President Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer—news that lands in the middle of a media cycle already consumed with questions about Biden's decline thanks to a buzzy new book and the release and of the audio from Biden's special counsel interview. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy unpack the fallout: the questions, conspiracies, criticisms, and some truly disgusting reactions. Plus: Trump's "excellent call" with Putin, his new attacks on the media and Kamala Harris's celebrity endorsers, and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino disappoint MAGA's conspiracist base.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.For tickets to Free Andry: A Crooked/The Bulwark Fundraiser At WorldPride, visit https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/150062AFA79E3227.
Chapter 1: What is the news about President Biden's health?
They basically the changes are they moved up the timeline to kick people off Medicaid. They increased some fees for people on Medicaid and they cut even more clean energy investments that Biden had passed and Democrats, of course, The hardliners say they're still not happy. So negotiations are continuing, though the House is still aiming to pass this thing by Memorial Day.
Trump's apparently going to be meeting with congressional Republicans at the Capitol on Tuesday as you're listening to this. So I want to know what happened to all those House Republicans in competitive districts who were worried about Medicaid cuts. They just going to swallow all these changes now?
They should remain worried. I mean, there's a CNN poll the other day that 76% oppose major spending cuts in Medicaid. That includes 79% of independents and 55% of Republicans. And the reason is 62% of Democrats and Republicans were on Medicaid or knew someone close to them who were on Medicaid. It's a very personal thing for people.
yeah four republicans voted present which would be enough republicans to sink it those are the hardliners but those would be enough to sink it on the house floor right now it is a like you had massey posting earlier today about just how much this adds to the debt he's saying it adds i think he said 10 trillion it's like that's like a
that's double even what the estimates would be if you fully extend it, but whatever. The fact that it's $3.3 trillion in deficits before you add, what happens if you extend the provisions they sunset? Which means they've written this bill to claim it only adds over 3 trillion to the debt over years.
But in reality, they have a bunch of stuff that just goes away after three or four years because they assume political pressure will force it to be extended in the future, just like what they're trying to do now.
If you add that, it's, I think, over $6 trillion in deficit, all of which basically is extending the Trump tax cuts paid for in part by cutting Medicaid dramatically and accelerating the cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act, which are a bunch of clean energy projects, many of which are actually already happening, right?
Like they're coming in to say, to stop projects that are, or to disincentivize projects that are already happening.
It's such a farce because say they get this through the House. They're going to get it over to the Senate. Senate Republicans are not going to be able to pass a bill that's as crazy as this one because they have people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in their caucus.
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Chapter 2: How did the media react to Biden's cancer diagnosis?
It's in one of these cases that we deport people and then the court rules, they need to be brought back and they can fly back. You can go and buy a plane ticket and you can fly back where the government can can fly you back.
The like idea that these that these people that may have been here undocumented or may have been seeking some kind of refugee or asylum status are then not just being deported, not just being deported to a country that is not their own, but being deported to some kind of a foreign prison for a sentence without. And that is what They just skip right over that.
Oh, look, all these right-wingers, all these Trump goons, they're all like, oh, we can't have a country anymore because the court is stopping us from enforcing our immigration laws. Nobody's stopping them from enforcing our immigration laws. Nobody.
They have created something so heinous that every court is forcing them to stop and then claiming that is preventing them from doing anything beneath that legally to address what they view as an undocumented immigration crisis.
These prisons, by the way, like that people are tortured, beaten, sexually assaulted. It's like it's horrific. Also, remember that we're also apparently the Trump administration's plan is to send one million Palestinians in Gaza to Libya.
Right.
in terms of like population proportion, that would be like relocating 40 or 45 million people to the United States. Like it's completely unworkable. There's no infrastructure. There's no way to take care of that number of people. But this is a serious plan that's being considered.
Now it's been rejected by, there's like a Western government in Tripoli and then there's an Eastern government run by this warlord. They're both like, no, this is crazy. We're rejecting this idea. But The Israelis seem down to do it.
And all the people that they're sending to these prisons from here, the right wing is like, well, but they're all terrorists or gang members. It's like, says you, says the Trump administration without ever proving it in a court of law. They do not offer any evidence. They do not go see a judge. They don't do any of these things. They just say, we say that they're terrorists.
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Chapter 3: What conspiracies emerged regarding Biden's diagnosis?
So Gabbard fired the two top members of the National Intelligence Council with the stated reason being that she's trying to end the, quote, weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community. I'm sure she nailed that one. That sounds, that's an interesting way to stop weaponization, huh?
Yeah, and this is some of those brazen politicization interference in the intelligence community since the Iraq war. I mean, remember, the Iraq was Dick Cheney and his goons cherry-picking intelligence that fit the narrative they wanted to sell about Iraq having WMD or whatever.
And that meant elevating intelligence that we believe with low confidence and presenting it as dispositive while downplaying dissenting opinions. This is her having her person be like, hey, I know you said you think this, but what if you thought that? And when they disagreed, they fired them? Like, that is, I don't know. It's like a new level of shocking.
And also, Laura Loomer was behind this one. Laura Loomer tweeted on April 20th, the NIC senior official should be fired. And then it happened. Remember, Laura Loomer is this right-wing freak who chained herself to the Twitter offices in New York City and was wearing a Star of David because she said she was being persecuted like the Jews during the Holocaust.
I just, the United States is not currently under invasion by Venezuela. I just think that's a kind of, the words have meaning. Like the Tren de Agua, I don't think, I think any, if we have gang members that are, committing violent and terrible crimes in our country and are here illegally. They should be arrested and deported, of course. But the word invasion has meaning. We're not being invaded.
America, we're not being invaded. Like you're dancing on the head of a pin here. Like, well, technically, if we can prove that someone in the Venezuelan government is in contact with someone from Trinidad and Tobago, then we can call it an invasion. It's ridiculous.
The Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled on whether it's appropriate, whether it's lawful for Trump to invoke alien enemies. They keep pushing that off. In the latest ruling, they basically kicked it back to the Fifth Circuit to tell them to rule, and then it will come back to the Supreme Court at some point.
This Tulsi stuff, the intelligence, their case wasn't great before the administration's case on Alien Enemies Act, but this is going to really fuck it.
Also, like in the near term, this means it justifies the deportations of these Venezuelan migrants. What if Trump decides, you know what, we got to take the fight to Maduro? This invasion, we got to cut it off, you know, we're at the head and invade them, right?
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Chapter 4: How has Trump responded to Biden's health news?
Also, it... It may be lawful, at least that's what the Supreme Court ruled, that Trump can revoke temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelans. But it is a horrific policy. And imagine if you're in this country legally and you've been settling here because you were granted protected status and you have legal status and you're Venezuelan and you wake up today and you realize like,
Now I could be, and it's not just deported back to Venezuela, which would be bad enough. Who knows what these people will do with you? Who knows if you get to sent to Sikad or you get sent to fucking Libya or wherever else.
You have it. You had a DUI and suddenly you're in a, in a detention facility without end. It's a revoking, like, I mean, it is bad enough just from a human standpoint to revoke the status from people that are desperately fleeing political instability and violence, revoking the status from Afghan refugees who,
were allies who by many accounts would be basically facing death if they go back to Afghanistan, revoking the status of those people who like worked with special forces, who worked with American troops, who risked their lives
and helped our military, you're gonna send them back while bringing in a bunch of fucking white South African refugees to kind of stoke the erogenous zone of your right-wing racist base? It's disgusting.
And as with the US government policy in Venezuela, destroy their economy with as many sanctions that we can possibly layer on. So we're sending people back. There's no life you can build for yourself in Venezuela if you're trying to get a job. If you're an asylum seeker, if you're seen as a political dissident, you will face persecution, violence, or just economic destitution.
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