The Press Box - The Joe Biden Inauguration Edition

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Inauguration Day and 46th President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They discuss Biden’s inaugural address, Harris making history as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be elected vice president, and everything we saw at today's inauguration.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. This is the special inauguration edition of the press box. And David Joseph R. Biden Jr., today is the only day we get to use his full name, was just sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Amen to that and not just rhetorically, because that the last hour of my life felt like the most, profound church service I've ever been to. And it was one, I think, this country needed.

Okay, so on that note, in normal times, I think you and I would be doing this podcast and having a jolly time with the platitudes that the news anchors used today. Peaceful transfer of power, the rituals of American democracy, et cetera, et cetera. I have never rooted harder for platitudes than I did today. how good did those sound coming out of the mouth of Brian Williams and everybody else? It sounded fantastic. You know, the normalcy of the event, and listen, there was a lot of severe glaring abnormalities compared to previous inaugurations, but the overall normalcy of it, I think, was incredibly powerful. but the admission that things weren't normal, I think, was even more powerful. And, you know, to hear everybody who was given time at the microphone sort of refer to peaceful transfers of power and everything else felt incredibly, it did.

It felt good. It felt good. I mean, listen, all of that was spoken against a very real anxiety on the part of you and me and everybody else watching that it might not go off smoothly. you know? I mean, up until the Biden's left the stage, uh, in my kind of happy emotion was combating a fear that anything, that something terrible could happen. Me too. Uh, it's in a way, I really enjoyed the festivities today and I was eager for them to end and everything

to peacefully go, go about its business. I mean, just to say the most obvious, thing right off the top here. The building they were standing outside of today was invaded by domestic terrorists two weeks ago. Two weeks ago today, what Biden called in his speech, sacred ground was overrun by the guy with the Viking horns and people who were sitting in Nancy Pelosi's desk. That was two weeks ago. So yeah, it's anxiety. And then I think competing with that anxiety, a kind of relief and pride that this ceremony happened in that same spot? Yeah, I mean, we're going to talk more about kind of what's the first term of or the next

few weeks have in store for the Biden administration. We'll be talking about that, I'm sure, very regularly over the next four years. But, you know, as much as I think I and many others were tempted to roll our eyes at Biden's obsession with bipartisanship and and kind of glorification of the old days of politics that probably don't exist anymore. Well, for one thing, that was, I mean, that was this platform. So, you know, we should all, in some sense, give runway to that whether or not we think it's feasible. But I think what's more pertinent to today is, and to the last two,

weeks is that I Joe Biden ran on you know that and ran on the this notion of of healing our country and it and it evolved past it grew into something bigger than a platitude over the last two weeks right I mean it it was the the attempted insurrection this act of terrorism on our capital two weeks ago you know I think sort of ended the point in time and ended whatever time period it was that we could sort of be nonchalant about such ideas. And it really, I guess it opened the doors to a new moment in which sort of normalcy and platitudes and everything else have a new sort of power and a new relevance and a new importance. And we should all be joyous hearing those things today.

Well, it's interesting to go back to Joe Biden's obsession with healing and with unity. Because remember, he told us that he. ran for president after what happened in Charlottesville. And that was beyond the platitude idea of unity. That was, oh, wow, something is really broken in this country right now. Something is really, really, really broken, perhaps more broken than a lot of people were willing to admit before that took place. And then I think this whole idea of unity sort of grew, right? It grew with the coronavirus.

We need to literally heal this country. heal it not only from this deadly virus that's now killed 400,000 people, but heal it from the after effects of a president who denied that the virus really existed or said it would magically go away. And then as you point out, in the last two weeks, we've had, oh, wow, democracy was threatened at the Capitol. So it felt by the time that Biden got up there today, you're right, it totally had a new resonance. It also put Joe Biden in the spot that he, I think, is most comfortable in, which, is this sort of, you know, long-time civil servant, almost like you're, you know, the aging political science professor that the students really like. And I'm going to tell you guys all about democracy. And I'm going to lean into the cliches a little bit. And it's going to work. Right. It had it was, it was, I thought, I thought his speech was great today. And I thought it was absolutely the speech he needed to give at this moment in time. Yeah, I mean, it was the best speech that he's given.

And I don't, and certainly I think the auction he was breathing, the moment that we're in lent a certain credence to it, that it might not have had otherwise, that he might not have exemplified otherwise. But he was, it was fantastic speech. He led off by saying, at this hour, my friend's democracy has prevailed. He then quoted Lincoln, David, saying, my whole soul is in this idea of uniting America.

Mm-hmm. So politics doesn't have to be a raging fire. end this uncivil war. It was it was really the absolute polar opposite of the speech Donald Trump gave four years ago, that American carnage speech of which George W. Bush famously said, that was some weird shit. This was as unweird and down the middle democracy, American system here, you know, we must continue, we must face our fears as you could possibly get. Yeah. And yet sort of, it's a radical sort of normalcy, right? It's a radical sort of return to our foundations

because it seems so impossible right now. And listen, we, we, like I said, we've, you know, many people rolled their eyes at his talk of bipartisanship, at his ideas of healing. But people rolled, I mean, we were on this podcast. I mean, I hope I'm not speaking incorrectly of you, but we were rolling our eyes when Joe Biden was leaking that he might get into the presidential

race because he thought he was the only one that could win. And well, I mean, he was right that he could win. I rolled my eyes more than once at the idea of Joe Biden's campaign. People, people, people rolled their eyes when he didn't fight back, you know, at various Trump slaps during the campaign. He was right, you know, I mean, I don't, I can, I hope that he's right about unity, you know. I hope that he's, I hope that these things are right. And, and, and, you know, it's a incredible moment that he finds himself in. You know, the best case scenario for the next four years is, well, I'm not even going to go that far, but just to take what you said about Biden and his career, I mean, a good Biden presidency is the

argument for career civil service in a moment, you know, in an era where it seems outdated, right? I mean, he is a successful Biden presidency is a vindication of a lifetime, you know, serving in the government. Right, that you don't need to break the government in this kind of theatrical, ridiculous fashion, but you actually need to fix the government and make it better. I think this idea of

unity and healing, it's tempting to kind of see it up a little bit too broadly, but it's actually functions on a couple of different levels. There is, I'm going to unite the country, which a lot of nervous Democrats take is, I'm going to get rolled by Mitch McConnell.

Yeah. Which is, by the way, a very, very, legitimate fear to have about Joe Biden, just as it was about Barack Obama because people have been down that road before. I totally get that. Then there's, I want to unite the country by doing the simple, symbolic stuff of being an American president, which you have pointed out many times, Donald Trump just didn't do. Like, I know, standing on the national mall last night, or having that silent moment of prayer today during his inaugural address, where you just recognize that lots and lots of Americans have died of the coronavirus and saying the word amen at the end of that very powerful moment. There's standing up to domestic terrorism, to Trump stealing

the election, to QAnon. Biden had a good line. He said, lies told for power and for profit today. You know, that kind of national healing. And I actually think that's pretty separate from the idea that, you know, Democrats and Republicans are just going to get along. Maybe by, Biden is going to go in for that whole critique. Maybe it's going to be a big mess on Capitol Hill when he tries to get legislation because he has a very, very outdated idea of government. He might, but at least in the other context, unity is not a bad idea right now. And in fact, seems like the most important idea he could have had today standing up there in front of the Capitol. Yeah, I mean, and even if you want to look at it from some sort of jaded point of view,

it's a good negotiating place to start from. I mean, to have the country behind you, unified behind you in the name of unity, right? I mean, maybe he will get ruled by Mitch McConnell. And maybe, I mean, and listen, it's a, it's a real fear, as you pointed out, and it's a much more significant fear than it has been at any point over the past 20 years, maybe more, because, you know, we can't shift the tax burden away from the wealthy 1% more, right? I mean, that's, that's like, that is the perilous situation our country finds itself in. And getting ruled by Mitch McConnell almost inherently means that, right? But, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I think, I think at this point, at least for the near future, we give our new president the benefit of the doubt.

A couple other notes on his speech. Joe Biden is just a continuing advertisement, David, for the power of short speeches. Not just because you and I would rather not watch a speech that goes on for an hour and five minutes or, you know, a kind of Clintonian winding address. But it's so much more powerful when it's short. it's like your editor tells you when you turn in a piece and says this will be twice as good half as long that is every joe biden speech like i'm just going to say this directly i'm going to put a few adornments on there yes but i'm going to i am i'm just going to say it i'm going to give you the nut graphs of this speech and i'm going to just dispense with the other stuff yeah he's not shooting for like any kind of hashtag long reads uh plot it no he's not going to be on the long form

podcast anytime soon, I don't think. That was really striking. The shout out to Jimmy Carter, who the only living president besides Trump, who could not be there today, really struck me. There were some parts where Biden seemed to be reaching for a little bit of like almost Churchill flourishes. He said, master this rare and difficult hour, that that was a really interesting line. It sounded a little bit un-Joe Biden to me, but I thought it was quite good. He referenced, he said, St. Augustine, a saint in my church. Yeah. Reminding us that Joe Biden is the second Catholic president of the United States.

Name check the song American Anthem. I was kind of worried where that was going. That quotation actually seemed to work pretty well within the confines of the speech. And then I love this tweet from Alex Siteswalled. Expect you all to keep breathlessly quote tweeting the White House with messages like, wow, this is precedented. Not unprecedented. This is precedented. And I thought about that while Biden was speaking today.

Everything he's saying is very, very precedented, even given the crazy circumstances. Yeah. It was a defiant, a defiant reclamation of the American projects. You know, I mean, it's just, I mean, I hesitate. I mean, I find it difficult to speak without speaking in cliches. you know, I mean, about what we saw today. But, yeah, I mean, I think that, well, listen, we saw a, like you said, every president,

every living president, except for Biden and Jimmy Carter were gathered there today. Except for Trump and Jimmy Carter. I'm sorry, what did I say, Biden? Yeah, Joe Biden did attend his own inauguration. Yeah, goodos to him for being there for manning up. The, you know, George W. Bush, well, has not been mentioned a lot over the last four years, but when he does get mentioned, it's usually George W. Bush says that's some weird shit or has some sort of direct or indirect comment at which point everybody on kind of liberal Twitter, you know,

feels obligated to remind us that he is a war criminal and, you know, that as much evil happened under his administration as any other. And listen, I think there's a really compelling argument to be made that, you know, Jeb Bush or literally any of the other contenders for the nomination four years ago would have been a more damaging Republican president in some ways, right, than Trump. But I say all of this to say this. I was thinking about George W. Bush today, and he did a lot of really reprehensible shit. But I think what makes us, or what makes us in some people sympathetic to him is not just his

kind of affable post-presidency demeanor and his painting and whatever else. but it's the fact that all of the terrible shit that he did was functionally part of the Republican platform, right? And I don't mean this in just some sort of like, I don't mean to sound jaded about this, but there's no other Republican president that wouldn't have invaded the Middle East the way he did. There might be, but it's sort of insignificant. All of the, all of the just reprehensible stuff that he did was abetted by his entire party, by the entire government for the most part. And that's whether or not you agree with it, you probably shouldn't. agree with it, but it's, but it's, you know, it's, it's on all of us a little bit. This is the government that we've helped create, and this is the government, and this is what this

government's going to do. I think what makes Trump stand out from George W. Bush or any of his predecessors, literally any of his predecessors, is that his evils were, were off script. His evils were, like, above and beyond any, like, inherent, any inherent cruelty or corruption of the office, of the, of the political process. Despite the fact that he was abetted by the entire Republican Party for four years, it's not just a cause for introspection. I think it was a shock to most of America that he did have a constituency for some of the stuff that he did.

And that's, you know, that's, I think where a lot of the pain comes from. But anyway, it's the whole long way of saying Trump is worse than what came before him. And I mean, we don't need to waste a second saying, talking about how he wasn't there today. He shouldn't have been there today. He didn't deserve to be there today. I'm glad that he wasn't. Yeah, that was that was the, uh, what Joe Biden said a couple of weeks ago. He said the only thing I agree with Donald Trump about is please don't come to the inauguration. We're all good. We're all good. Thanks for that. Let's say a few words, David, about Kamala Harris.

It got me when I believe it was Amy Klobuchar who used the word, Madam Vice President elect. She is, of course, as New York Times knows, the first woman and the first woman of color to serve as vice president. a huge day for her. It was very interesting to see her today. She does not get to speak on an occasion like this, but her presence was no less powerful. Weirdly had her name mispronounced, I think, by Sonia Sotomayor. Can we just make sure we got that right now that she is the vice president of the United States?

But what did you make of Kamala Harris today? You know, there's a lot of ways in which this, days felt, I don't think it was really about any one person. I think that Joe Biden capable made it about our country. But, you know, kind of her moment in a lot of ways seemed maybe one of the most significant, maybe the most significant one of the day. She's going to be, you know, in a really important force over the next four years and beyond. And it was, I think, a really compelling moment. I mean, just her really compelling day, just if you just watched her and her family.

Yeah, it was, it was big. A couple other notes for you. I heard this on MSNBC this morning. How striking was it that everyone was wearing masks up there at the podium? And you talk about like whether another Republican president would have been elected in 2016. I just thinking on Earth 2, you know, there is either Hillary Clinton as president in 2016 or there's another Republican, some generic Jeb Bush-style Republican wins that election. And we don't have this insane political debate over masks, right?

Maybe we have a political debate over when should we reopen the schools, when should we reopen businesses, you know, what is the balance between protecting citizens and trying to keep businesses open and solvent over these last nine or so months. But the whole let's not wear masks thing was aided and abetted and in some cases started by the president. the United States. And then a lot of Republicans felt obliged to go along with that and pretend that that just wasn't a good idea. Then you look at the podium today, Trump's gone. Everybody's wearing masks. Oh, oh, wow, that was easy. We're all, I guess we're all good, right? Nobody is theatrically refusing to wear a mask because it deprives them of their liberty. Okay. Well, that was that, glad we took nine months to figure that out. You mean, it's just a perfect metaphor for the just irrational hold that Trump had over his party, you know, that should, it shouldn't even been a topic of

conversation. It should have been a given, but, you know, Trump was just such a frightened man, insecure man that he didn't think that he could put on a mask without jeopardizing his legacy. Well, I guess that didn't really work out. He made fun of Biden for wearing masks. You made fun of him during a debate for wearing masks. the TV shot of the day, David, was the cutaway to Mike Pence, which seemed to happen about every minute and a half during the ceremony. And I was laughing because on the one hand, it seems like almost, you know, the shot they showed, the losing football coach when the last second field goal goes through the uprights. But then I think I figured it out over the course of the day that that's the peaceful transfer of power shot.

In a normal day, that would have been Donald Trump. okay, we're showing Donald Trump. He is the loser of the election or he is the former president. And now we're showing the person who's going to be the next president. That's just the grammar of those platitudes we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. But they didn't have anybody to put in that shot. So it became Mike Pence, who got an incredible amount of airtime today just sitting there looking stoic in his mask. It's true.

I mean, this is basically just the goal of the entire vice presidency for Mike Pence was to stand around and look presidential while Trump goofed off. I mean, unfortunately, he had to, you know, we say, we're saying a bet a lot in this podcast. Unfortunately, he had to co-sign a lot of just terrible, terrible, historically reprehensible shit to get to this moment. But a lot of abetting. He did get a lot of airtime. A lot of aiding and abetting over the last four years.

Lady Gaga National Anthem with that dramatic hand gesture to the actual American flag. that was waving behind her. I like that. J-Lo did this land is your land. By the way, really underrated patriotic song. This is your land. I've been singing that with the kids.

I think they learned that at school recently. That's a cool song, by the way. She did a fabulous job with it today. And then one, you were looking forward to, David. I know especially Garth Brooks. Oh, yeah.

Doing amazing grace. I loved all the kind of speaking of, you know, the rituals of democracy. How about the rituals of country music where you remove your cowboy hat before you sing Amazing Grace. Yeah. And then just really making love to the camera, you know, I want, I don't want just the people here to sing the last verse with me.

I want, though, you people at home to say, is this, is this the He-Ha and the Grand Ole Opry? I mean, this is amazing, right? It was fantastic. It was a really good, good performance. I mean, listen, I, Amazing Grace, you know, I feel like I, I'd make more. cracks about Amazing Grace than say positive things about the song because it's the kind of Control V stand in whenever a scene in any television show or movie goes to church, they are,

they are immediately singing that song, despite the fact that that is not the song you sing every week in church. So it's a little bit overdone, but it's a, but let's be fair, it's a banger. It was the perfect moment to sing it. And it was a, it was just a really, really great performance by Garth Brooks. And was it Roy Blund, who was up there afterwards and was able to correctly reference that the, you know, really memorable time that President Obama sang that song to after the massacre in South Carolina? That was that was a really powerful moment, too. And it was nice for him to tie that back. Most random attendee of the inauguration, Dan Quail or Arod.

Who do you got on that one? Poor Dan Quail, because I think he's the answer. and yet he was the vice president. You know, I mean, I think that, you know, maybe Mike Pence should take note. There's no, like, if you're a one. This is your future. Well, yeah, if you're a one-term,

people always talk about one-term presidents as sort of being disappointments or whatever. But like, you know, one-term presidents are still entering to pomp in circumstance when they show up at these big events. One-term vice presidents, I mean, you're lucky to find a good lobbying job after that, right? You just get lost.

One time, I was doing oral history for Grantland on the 1989 World Series. And this is the earthquake world series. And Dan Quail, I guess, surveyed the damage after the San Francisco earthquake. So I wanted to get Dan Quail on the phone. So I like wrote, you know, the equivalent of info at danquail.gov, you know, just thinking, like, I don't really know how to do this, but I'll just start here. And I swear, he got on the phone the next day. I mean, he was good. He was, he was, he was very available. He, he was happy to talk. By the way, Dan Quayle, I saw this on Twitter, five years younger than Joe Biden. Dan Quail became president, excuse me, in 1989. And he is five years younger than Joe Biden, who became president in 2021. Try that on for size. I don't know if you notice this moment. Right after the ceremonies were complete, there were a couple of military officers carrying flags.

around for the various branches of the military and somebody had the Space Force flag? Yes. Yes. Did that not just get canceled at 1201? You know, Joe Biden, you know, I have a bunch of things I want to do today, but first, can we go ahead and cancel the Space Force? Yeah, maybe just the path forward. You know, like Trump installed

Michael, this guy, Michael Ellis, as a, the NSA's General Counsel and all these Democrats, I think, including Biden, are just like, no, you can never serve. Like, you can't. I'm just going to take this weird midnight hour like a pointy and give, but, but the, but the rules, you either have to go through this laborious process of removal or you can just transfer them to any other position of equal level. Let's just transfer everybody with the Trump Stinch to space force. Give them, give them like CEO titles, whatever they need, whatever they want over there to space force and then just, you know, let them just, we'll just put like an old Atari and a space invaders

cartridge in front of them and let them have fun. It's the government equivalent of Congrats on your new job at Fusion. Yeah. Congrats on your new job at Space Force. By the way, speaking of Space Force, I loved Al Gore beaming into cable news today. He was not at the inauguration, but he had that background where it looked like he was photographed from the moon because Earth was floating in the background. Yeah. Good overwork Twitter joke.

Al Gore went from trying to save the planet to just getting the fuck up out of here. I like that one. And by the way, David. What a time for news anchors today. We talked about the platitudes. I love this ritual every four years. I guess it's every year at the State of the Union, too, where news anchors are showing off that not only can they pick out obscure politicians just by sight,

that they can pick out the obscure politicians by sight with their masks on. Oh, my God, yeah. That is absolutely the way you tell your audience that you are a true political nerd and not just a hairdo who appears on cable news. I can find John Thune wearing his mask. Like, I'm that good. Would you turn into a channel that was just like the various anchors from around all the talking heads from all these channels just trying to identify people as quickly as possible? Absolutely.

We're like a buzzer. Because I would like Rachel Maddow absolutely destroys it. Everything she said, she was just cutting it on herself. is saying just like I believe that's I believe that the person in the ski mask is a yeah let's end with Trump

oh by the way the funny before we do that the funniest pick out was I don't know if you saw this was Tim Kane who was wearing a knit cap that actually said TK on the side no although I kind of want a TK our copy desk would probably kill for those knit caps poor Tim Kane who seems like a genuinely good politician is now in the Dan Quail zone

of American life Before we get away from the media, and I know this is unofficially the Brian Williams Appreciation podcast, but we must acknowledge the line of the day that was not spoken from that poean was spoken by Brian Williams after all the, after every, whenever he was exiting, he said 32 minutes ago while Joe Biden spoke, the power of the presidency slipped from the grasp of a twice impreached private citizen in Florida. And I think that that is like that, that is the epic paragraph of this past four years that we really, we really, we really needed. That was better than his other line, which was that America is back.

Listen, there was a lot of today that belonged in like a Ford trucks commercial, but like that's, we will, we are accepting that. We are happy to have it, uh, rather than to have someone who's like cosplaying as, uh, the talking head in the Ford Trucks commercial. Let's just embrace that part of America, uh, firmly today. America like a rock. All right, let's do some, uh, let's do some Trump notes before we get out of here. David, Donald Trump did leave a note for Joe Biden at the White House. After all, the one bit of presidential succession transition that Donald Trump honored, besides actually just leaving, he left a note.

We don't know what it says yet. Somebody posted the Zodiac Killer's Note on Twitter as being part of it. I thought that was pretty unexpected. He is a note guy. so maybe we should have anticipated that. Donald Trump, okay, listen, if Trump,

if Trump spokesman Judd, is, all right, Trump spokesman Judd-Dier confirmed a political Wednesday that the president had written a letter to President-elect Joe Biden and left it for him in the Oval Office's Resolute Desk,

the Trump White House did not divulge the contents of what Trump left for Biden to read. First of all, it didn't say contents of the letter instead of what Trump left for Biden to read weird formulation there, but also,

if Trump spoke, Joe Deere tells you that he left a letter. Why do we believe he left a letter? Yeah, that's right. It's basically just calling Biden's love. We know Biden cares too much about civility to point out the fact that this is bullshit, so we're just going to say he left a letter. Or when some of the Biden might ask questions, it'd just be like, listen, the letter

was there when we left. I don't know which one of your people made it go by-bye, but it's not our fault. Trump gave his own speech this morning very early at Joint Base Andrews. He had the line, we will be back in some form. We will be back in some form, which led to the overwork Twitter joke. Oh, white, Trump is Voldemort after all. Listen, he was, he was, he also didn't acknowledge the Biden by name, right? So someone point out that like he went from.

He hasn't yet, no. He went from calling Biden Sleepy Joe to his new nickname, which is just the incoming administration. But, uh, I mean, whatever. get the fuck off stage. But at the same time, it's just evidence. He needs somebody smart telling him what to do, which he hasn't had over the past four years at any point in his life, I guess,

which is that like if you sit around saying the incoming administration refusing to say his name, then the crazy people who believe in you and who murder in your name will continue to believe that something is afoot, that it's not actually the Biden administration that Q is still leading us to some glorious new future. So whatever, we don't have to listen to him anymore,

but that's a huge misstep. And by the way, Are we going to talk about his valedictory speech from earlier this week? Oh, yeah, you were texting me about that. It was the most, was it last night that he sent it? It was the most. I was eating dinner and I came down. I was like kind of going over with my wife, the eventualities that would cause us to

podcast before this moment in time. And I was like, well, if Trump does something crazy and releases a speech, she's like, oops, it just happened. And we watched it together about five minutes in. I was like, how long is this thing? And she tapped on it. It was like, it was like 25 minutes or something. and she was like, are you okay?

And she could like see anxiety. Just, I was like, this is not, I need to know what happens before I just spend 25 minutes. I need to just spoil it. Give me the spoilers. But it was such a dumb, dishonest, silly speech. And I know presidencies do this all the time, but it's not, you talked about George W. Bush other day. Was that on the air after the podcast?

I don't even remember. But the way that he, his presidency is, you know, they sort of rewrote his, his presidency after, his presidency after the fact. But Trump's speech was so much further than that. I mean, it was just so dishonest and so silly. And so just, it was just such a, it was so different than everything that came before.

It was like, it was like if you put the, the end of movie monologue from Shawshank Redemption, like, and like just taped it onto the end of Battlefield Earth or something. I mean, it was just like, it was not,

it was, It just didn't make. It just was so, it was so nonsensical. It was almost, it would have been offensive just because of that, but it was also just offensive. But speaking of movies, did you see the, I guess on purpose touch today when Trump gave a speech? And he has an Air Force One took off for the final time. Just as the speakers were playing the final strains of Sinatra's My Way, which our pal, Matt Zeeland, notes, this is also how the movie Goodfellas ends. with a semi-ironic playing of my way.

Yeah, that was something else. And then I guess we should just spend 30 seconds here, David, on the pardon-palooza that came down in the wee hours. Donald Trump did not self-pardon. He did not pardon any members of his family. He did pardon quite a number of people ranging from former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to Janine Piro's husband.

Ex-husband. Ex-husband. Dendom. Dendom. Dendom. It was his ex-husband. Okay. So now we will

now we will ponder the potential litigation of Donald Trump's presidency in that context. Love this tweet from Patrick Monaghan. Trump is going to pardon the guy who calls you at least once a day with an important message about your vehicle's warranty. I did not see his name on the list, but then again, I don't know what his name is. Anyway, he is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. as always by Erica Servantes. David, we're back Monday for the post-Trump period of this podcast. Of course, we won't be talking about him next week. No, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. We'll just,

we'll just completely forget. We'll have nothing at all to say about Donald Trump. He'll be very quiet and not trying to interfere with American politics at all. And of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.