President Biden pardons his son Hunter Biden | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter Biden. President-elect Donald Trump threatens BRIC nations with tariffs if they 'move away' from the U.S. dollar. Paste BN Congress and Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin discusses how President-elect Donald Trump is already testing checks and balances ahead of re-taking office. Donald Trump is planning to nominate Kash Patel as director of the FBI, tapping the longtime loyalist to lead the the law enforcement agency he has often criticized. Paste BN National News Reporter Michael Loria discusses how Elon Musk is known for making radical cuts, and what it means for Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more Paste BN podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Monday, December 2nd, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today we break down President Biden's pardon of his son. Plus Trump makes new tariff threats, and how Congress could be a critical player in a potential series of tests of our checks and balances.
♦
In a stunning reversal, President Joe Biden announced yesterday that he has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted of three federal gun felonies and federal tax charges earlier this year. In a statement, Biden said, "From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making. And I kept my word, even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted." Biden said he believes in the justice system, but that raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice. Biden previously said he would not pardon his son, who was the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime. NBC News first reported the pardon.
In June, Hunter Biden was found guilty of falsely filling out a federal form, denying he was addicted to narcotics when he purchased a firearm lying to a gun dealer and knowingly possessing the revolver despite restrictions against people addicted to drugs owning firearms. He was also found guilty of charges, including failing to pay his taxes from 2016 through 2019. He was expected to be sentenced for both convictions in the coming weeks.
♦
President-elect Donald Trump continues to threaten to use tariffs against foreign nations this time toward a block of nine countries if they try to undermine the dollar's global dominance. In a post over the weekend on Truth Social, Trump called out the so-called BRICS Alliance, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, Iran, and others. He threatened to impose 100% tariffs and block their goods from entering the US economy. Trump said that the US requires a commitment from the countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the US dollar, or they will face tariffs. The US dollar remains the world's most used currency in terms of global business after overtaking the British pound at the end of World War II. Still BRICS Alliance leaders assert they and developing nations are tired of America's dominance. And in 2023, some of its members started using the Chinese yuan and the Russian ruble in their trading. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
♦
President-elect Trump is testing the system of checks and balances just weeks after the election. I spoke with Paste BN Congress and campaigns reporter Riley Beggin about a potential constitutional showdown. Hello Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
So Riley, let's start with the cabinet nominees. What has Trump said about maybe expediting this process and what are some of the concerns here?
Riley Beggin:
So Republicans in Congress recently elected a new majority leader who's going to succeed Mitch McConnell. And ahead of that election, Trump said that any next leader needs to agree to recess appointments, which is sort of a wonky word for a pretty new process that he is asking the Senate to consider for his cabinet picks. Essentially what it would do is bypass the traditional Senate's role, which is to hold hearings, vet cabinet nominees and vote, they need to get a majority vote to become the official cabinet nominees. So by asking them to bypass this process, he's essentially asking them to step aside and allow him to unilaterally approve his own nominees. There's a few caveats here. People who are confirmed through recess appointments can only serve for a certain period of time. It's typically up to two years. They also do not get paid. So there are some challenges there potentially in terms of even getting these cabinet nominees to want to go through that process. But it's definitely something that Trump is seeking.
Taylor Wilson:
And as for cutting some of the regulations presidents typically have to work within, what have we seen here Riley, particularly as it pertains to the work Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are doing.
Riley Beggin:
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are tapped to run this new outfit, the Department of Government Efficiency, where they're going to be looking at ways to cut waste from the federal government. They are essentially outside advisors, so it's not like a completely new agency is being created, but they're going to be advising on how to shrink the federal government.
And one of the ways that they have already proposed doing that is by ignoring congressional mandates to spend money. So again, another sort of wonky thing, but Congress appropriates funding for federal agencies and federal programs every year, including things like Social Security and Medicare. And that money is put into a pot that's spent over the course of the year, they look at it again over the next year and so on. What the new Department of Government Efficiency is considering doing here is essentially saying, "Even though Congress has said we should spend this money, we're not going to spend it." Now, I think to a lot of probably conservative-leaning people watching this, they say there's no problem with that, that sounds like a good thing, but it's going to be a legal battle either way.
Taylor Wilson:
I'm just curious, what we've seen previously when it comes to presidents maybe trying to push the boundaries of checks and balances.
Riley Beggin:
There is a long line of presidents trying to push the limits of the executive power. This is actually what the checks and balances system is really meant to do because we know that people who become presidents are always going to want to push the limits in order to enact their agenda. So this is not something that is necessarily unique to Trump. One of the big examples is always Franklin Delano Roosevelt really pushed the limits on enacting the New Deal, and his policies sort of pushed Congress further than maybe they would've liked at the time. In more recent memory, I think some good examples are in the post-9/11 era, there were a lot of efforts by presidents to take control in their own hands. So what we're seeing with Trump is not exactly new, but what the experts that I spoke to said is that it does push the boundary a little bit in terms of the expectation of what the Senate's role is here. I think the cabinet nominees is going to be something to watch for sure.
Taylor Wilson:
Of course, Riley, you cover Congress. What do we really hear from lawmakers on Capitol Hill? What's the general mood and tone about some of these issues that we've been talking about and really just them needing to fill their role in the legislative branch?
Riley Beggin:
Republican senators are in a really interesting position here. Trump really has total control over the Republican Party, and it's not lost on a lot of these GOP senators that they could face some backlash if they publicly go against him. So what we're seeing is a lot of pretty subtle pushback. One of the big examples is they chose Senator John Thune over Senator Rick Scott, who's a close Trump ally to succeed McConnell. That's sort of an indication that they do want to have an institutionalist in that role to protect the Senate's role here.
And another phrase that we are hearing over and over and over in the Senate over the last few weeks is the phrase, advice and consent. Even though they say, "Yes, we're okay with recess appointments, especially in the case of Democrats are obstructing," people are pretty mum when you ask, "But what if Republicans are the ones that don't want one of these cabinet nominees to be picked?" Several senators I spoke to said they were looking into this. They believe that the Senate is going to stand up for their rights here, but we just sort of have to see how it goes.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Riley Beggin covers Congress and campaigns for Paste BN. Great insight as always for us, Riley. Thanks so much.
Riley Beggin:
Of course. Thank you.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Donald Trump is planning to nominate Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. The announcement Saturday signals Trump's intention to oust current FBI Director Christopher Wray. Trump nominated Wray in 2017 to what was supposed to be a 10-year term. Patel has called for sweeping changes at the FBI and has condemned the Bureau's investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. He also laid out drastic plans In a September interview on the conservative Shawn Ryan Show Podcast to reform and shrink the agency. Patel is seen as a loyalist to Trump, even joining a small group who accompanied him to his newer criminal trial earlier this year. The nonpartisan government watchdog group, accountable.us called Patel's nomination Trump's latest cabinet pick to put political loyalty above national security in a statement yesterday.
♦
Elon Musk is known for making radical cuts. What does his legacy as a maverick mean for Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency? I spoke with Paste BN national news reporter, Michael Loria to learn more. Michael, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Michael Loria:
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
So Michael, let's talk about the Musk method over the years starting with Twitter, now X, he bought the platform in 2022. What has happened since then?
Michael Loria:
What he's done at X is in some ways kind of straight out of the Musk playbook. I've spent a long time looking at Musk and how he's handled his various companies, and there's kind of a mantra that he has at each one of these, which is delete, delete, delete. In some cases that's getting rid of certain parts in rocket building to make it much more efficient. However, a big method that he uses is to get rid of a lot of workers, and that's exactly what he's promised to do with Doge.
So what he's done at X is apply that same sort of sweeping layoffs approach and getting rid of thousands of workers after buying the company in 2022 to kind of achieve what he thought was kind of the best thing for the platform. I think one of the interesting things though is that despite the fact that he's cut all these jobs at X, I think that judging by his own sort of activity on the platform, he views it as a success. But if you talk with experts who have been kind of analyzing this from a business perspective, it's clearly not been a success. I mean, the company has fallen from being worth $44 billion when he bought the company to being around 9.4 billion at the end of September. So I was talking with one of the experts, and the way they put it was essentially that, yeah, you cut a lot of costs, but along the way you went bankrupt. So can that really be considered a success?
Taylor Wilson:
All right, as for Tesla, what have we seen there and has he taken a similar approach really to radical cuts?
Michael Loria:
Absolutely. So there's been a similar thing at Tesla where he has applied this same sort of delete, delete, delete approach to get where he wants to go, which is creating the first successful electric car company. But at times, this has been really drastic cuts for workers. As recently as this year, he cut 10,000 jobs in the spring at Tesla this year.
Taylor Wilson:
You would think going to space might be a different animal, but it seems Elon Musk has also had a tendency to look for ways to save and cut at SpaceX as well. How so?
Michael Loria:
Yeah, absolutely. And these are some of the most exciting things, I think, what he has done at SpaceX. Some really incredible ways to really change the game of rocket building in really revolutionary ways. Just to get into some of the examples, some of these things read like sort of half-baked MacGyver plots except for the fact that they end up working, which is incredible. One of these examples, which is the latches that were supposed to go on the rocket for the International Space Station, the market price for these things was $1,500, which when Musk heard about this, he balked at that. And then he got his engineers to come up with essentially just modified bathroom locks for $30 instead. So some pretty incredible improvisations there.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. Wow. So I mean, let's just fast-forward to this moment where, and now Michael and Doge, can you help us understand really what this effort is? What have Musk and Ramaswamy indicated they plan to do? And really is any of this plausible?
Michael Loria:
This is something that's not new in a sense. I mean, for decades, new administrations have promised to come in and cut the federal budget in drastic ways. And a lot of people have promised to do this before, and Musk is promising to do it again. But the thing here is that he is promising to taking the sweeping layoffs approach and the sort of moonshot for Musk and Ramaswamy is $2 trillion, which experts say is really just not feasible. That's like a third of the federal budget. So it'd be an incredible amount of money.
But I think kind of the rub here is that when you talk with Musk biographers, they say that he's a very literal person. So what he says should be taken at face value. And another kind of interesting thing here is that he has a tendency to make these kind of outlandish claims. And then the crazy part is that he sometimes sticks the landing. So there's a mix of opinions. I've talked with a lot of former top budget officials in the White House who have said, "This is not possible. Other folks have come in suggesting these types of cuts and they just get shelved in a drawer." However, I've also talked with others who have said that this is very necessary, and if there's anyone who's up for this type of job, it could be Elon Musk.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, interesting breakdown. The listeners can find this full piece with a link in today's show notes. Michael Loria covers national news for Paste BN. Thank you, Michael.
Michael Loria:
Thanks so much.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
And today is Cyber Monday, head to usatoday.com where we've got you covered with some of the best online shopping deals and discounts. And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.