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This has been an extraordinary trip, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are vectors moving in all sorts of directions that indicate a lot of things, and I think it indicates that, you know, Trump is a guy who is transactional. He's a businessman, which I think is very, very good, but we also have to be cautious when you're dealing with foreign actors like China.
Their interest is not always in just securing a deal that's good for both sides. Also, you know, people look at what's happening in Syria. This guy was former al-Nusra former al-Qaeda, runs Syria, but it's been presented to him that it would be in our interest to make sure Iran stays out and that Russia gets out and that China doesn't get in because China does not care who you are if they could do business with you. So this was a tactical move.
Yeah, no, exactly right. And look, I think the role here of the Saudis is crucially important. We know that Donald Trump has a good working relationship with the Saudis. This is a Saudi government that really under MBS's leadership has moved more to the pro-western orbit, certainly less hostile to Israel. And so I think if they are whispering in Trump's ear, look, we have relationships with the Syrian leadership. We think that we can get them to move in a less anti-western posture.
Let's try to work that. So I think Trump is really leaning on the Saudis here and we'll have to see if their assessment is accurate. But I think every once in a while in these kinds of situations, especially when a new actor emerges, you have to give them an opportunity. The Iranians are different. Brian, as you and I know, that same regime has been in power since 1979, same kind of leadership. In the case of Syria, it's a new opportunity.
So let's see if they're willing to become more pro-western in their orientation. Peter, you must be driving you crazy as people come up with revelations about the Bidens are not the great American family. We thought you wrote the book Blood Money. You talked about how corrupt they were. And now we're focusing on a fourth book now that talks about their incompetence while in office. And one was written unbelievably by Jake Tapper, who fought against people that brought up the fact that he wasn't making sense, can't walk, can't talk, and is virtually, is virtually invisible in the office. What are your thoughts right now as now all of a sudden people are being honest about what kind of president he was? Yeah, no, I think it's particularly outrageous when you have people like Jake Tapper doing this, because you're right.
I mean, there's this thing Jake called the Internet where we can actually go and look at previous interviews you did on this topic. And in the spring of 2024, he was pushing back on arguments that, you know, that Joe Biden was not mentally there. I would also say, though, the other part of the story that they're neglecting is there were a lot of reports in early 2024 that one of the reasons Joe Biden was running for reelection was nobody in the White House had confidence in Kamala Harris. And that's proven to be true as well. So the revisionism is as standing as it relates to Joe Biden. But let's also remember why the Biden team felt the need to run for reelection in 2024. And that's because they had no confidence whatsoever in Kamala Harris.
And that that proved to be pretty accurate as well. You know what the thing is, the whole Russia investigation, the years if they were convinced, they tried to convince America that Donald Trump got elected because Russia put him there and he was a Russian stooge. Total fallacy, waste of multimillion dollars and his own sons and were being scrutinized, his business was destroyed. His son-in-law was almost put in jail for actually doing nothing wrong. His national security adviser was was fired for something.
In retrospect, he did nothing wrong. So having said all that, the president's making sure that doesn't happen to him this time. But one person behind it was Joe Biden. You know, he was there every step of the way about this corruption that even put him back into office.
And when he gets back into office, he spends a lot of his time subtly, I think it's going to be revealed, making sure that Donald Trump has a lot of legal problems. When you look at the Joe Biden that they described today behind the scenes, they have 200 sources, you know what that's like, all unnamed, that talks about various times in which Joe Biden has failed to recognize his own staff. Yeah, no, I mean, it's astounding. But honestly, it's not that astounding, Brian. I mean, you've done a lot of reporting on this.
Other people observe the same thing in the spring where he sort of wandered around endlessly. So, I mean, this sort of shocking revelation is really not that shocking unless you're in the bubble that is in the DC media. And I think that this administration, the Biden administration, is really going to become kind of a test case for a lot of things. You mentioned one of them, which was the lawfare, this aggressive desire to go after your political opponents, especially a guy, Donald Trump, who was presumably going to be running against you again in 2024. Let's remember, even the New York Times reported in early 2021 that Joe Biden was frustrated with his own attorney general, that he was not aggressively enough pursuing legal action against Donald Trump. That is really, as far as I'm concerned, unprecedented in American history.
So you have that layer of it. Then you have the layer of it where, you know, Joe Biden's not there, but really it's his staff running things. Certainly haven't had that since Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in office and his wife, Edith, was really running the affairs of the country. So this was a train wreck of his administration, not just in terms of policy, but in terms of actual conduct towards his political rivals and to lying to the American people.
So it needs to be scrutinized. And the Democrats need to do a lot of soul searching, Brian. You and I've seen a lot of so-called Trump derangement syndrome. People kind of hysterically doing things on the street. This is Trump derangement syndrome on both of those areas in the halls of the of the Oval Office itself.
And I think Democrats need to do a serious reevaluation of of the calculus that they're even making. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Optimize your nutrition this year with Factor, America's number one ready to eat meal service. Factor's fresh, never frozen meals are dietitian approved, ready to eat in just two minutes. Choose from 40 weekly options across eight dietary preferences like calorie smart, protein plus and keto. Eat smarter at FactorMeals.com slash Listen 50 and use code Listen 50 for 50 percent off plus free shipping on your first box. FactorMeals.com slash Listen 50.
Code Listen 50. T's and C's apply. His best security was Kamala Harris because she was so incompetent. Remember about six months before the Joe Biden's debate against Trump where you all fell apart. You know, they were asking people like Jamie Raskin, do you think the Kamala Harris should be on the ticket? I don't know. It's not my choice. Asking Nancy Pelosi, well, it's up to Joe.
Really? Do you really think that people in the Republic would have trouble saying J.D. Vance should run with Trump or Al Gore should run with Bill Clinton?
They were telling you get her off the ticket so we could have a future. But what about this? Mark, I thought about you last week because Mark Halperin came out and did some reporting and he said part of the reason why Joe Biden's coming back to do The View, the BBC and get a memoir going because the money has dried up. Biden, Inc. has no more ink and he has nothing to do and he can't earn money. Nobody wants his speeches. Nobody wants his appearances.
Nobody wants him on the campaign trail. And there's a lot of grandchildren and children who are on who are on the Joe Biden dole. How true do you think that is?
No, I think it's dead on. I mean, look, Joe Biden has been selling access to Joe Biden pretty much his entire electoral career. Let's remember, before he was vice president to Barack Obama, Hunter Biden was what? He was a lobbyist for people in Delaware. People in Delaware were hiring Hunter Biden.
It's very small state. They were hiring Hunter Biden so they could actually access his dad, who happened to be the senator for their state. So this has been the mode of operation even before the Ukraine and the China deals. I think one of the areas we should be watching, Brian, is I still do believe that during that period, after that disastrous debate in 2024, when Joe Biden, people calling for him to get out and there was about a four to six week period before he actually dropped out where Hunter Biden moved into the White House, lived with Joe, I am absolutely, confirmly convinced that they negotiated deals with Democrat donors to get him to leave.
Then, in other words, he said, I'm going to leave only if you take care of my family. So I think they certainly have more financial needs. But I do believe that there will probably deal struck with Democrat donors.
They're not going to have to disclose those are not going to have to be made public. And then, of course, the latest issue out there is there are supposedly negotiations going on with Jill Biden's memoir. And Jill Biden, of course, wants to write a kind of fluffy, fluffy memoir that nobody's going to buy. Publishers want her to publish parts of her diary, particularly those areas that talk about the decline of her husband.
And the question is going to become whether that money is so attractive that she's essentially going to throw her husband under the bus to get the big payday from publisher. I mean, look, she kept throwing him out there. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk.
He couldn't enter a stage. What family member would ever do that? They cared about their spouse or their kid or their uncle or their in-law. Nobody would do that unless you were so consumed by power that you couldn't that you couldn't help yourself, which seems to be the case.
Well, you just don't care about that person in particular. And you love being first lady. Well, you make all the calls almost as if you're president. I want some of these cabinet members to stand up and talk about how Joe Biden did nothing at his eight cabinet meetings over four years and how many times they took calls from Jill Biden.
I'm sure that'll happen. But I got to ask you, do you know that he confused Becerra and Mayorkas? Do you know that he couldn't recognize Jake Sullivan? Do you know that at George Clooney's fundraiser that he threw for him, he didn't recognize the most recognizable actor in America when introduced to him? I mean, this is unbelievable.
What are other countries thinking about us that they were able to pull this off? Well, and let's remember, you're right, Brian. During the same time, he couldn't recognize George Clooney or he couldn't recognize his longtime aide, Jake Sullivan. He was on on the phone talking to foreign leaders. I mean, he was talking to Putin. He was talking to Xi. He was talking to Zelensky. And God forbid, if the transcripts of those are released, you know, what did he say or what didn't he say? I think there certainly was a lot of confusion by this administration on policy towards China, towards Russia and Ukraine. Part of that was probably the traditional factions you have in any administration. But I would not be surprised if it was muddled and it was confused because Joe Biden was on the phone saying things to these leaders or saying things to diplomats visiting him in the White House that made no sense or were completely inconsistent with what stated policy was.
You just wonder when people are going to be honest with you if you catch them lying and they don't admit it. So Chuck Schumer was confronted on CNN cut 36. You were in there.
You saw him up close and personal. Did you really not have any idea that he was not fit to serve a second term? Casey, we're looking forward. We have the largest Medicaid cut in front of us. We have the federal government because you lost a presidential election. And is that not Joe Biden's responsibility for deciding to run again?
We're looking forward. That's it. That's it. It's not OK. You and the evidently in the book, they say Chuck Schumer had a plan B. That means you lied to the American people. You were willing to lie again. If he was leading in the polls, he would have stayed there as a zombie and he would have been perfectly happy to do it. So now you want us to believe you that Medicaid's being cut big lies that Donald Trump is a is a brutal dictator or a Nazi.
Now you're going to say all those things. You expect to have any credibility at all? Yeah, I mean, this this is the problem that the Democrats face, which is a credibility issue. And we know in general, politicians in Washington, D.C. are not that popular in the country. Just look at the polls.
I think the congressional approval rating is like 18 percent. But the Democrats have made it worse because not only do you have the people in the middle and certainly the people that are part of the Trump coalition not trusting them, even now their own base. I mean, part of the reason you're seeing, frankly, this cannibalism of AOC and Bernie Sanders, you know, attacking the oligarchy, but also attacking other Democrats. The same reason you see David Hogg, this this sort of young young kid who became vice chairman of the Democratic Party, saying I'm going to primary other Democrats.
Why do you see that cannibalism? Because a lot of the base of the Democratic Party does not trust this leadership. And part of this, let's remember, is generational, Brian. I mean, yes, Joe Biden, you know, 80 years old, but guys, you know, in the Senate and the House that are the leadership, they're not far behind him. And a lot of these young bucks in the Democratic Party don't like them, not just because of their age and because of their policies, but also because they don't trust them because they've been lied to too many times. You know, Peter, they should just had normal primaries and let the best person win. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was an honest election.
The other person shocked Hillary Clinton. But since that time, they made sure Hillary Clinton won. They made sure Joe Biden won. They made sure nobody ran against Joe Biden. Just let the votes happen. David Hogg wins a vote and they're saying he's too white.
He's not DEI enough. So they're going to toss him out again. It's crazy. Peter, thanks so much. I can't wait for your next book. Great to see you. Thanks, Brian. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of The Trey Gowdy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcast.com. Listen to the show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
