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A
Okay, it's kind of embarrassing how bad I am at budgeting.
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B
Let me see your charges.
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A
Ugh. Fine.
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B
You spent over $600 on takeout last month.
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A
I can't cook. You know this.
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B
Yes, I have had your disgusting food, but you're literally paying for a meal subscription on top of that.
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A
Whoa, wait, wait, wait. That. That can't be right.
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B
Look, just get Rocket Money. It shows you all of your expenses in one place and even tracks your subscriptions. And if there's a subscription you don't want, which for you, there are a lot you don't need, you can just cancel right in the app with a few taps.
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A
So you mean I don't call anyone to cancel?
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B
Nope. No hold times or anything. And they'll even try to get you a refund on some of the months of wasted money, which is a lot of money for you.
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A
Okay. Okay.
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And if you thought I was done, I'm not. The app can also help you make a budget that works for your income. Anytime you get close to your spending limits, it alerts you, so you know exactly where your money is going at all times.
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A
All right, Emin, what do I have to do?
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Go to RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple or Google Play stores.
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C
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing out of the blog. I'm here with Will Salatin. We're going to be talking today about one of the more egregious pardons. Although Will makes a very valid case that it's not the most egregious pardon. Over the Thanksgiving break, President Trump announced he was going to deliver a, quote, full and complete pardon to former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is at the center of this incredibly sweeping drug case. He's found guilty of kind of conspiring to import and distribute enough cocaine to make everyone in the United States incredibly high and kill a bunch of people. He was found to have been collaborating with El Chapo, using the military to cover it up and threaten opponents. It was a sprawling drug scheme, and seemingly out of nowhere, Trump just announces. I mean, really out of nowhere, he just announces that he's going to give the guy a pardon. And then he was approached. Trump was approached about this on Air Force One on Sunday when he was returning from Mar A Lago, which is where he issued the pardon from. And he had this to say, the.
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D
People of Honduras really thought he was set up, that it was a terrible thing. He was the president of the country. And they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country, and they said it was a Biden administration set up. And I looked at the facts and I written them.
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C
What evidence did you share that he was set up and then he wasn't?
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D
Well, you take a look. I mean, they could say that you take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life. That includes this country. Okay. To be honest, I mean, if somebody does something wrong, you put the president of the country in jail. They said it was a Biden setup, it was a Biden administration set up.
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C
Well, what do you make of this? I mean, it's like, hard to kind of put your head around all of it.
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A
Okay, first of all, Trump says that the people of Honduras told him to pardon this guy. The people of Honduras did not tell him to pardon this guy. Right.
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C
Why? Wait, hold on. You don't think Trump's been, like, doing push polls and things? He's got his finger on the pulse.
- [03:13]
A
There's another part where. Another place where Trump says that many friends of Trump's, you know, told them do it. So many friends of Trump's are not the Honduran people. Right. The Honduran people to Trump are just another one of those brown people that he doesn't want in America. Right. But. But the friends of this former president of Honduras are connected with the friends of Donald Trump. And they sort of, you know, through the back channel, through Roger Stone and some other people clearly, like, got to Trump and told him to pardon this guy. And the case. Then there's the case that they used. And when Trump says in that exchange on Air Force One that they only went after this guy because he was the president of the country, a. That's wrong. They actually convicted him in the US Court of drug trafficking based on lots and lots of evidence. This guy literally took bribes from El Chapo and stuff. But also the fact that the guy was a former president is a part of the reason why Trump identifies with him. He is a former president who was convicted of a crime. And Trump says, you know, in that exchange, it's. That includes this country going after a former president. So he's basically saying the Biden administration went after this former president. They went after me as a former president. So he has this brotherhood with this convicted criminal.
- [04:33]
C
Yes. And I just think it's worth sort of. And again, I didn't really know much about this case at all. So I'm not, like, pretending to Be an expert. But like, the basic facts are pretty available for anyone who wants to do some preliminary research. And they pretty clearly undercut everything that Trump's talking about. So for instance, yes, the prosecution of this ex president did happen during Biden's term. It concluded during Biden's term in office, but it originated in Trump's first term in office. Okay, like this. Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years in prison. But it started, the prosecution started under Donald Trump. So that, that alone is sort of silly. But the thing that really tickled me, and they're, you know, they're saying, well, this is just like, you know, a classic Biden era prosecution. A corrupt lawfare going after political foes. The lawyer who went after the President's brother, who was a congressman in Honduras and was found to have assisted in all of this, the lawyer who did that was an Assistant U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York. You may know the name, it may ring familiar. Emil Bovey, who was Trump's personal lawyer, who then went on to like staff Trump's Justice Department and do all the stuff, the corrupt stuff around Mayor Adams and then got rewarded with a judgeship. So under Trump's, you know, weird, the White House's weird argument, Bovey was in on some sort of lawfare prosecution of this scheme to entrap the Honduran president. It makes no sense whatsoever.
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A
Yeah, okay, so first of all, Sam, the fact that Emil Bove was directly involved in this tells you that Trump didn't do any vetting of this at all. Like, I don't know, I don't know what was the channel by which these guys got to Trump and said, hey, this guy's like you for, you know, victimized former president, lawfare, all that stuff. If Trump had just put out the word to like his most senior justice, people like Bovey would have been included. Of course somebody Bovey would have raised his hand and said, you know, actually I was actually involved in the prosecution.
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C
Right.
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A
So this wasn't cleared with anybody. And by the way, Sam, as we speak, there still hasn't been any follow up from Trump about like he's made this. Clearly he was unprepared. He didn't know anything about this case other than he was told this garbage about the Honduran people and the victimization of this guy. So there was no vetting and he still to this moment doesn't have a good defense.
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C
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E
The people of Honduras have highlighted to him how the former President Hernandez was set up. This was a clear biden over prosecution. He was the president of this country. He was in the opposition party. He was opposed to the values of the previous administration and they charged him because he was president of Honduras. There were some other egregious figures, facts that come out, came out during this trial and I would encourage you to report on them. His court appointed lawyer was only given three weeks to prepare for trial. He Shared that his conviction was lawfare by the leftist party who, quote, struck a deal with the Biden Harris administration. Hernandez has highlighted there was virtually no independent evidence presented and many of his conviction was based on testimony from many admitted criminals who hoped that cooperating would reduce their own penalty. So the President heard the concerns from many people, as he does. And he's of course, within his constitutional authority to sign clemency for whomever he deems worthy of that.
- [10:16]
C
How do you make of that in terms of a response?
- [10:19]
A
Okay, so, yeah, this is the follow up from Caroline Levitt. So she's reading from a script here. She's been given these talking points. So she's delivering the same thing Trump said. She says the same thing about the people of Honduras, which we've just established is total garbage. Right. Then she goes on, talks about the Biden over prosecution. So you've got like, identify with Joe Biden, therefore it's wrong. And she says there, Sam, she says that the lawyer for Juan Orlando Hernandez was given only three weeks to prepare for the trial. Sam, you just read from the story. This prosecution began in the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, years and years. So, like, like she's not doing the most basic research. Well, I don't know. She just doesn't care. They just lie about only three weeks to prepare. Absolute garbage. Right? She says that and she used the word that we were just using lawfare. You know, he was. That he. And she says, she says, she uses lovely word shared. You hear this term, shared. The convicted criminal shared with us. In other words, he gave us his version of events, which was like totally refuted at trial that this was. That there was no real evidence and this was all lawfare by the leftist party. But also, all she has to do is repeat the magic words. Biden. Biden left his Biden heritage. So if it was done by the Biden administration, even if the prosecution began under the Trump administration by and was part of, like connected to Trump's own lawyer. No.
- [11:44]
C
It's so true.
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A
Yeah. And Sam, do you remember, do you.
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C
Remember when you and I did the interview, did the video about the 60 Minutes interview and we counted how many times they mentioned Biden? Yeah. It's the through line of all this. If Biden did it, it has to be bad, right?
- [11:56]
A
Totally. And Sam, it just underscores how I. So people are going to get pissed at me if I use this word. Gullible. Trump is gullible. Okay. He's a liar. Right. And he's, he's a scoundrel. And a criminal and all that, but he is also. All you have to do is say the magic words. Joe Biden, Democrats, leftists, liberals, if you can associate, if you can be like, if you can say that Hernandez and his party were opposed by the, the Biden administration and that he was prosecuted under the Biden administration even though it began under Trump, that's the magic words that will get Trump to instantly identify with your client. And that's what happened.
- [12:33]
C
100%. 100%. And Andrew Rager wrote about this a little bit in Morning Shots about how there is, like, a through line of all these international leaders that Trump feels have been prosecuted unfairly and that he has some sort of, you know, compassion for, because he believes he, too, was prosecuted unfairly. And he did reference it, it appears. I don't think it's been supported, but I mean, publicly. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, has been advocating for Hernandez's behalf. I just want to end, though, on, you know, we're sort of like making light of this, and I'm, I don't think it's obviously something to make light of, right. Like, it's, it's ridiculous. But I want to quote from the Times piece that, that wrote about this guy named Mike Vigil, who is a former chief of international operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency. So he no longer is there, but he was there. The, the Times writes he reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking. Quote, this action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the US in the international community. And that is true. Like, if you're going to just start pardoning the people who run this stuff, it's hard to imagine how that actually gets you to the policy objective that you ostensibly want, which is to limit, to eliminate or limit the drug trade. But there's no real consistency here from this administration.
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A
So. No, no. Can I go really dark, Sam? Let me go really dark for a minute.
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C
Why not?
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A
So one of the things that Caroline Levitt said in that press conference was that the test of some of the testimony, she said the testimony against Hernandez came from admitted criminals. Well, that's how you get a drug kingpin, right? You get people in the organization to testify against him, but who do they.
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C
Think is going to testify against the guy?
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A
Right. But let me. Here's where the dark part comes in. In the New York Times story about this, the history of this thing, they said not Only were there people who testified. There are people who couldn't testify because they got killed. Okay, and this is a paragraph from the Time story. Investigators said that. That Mr. Hernandez went to pitiless lengths to cover his tracks. One accused conspir. Co Conspirator was killed in a Honduran prison to protect the president, according to court documents. So you. That's how one way you do, you get rid of the people underneath you who could testify against you. Sam, what are we doing with these boats in Venezuela where a. We're, like, blowing them up. We're killing. Then. Then according to this Washington Post story, we go back and we kill them off. We. We. We could. We could board these boats, and then we would get testimony from people. And the testimony from people who are ferrying drugs often implicates them who asked them to do it. But if you kill them. If you kill them, they can't testify. So I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, but it is awfully convenient that what we're doing to the drug boats is killing the little guys and making sure that none of them are alive to testify against the kingpins. We give pardons to the kingpin.
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C
Yeah. Even if it's not a conspiracy, it's just obviously an ineffectual way to do this, because if you really want to choke off the trade, you go after the big. The big players in it. And the way to do that is to talk to the people who are smuggling. And it's not just the Washington Post reporting it, by the way. The White House now admits openly that they ordered a second tap strike. And so they are embracing this under the guise. And hopefully we can get another video on this under the guise of those two people who were clinging to the boat after it was hit the first time, posed an imminent threat to our national security. I don't really see it. We'll see. All right, Will, I appreciate your expertise in the drug trade. I knew I tapped the right person.
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A
Don't say tap. Don't say tap.
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C
Sorry. I knew I got the right person to come on and talk about this.
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A
I'm definitely your drug guy, man.
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C
This is why we have you. All right, Will Salt and everyone who watches us, thank you for doing this and enduring this. Subscribe to the feed as pity for both of us. Thank you. Take care, Budget.