in the style they'd become accustomed to was some sleazy piece of shit would be like, hey, you want to join my consulting firm or my hedge fund? He's like, yeah, sure, that sounds like a wonderful adventure. I love, I love helping entrepreneurs be contact, be put in contact with the sources of revenue so that they can grow the economy while they're all just these blood drenched monsters trying to around his bed and using him as a conduit, make all these incredibly corrupt connections.

And he's just doply the front man for all of it. Just wow. Amazing. This is so this is great. This the entrepreneurial spirit on display here is really inspiring. So he goes, it's like, yeah, hey, that's great, Hunter. Hey, do you mind fucking smuggling this suitcase full of Krugerans into Donbass? Sure, that sounds like a wonderful thing.

When I asked members of Biden's staff whether they discussed their concerns with the vice president, several of them said that they had been too intimidated to do so. Everyone who works for him has been screamed at, a former advisor told me. Others said that they were wary of hurting his feelings. One business associate told me that Biden during difficult conversations about his family got deeply melancholy, which to me is more painful than if someone yelled and screamed at me. It's like you've hurt him terribly.

That was always my fear that I would be really touching a very fragile part of him. Biden is the perfect patriarch and older patriarch in an Alexander Payne movie because he's sort of like haranguing, manipulative in this subtle way. Cold and withdrawn will withhold any attention. Yeah. Very thoughtfully like deals out his charm to sway people. He's perfect. About Schmidt is I think a good analog here.

Yes. Because of course, Vice President Biden was playing a central role in overseeing US policy in Ukraine and took the lead in calling on Kiev to fight rampant corruption. On May 13th, 2014, after Hunter's role in the Bersama board was reported in the news, Jen Paske, a State Department spokesperson, said the State Department was not concerned about perceived conflicts of interest because Hunter was quote, a private citizen. Several former officials in the Obama administration at the State Department insisted that Hunter's role in Bersama, again, in the shady Ukrainian company, had no effect on his father's policies

in the Ukraine, but said that nevertheless, Hunter should not have taken the board seat. As the former was senior White House aide put it, there was a perception that Hunter was on the loose, potentially undermining his father's message. Hunter on the loose. That is, there's your title. Yeah. Yeah. That just, that really rolls off the tongue.

Okay. Here's my favorite part of the story. So it says here, Hunter saw himself as a provider for the Biden family and he even helped to pay off Bo's law school debts, but he often wished that like his father and his brother, he could contribute more to society. Through his business, he got to know an Australian American former military intelligence officer named Greg Keely, who regaled him with stories about his career in the Royal Australian Navy. After moving to the United States at 40, Keely had obtained an age waiver to join the US

Navy as a resident. While on reserve duty at a US military base in Southern Afghanistan on September 11, 2011, he and members of his unit watched Vice President Biden deliver a speech at the Pentagon about the attacks of 9-11. After the speech, Keely sent an email to Hunter to tell him that members of his unit thought the vice president's message was, quote, spot on. Hunter passed the note to his father, who wrote Keely an email, keep your heads down, he said.

You're the finest group of warriors in all of history. Settle down. Keely helped convince Hunter that it wasn't too late for him to join the Navy reserves. He told me, my message to him was, if you feel the call to serve, which I encourage, it doesn't really matter what your rank is or what's on your shoulder board. It's that you're serving your country. Hunter took that message to heart and acted upon it. Again, this idea that he's been doing all these jobs, just found himself on the board

of some Ukrainian company that was pseudo-connected to his own father's anti-corruption efforts, or at least working against them at the very least. Or all the law firm, all these lobbying things that, again, in the article he says, we never even talked about it, that I would never talk about my clients with my dad. You know what? I kind of believe him. But the thing is, it's just unmistakable the appearance of what's going on, whether or not it's corrupt.

But then he has a need inside him to do something better or something that he feels is good for him or the world. Because he knows at a certain level that this is all just been handed to them. Even if he says, I did a good job. He knows that he has useless. He's a fucking USB cord between money and influence. That's all he is, and he wants to be something else. But he's also a dumb, shift-less shithead who doesn't have any skills or ability.

But compare this. Okay. So Mayor Pete, probably from the time he was 15, was like, all right, so I got to go the Ivy League track. I need an officer job in the military. Self-driven precocious. But Hunter Biden, after just like a few years of like being the USB cord, probably drinking some weird Gentile cocktail like Bailey's and Gin, just going off, you know, doing

Hunter things. Hunter things. He's like, this is bullshit. I got to fucking do something. And that's why he joins the military as a much older guy, getting nothing out. He was like well into his 40s at this point. That's awesome. It's not awesome to join the military, but like that, that his brain works like that,

that he's like fuck this. Like, God, I love him. So he can find himself. So yes, but this is the best part he goes. With a letter of recommendation from Keely, Hunter applied for an age waiver, which the Navy granted. The service has a zero tolerance drug and alcohol abuse policy and states that all recruits will be asked questions about prior drug and alcohol use.

Hunter disclosed that he had used drugs in the past, but said that he was sober now and the Navy granted him a second waiver. Hunter had suffered his first relapse after seven years of sobriety in November 2010, when he drank three Bloody Marys on a flight home from a business trip to Madrid. He continued to drink in secret for several months, then confided in Beau and returned to Crossroads Center. He had another relapse in early 2013 after he suffered from a bout of shingles for which he was prescribed painkillers.

When the prescription ran out, he resumed drinking. On May 7, 2013, he was assigned to a reserve unit at a Naval station, Norfolk. He had hoped to work in Naval intelligence, but was given a job in a public affairs unit. At a small private ceremony at the White House, Hunter was sworn in by his father. Later that month, the night before Hunter's first week of reserve duty, he stopped at a bar a few blocks from the White House. Outside, Hunter said he bummed a cigarette from two men who told him that they were from South Africa.

He felt, quote, amped up as he was driving down to Norfolk, and then incredibly exhausted. He told me that he called Beau and said, I don't know what's going on. Beau drove from Delaware to meet Hunter at a hotel near the Naval station. He got me ship shape and drove me to the base, he said. On his first day, Hunter had a urine sample taken for testing. A few months later, he received a letter saying that your analysis had detected cocaine in his system. Which means he just did.

Yeah, he just did it. Like that morning. Under Navy rules, a positive drug test typically triggers a discharge. Hunter wrote a letter to the Navy reserve saying that he didn't know how the drug had gotten in his system and suggested that the cigarettes he'd smoked outside the bar might have been laced with cocaine. So he gots a lawyer or whatever, but essentially, there's a lot of closed door hearings. He's discharged from the Navy.

Love to lace my cigarettes with cocaine. That's the best. That's the way the teens are doing it. That's the most efficient way to get high. Yeah, they actually, they call it a Hunter. So then like, you know, after that, he goes to various yoga related rehabs at the Eselin Center in California, which I think we've discussed before on the show. So it says on June 6th, 2015, thousands of people paid their respects at a service in

St. Anthony Church in Wilmington. This is after his brother, older brother Bo, tragically died of brain cancer. The next day, President Obama asked Biden and Hunter, who was fearful of public speaking, delivered eulogies. On the drive back to Washington, Hunter, moved by the outpouring of support for him and his family at the funeral, told Kathleen, his then wife at the time, that he was only, that he was singing about running for public office. She pointed out that he had only recently been discharged from the Navy after testing

positive for cocaine. They rode the rest of the way home in silence. Kathleen declined to comment for this article. Wow. Kathleen sounds like a fucking unsupportive bitch. It's like the only reasonable person in his life. It's being like, you know, I don't know if you can handle that kind of pressure right now.

And it's like, bitch, you don't support my dreams that I just had 20 minutes ago. Literally five minutes ago. I think how exhausting this would be, like he's just constantly in like Panama. It would be like being married to a Jack Russell terrier. Yes. Yeah. And then every month, he's like, you know, I've just, I think I can get into the Joffrey. He's just a new thing all the time.

Yeah. First it's like, I want to be in my mid 40s, join, like become a naval intelligence officer. Oops. Pop the pause for cocaine. And then immediately after that, he's like, I think I'm going to run for office. It's just, it's very, it's very powerful. It would take a lot out of you. Yeah.

So, and then again, like the story is very long. It goes into like, he's, you know, in and out of various treatments and rehabs and things like that, including one, a program that required him to carry a breathalyzer with a built-in camera. Yeah. Later that summer, Ashley Madison, a dating service for married people, which used the slogan, live life is short, have an affair, disclose that hackers had breached its data. I remember that.

You can see where this is going. Oh, hilarious. Hunter practice yoga daily. A teacher from his yoga studio told me, I don't think I've ever seen a person try as hard to heal as he did. When he stopped coming to class, the teacher went to his apartment near Logan Circle and knocked on the door. Hunter told me he pretended not to be at home.

That also appears to be a breach of the yoga teacher-student relationship there. But that's like, okay, that's how powerful Hunter is. That never, that's the sort of thing that only happens in movies. Like Hunter like has this energy where people like interact with it. Like he goes to a fucking yoga class. They just see this 40-year-old man stretching and there is this aura about him that if he doesn't show up, this yoga instructor is like, where did he go? I have to find him.

I have to see what happens. You worry. Yeah. Who is he? I need him. So during this period when he is basically like shifting through various yoga retreats, rehabs, just numerous different strategies for dealing with this, he begins to, he begins a relationship with Hailey, his brother's widow, because they share a kind of connection.

And also he has this magnetism. Yeah. He does. And it goes here. That fall, Hunter made plans to go to the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Sedona, Arizona. During a layover at Los Angeles International Airport before his connecting flight to Phoenix, he went to a nearby hotel bar and realized he had left his wallet on the plane. It had belonged to Beau and still contained his attorney general identification bag and

also Hunter's driver's license, without which he couldn't board the flight. Using a credit card he had in his pocket, he checked into a hotel where he waited for the airline to return the wallet. I mean, you can see where this is going. This is just like, miss your connection, end up in a motel. He ends up in LA's Skid Row buying crack. At that point, someone puts a gun to his head before they realized he was a buyer. And then he basically would just spend some time in a motel buying crack from Skid Row

and just not being in contact with anyone. Hunter said at that point he had not slept for several days, driving east on Interstate 10 just beyond Palm Springs. He lost control of his car, which jumped the median and skidded to a stop on the shoulder on the westbound side. He called Hertz, which came to collect the damaged car and gave him a second rental. Later on a sharp bend on a mountainous road, Hunter recalled a large barn owl flew in front of the hood of the car and then seemed to follow him dropping in front of the headlights.

This is his spirit animal experience. He said that he had no idea whether the owl was real or a hallucination. On the night of October 28th, Hunter dropped the car off at a Hertz office in Prescott, Arizona, and Grace Grove sent the van to pick him up. So Zach Romfrow, who worked at the Hertz office in Prescott, told me he found a crack pipe in the car on one of the consoles, a line of white powder residue. Bo Biden's attorney general badgers on the dashboard. Hertz called the Prescott police department and officers there filed an narcotics offense

report listing the items seized from the car, including a plastic baggie containing. First of all, his life is a movie written by an asshole. This is like that a million little pieces shit, but not total bullshit. Yes. You know what I mean? Like he's like, this is not a complete fiction. But by the way, why is the Hertz rental car company just immediately calling the cops if they find a scam?

Yeah. I think everyone should know that. They're fucking dime you out. Just throw it out. Fuck Hertz. You know what it is? It's that like the woman who like he returned the keys to like looked at him and was drawn in by his magnetism and then she went and saw it and she's like, he's in trouble.

I have to do something. It's the only way to save him. No, it's more drama if it's Hunter. Like the woman was like, who was that guy and the manager who's had a crush on her and also his marriage is falling apart was like a fucking asshole. That's who. And then starts the car. Hunter just like everywhere he goes, he's an FX series.

Every ripple he creates is like an ABC series. So of course, at this time, Kathleen files for divorce in court. There are of course allegations of drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs and gifts for women with whom he's had sexual relationship while leaving the family. No funds to pay legitimate bills. Kathleen told friends he felt ostracized by the Biden family. Hunter denied hiring prostitutes and said that he hadn't been to a strip club in years, but he said the evening the story was published.

I went directly to a strip club. I said, fuck them. Yep. I'm going to be who you say I am. Oh, I hate being at the strip club, but you people in your fucking lies just made me have to go. How old was he? Isn't this mid to late 40s?

Yeah. 40, like 45 year old man with kids being like, fuck them. So awesome. Hunter said that in divorce proceedings, he offered to give Kathleen everything, including a monthly payment of $37,000 for alimony, tuition and childcare costs for a decade. What a baller. One of Kathleen's motions contains a reference to quote a large diamond that had come into Hunter's possession.

The motion seems to imply that it was one of Hunter's personal indulgences. When I asked him about it, he told me he had been given the diamond by the Chinese energy tycoon Yi Zhenming, who was trying to make connections in Washington among prominent Democrats and Republicans and whom he had met in the middle of the divorce. Hunter told me- He's like, oh no, I wasn't buying something for a mistress. This was just an incredible perk from my super corrupt career. He goes, Hunter told me the two associates accompanied him to his first meeting with Yi in Miami, and they had surprised him by Yi giving him a magnum of rare vintage scotch

worth thousands of dollars. It just basically says he went to his hotel after a meeting and there was just a giant diamond waiting for him. They just really liked how he did a handshake. It was a really strong, powerful handshake, and they were like this, give this man a diamond for his handshake powers. In February 2018, Yi was detained by Chinese authorities reportedly as part of an anti-corruption investigation and the deal with Hunter fell through.

Hunter said that he did not consider Yi to be a shady character at all and instead characterized the outcome as bad luck. There's nothing weird about giving someone a really expensive scotch and a diamond. Yes. I mean, I have a nice night out, I meet some friends, and I am bejeweled. That's a business dinner. It's business bejeweled. Like I said, he's been through some darkness, but I'm skipping a lot.

Let's get to the happy ending of this story. In early May, Hunter met a 32-year-old South African woman named Melissa Cohen, a filmmaker who was working on a series of documentaries about indigenous tribes in Southern Africa. A few days later, after their first date, Hunter had the word shalom tattooed in Hebrew letters on the inside of his left bison. Yes. By the way, the most relapsed move I've ever heard of him. He joined the IDF.

He picked the holiest word in the Hebrew language. Hello. He's so awesome. Hello. So awesome. Hello. He had the tattoo on the inside of his left bicep to match a tattoo that Cohen has in the same spot.

On May 15th, less than a week after they met, he proposed. The next morning, she accepted, and he bought the simplest gold wedding band he could find, then called the marriage service, which sent over an affidavit. A month later, on the roof deck of Cohen's apartment off the sunset strip, Cohen sat on a bench next to Hunter, who was wearing jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with a slogan, be fucking nice. Oh, Mike, it's the virgin Don Jr. Oh, yeah.

Hey, my dad watches your network. Can we please date? I have to go killing elephants. So my dad likes me, Hunter, all right, I got to get some keyboard duster to like even out the hive from these Roxy's, oh my God, this fucking Ruby encrusted scimitar. Where did I get this fuck? If Hunter- Oh my God, I met you last week.

I love you. Can I get you pregnant now? If Hunter weren't raised in like a PMC isolation tank and pushed along by probably an emotionally very withholding, aggressive patriarchal father figure, he would not even be a manager at hot topic right now. Well, I mean, that's the thing, I mean, especially regarding his dad's, you know, hyperescalation of the war on drugs. As you read this story, and it's just a revolving door of like treatment centers and rehabs.

He's checking himself in and out of yoga retreats at Esalen. And it's like, honestly, I think everyone who deals with drug and alcohol problems should be able to do that. But quite frankly, the vast majority of them are in and out of a different kind of facility until they just fucking die. Right. You know, so. But also, I think maybe some of the nature of those facilities not necessarily taking

very well for him might have to do with like the amount of freedom he has been giving you. Drug treatment in America is like awful. It's a fucking scam. I actually think we should do an episode about it. Oh yeah. There are two kinds of throw you in jail or you get to go to a spa where everyone says actually you're a magical being made of light. Yeah.

Every one of his fucking rehab assignments is a vacation. Right. You went to like a Mexican beach to like do yoga for six months and like have smoothie enemas. Meanwhile, in a lot of this country, if you go to rehab, you're literally made a slave at like a poultry factory. Like they make you they make you work for no money. It doesn't work for the.

It doesn't work for the poor. We like have it figured out that it's neither like a luxury service nor prison. Right. So again, here's some light in the darkness. He recalled that after the ceremony, I called my dad and said that we just got married. He was on speaker and he said to her, thank you for giving my son the courage to love again. Hunter pause his eyes, his eyes filling with tears.

And he said to me, honey, I knew that when you found love again, that I'd get you back. No one rubbed his shoulders. He went on and my reply was, I said, dad, I have always had love and the only thing that allowed me to see it was the fact that you never gave up on me and you always believed in me. Hunter told me that on a recent evening, he had seen this is the very last paragraph. He had seen reports on Twitter that Trump was calling for him to be investigated by the Justice Department. Then Hunter noticed Trump then Hunter noticed the helicopter overhead.

I said, I hope they're taking pictures of us right now. I hope it's a live feed to the president so he can see just how much I care about the tweets. He went on. I told Melissa, I don't care. Fuck you, Mr. President. Yes. Here I am.

Living my life. Yes. He's so fucking cool. No one, he has like protagonist syndrome. Yeah. He believes he is the protagonist. He is the protagonist of reality. Honestly, they bring him like Trump literally, he backs down from strong personalities.

He backs down from defiant people like Maduro. Kim Jong-un, like when people are just like, don't take his bluster and like, you suck my dick, dude. He's like, I like, he's actually as smart as me. He shows his belly. If he read that, he'd be like, I'm replacing Jared with Hunter. Hunter called to testify and like, you know, one of the, like Louis Gomer trying to grill him.

It would be like the army McCarthy. He'd be like, sir, at long last, you were the real fucking drug addict. Dude, he comes in there wearing like a spiritual gangster t-shirt or some other dumb shit for like 40 year olds. All the aides, so like Steve King, all them, they're just like, who is that? Like all the women are fanning themselves. He's just like, he's fucking, he takes one hit off and you'll fucking whip his shoulder. It's James Einhof in the head, cracks his glasses.

No one gives a shit. They're like, what are your business contacts? And he's like, I have a different kind of contact, the kind between soul and soul. And they're like, what the fuck? Some might say that before me sit the August representatives of the American people. But sirs all I see is a bunch of seagulls fighting over French fries. Hunter critic Hunter 2020 critical support for Hunter Biden run with just God, it would be the first, his vice choice for vice would just be a giant pile of like divorce dad bracelets.

No, his choice for vice president would be the Steve Earl character from the wire, who's just his sponsor and running me or wait. No, I got it. It's Daughtry Hunter by probably Hunter Biden's favorite artist. I mean, I'll also say a weathered but Hunter definitely a hunk. Very hot looking guy. Yeah, he's dummy hot. So he's kept his hair too.

I'm like, yes. So there you go, that is the saga of Hunter Biden will leave you with that for this week. But before we go, I do have a very important plug to make August 23rd in Providence, Rhode Island. We will be continuing our epic call of Cthulhu saga live at Necronomicon 2019 in Providence, Rhode Island. The tickets are available now. We will link to it in the show description.

But we will be again at the official H.P. Lovecraft convention in Providence, Rhode Island doing our call of Cthulhu saga live. I have never met this more. Be there and be square July 22nd in the Bell House episode one featuring us. Let's go. So yeah. Oh yeah. I will be I will be making my episode one debut July 22nd at the Bell House in New York.

So till next time guys. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.