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What A Day
Trump Can't Stop Saying Biden
00:20:45
Trump has been president for 11 months, and during that time, former President Joe Biden has basically left the public eye. Yet as Trump's own presidency has deflated like an old soufflé, he's gotten very focused on making sure we all know that Biden is still the problem. For more on Trump's increasing fixation on Joe Biden, as well as his horrifying comments on the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, we spoke to Shawn McCreesh. Shawn is the White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering the Trump administration. And in headlines, President Trump declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, the House Oversight Committee alleges Washington, D.C.'s police chief pressured subordinates to manipulate crime data, and from the people who said "what if the military, but… space?" comes the sequel no one asked for: The U.S. Tech Force.
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- [00:03]
A
It's Tuesday, December 16th. I'm Jane Coston and this is Whataday, the show that learned that Denny's is releasing, quote, syrup filled sneakers for $195 in honor of National Maple Syrup Day. Yes, the sticky cakes contain Denny's syrup sealed in the shoe. Ew. On today's show, from the people who said, what if the military? But space comes a sequel. No one asked for the U.S. tech Force. And Trump declares fentanyl. Yes, fentanyl, a weapon of mass destruction. Let's start with our president, who seems to have an unhealthy focus on our former president.
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B
They're highly intelligent radical left lunatics.
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C
Okay?
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B
So in a way, that's worse than having a guy like Biden. But under Biden, real wages plummeted by 3,000 and the cost of Thanksgiving from a year ago under sleepy Joe Biden. I have to start off by saying, that's Biden, that's not Trump.
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A
Trump has been president for 11 months and during that time, former President Joe Biden has basically left the public eye. Yet as Trump's own presidency has deflated like an old souffle, he's gotten very focused on making sure we all know that Biden is still the problem. Trump has always been like this, thin skinned, vindictive and obsessed with his enemies to the point of mania. There's no other version of him. No peace president, no five dimensional chess. No. This is when Trump finally became president. And we got a crystal clear example of this on Monday. Pretty much everyone was horrified to hear that legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner had been found dead in their Los Angeles home Sunday. Their son was booked for suspicion of murder on Monday. I say pretty much everyone because President Trump decided to turn the tragic news into something he wanted to talk about. He posted on Truth Social Monday morning that Rob passed away together with his wife Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as tds. This is a real thing. The President of the United States posted online and then the White House rapid response account reshared on Twitter and then he doubled down on his comments in the Oval Office. I'll say this for Joe Biden, he would have never done this shit. Sean McCreesh is the white House correspondent for the New York Times covering the Trump administration and he recently wrote about Trump's increasing fixation on Joe Biden. We talked about that. As well as Trump's horrifying comments on the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife and what they reveal. Sean, welcome to Whataday.
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C
Thanks for having me.
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A
So you wrote about something that I've been kind of curious about recently, because President Trump has always been adversarial with basically everyone he perceives to be his enemy, even if it's like someone who he said was amazing three days earlier. But recently there's been this person in particular who's always on the tip of his tongue, former President Joe Biden. How much of that feeling is rooted in fact?
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C
It's completely rooted in fact. This has been a weird quirk of his second term, is the amount that he talks about Biden. You know, I wrote about this topic back in the spring, and we looked at his first 50 days and found that he spoke about Biden on average 6.32 times a day. And it was among his most frequently used terms. He used the word Biden more than he used the word America. In many speeches, he used the word Biden more than he used the words Israel or Ukraine. And that trend hasn't gone away. And in some ways the obsession has become more intense. So we checked back in and found that this has not subsided.
- [03:46]
A
I was actually just talking to my team about how, like, weirdly enough for the fact that Joe Biden was president in January of this year, I've kind of like forgotten about him a little bit, which I'm guessing that for many people it might be similar. He's pretty solidly out of the spotlight. Former President Barack Obama is making more headlines than Joe Biden is. So why is President Trump always talking about him?
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C
Well, this is an interesting question because some people think that this is a political strategy by Trump, that it's a calculated thing where he has to keep reminding people this sort of mess that he was left and that to let Biden go would be stupid and political malpractice. But other people think that Trump actually is just deeply fixated and there's something about his psychology that won't let this go. So it sort of depends on who you ask.
- [04:36]
A
Yeah, I tend to go with the not very calculated idea. It could be five dimensional chess, or it could be that this guy is obsessed with the person who beat him in 2020. And one of those seems more obvious. But like, let's give that first theory a little bit of credence. Is that messaging working?
- [04:53]
C
It's hard to know exactly if the message is is working, but I would say if you want to Give that theory credence. The one thing that comes to mind for me is that Trump is keenly aware of the power of repetition. It's sort of one of the skills of his verbal sorcery. He just knows about beating a message into somebody's head over and over and over again. And so, insofar as that this might be calculated, I think there's a reason why he mentions Biden as much as possible. I don't know that his base is ready to start saying, hey, this is your economy now we're a year into this. You know, like, how much longer can that go on for? And the other thing is that a lot of the shockwaves in the economy have to do with things that Trump did himself, like tariffs. Of course, that has not changed his messaging at all.
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A
Of course not. It is kind of strange because a lot of the things he's attacking Biden for right now are the things Trump himself seems to be facing right now, even down to, like, inflation and then trying to deny it or falling asleep places or being old.
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C
Yeah, it's true. I think two things that really were were getting Biden at the end were he just looked too old to do the job, and the economy wasn't as good as he was telling people it was. And then there was a perceived callousness to the way that the Biden administration kept insisting to people that it wasn't as bad as they thought it was. And so you really see that in spades with Trump now. He's literally has fallen asleep in his own meeting that's televised, and then he's giving this tour about affordability, and he's telling people they don't need 37 pencils and dolls for their children and that everything's amazing. And so it's undeniable that some of their troubles are looking very similar now. And that's what's interesting about this to me, which is that the more that Trump's troubles resemble Biden's troubles, the more Trump keeps attacking Biden for those troubles. So it's this really weird thing where it's like his wheels are sort of stuck in the mud.
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A
Yeah. I mean, I used to joke that for Donald Trump, it was always 1988, but now I'm starting to think, like, is it just kind of always like, 2021? And as we mentioned earlier, this is not just a Biden issue. Somehow President Trump is always talking about someone else, whether he's blaming them for something or attacking them for not agreeing with him. This is just who he is. So outside of Biden, who else always seems to be on the other side of a Trump rant? And is there, like, a theme to it?
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C
Well, the one thing on this, I will say that was interesting to me is that I think we all think of Trump this way. And we think, well, this is how he was with Obama and this is how he was with Hillary, and it just sort of depends on who the target is. But actually, when we went back and looked, the way Trump spoke about Obama during the first 50 days of Trump's first term was completely different. He only mentioned him like 35 times. Some of those times were positive. Then you compare it to the way Trump talked about Biden during the first 50 days of Trump's second term. He mentioned him 316 times. And it was all completely in the negative. All of which is to say that the numbers actually show that he was not as fixated publicly on his predecessor the first time he was president.
- [07:55]
A
Yeah, I think it really goes to show that 2017 actually was like, a while ago.
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C
It was. And I, I think Biden also does hold a unique spot in his mind. These two guys are like, forever linked in history because January 6th never would have happened if Biden didn't beat Trump. And, you know, that led to a lot of the indictments and everything else. And then Trump came roaring back and you even go to the National Portrait Gallery in Washing, and it's a picture of Trump, a picture of Biden, a picture of Trump, like Biden will always be in between two Trumps. And that's how it is even in the, you know, the Rose Garden, Presidential Walk of Fame or whatever Trump's calling it now. It's just a weird quirk of history that these guys will always be really tightly associated and Trump just can't seem to get him out of his head.
- [08:43]
A
It's interesting also because I wanted to talk to you about the comments that the president made about the late Rob Reiner and his wife who were murdered, as far as we know. But what was interesting to me, and I don't mean interesting and good way, is how this seems to be such a, like, off the wall statement that he's getting a lot of responses on truth social saying like, whoa, this is too much. He seems so siloed from the idea that maybe this is not a good thing to say publicly as the President of the United States. What do you, what did you make of that?
- [09:19]
C
God, there's so many things to say. I mean, first of all, it's horrifying and crazy. And it has been interesting actually, watching people revolt against him who are not the usual suspects. I mean, real MAGA people were shocked by this, but it's so interesting to me because actually, the cadence of the tweet, the way it's written, it follows the format of the classic Trump tweet. You know, it's sort of like the old one, like, Happy Thanksgiving, even to my losers and haters who I wish, blah, blah, blah. Right. So it's this sort of jokey format, except it is about two people whose throats were allegedly slit by their own child. And to me, it's like some kind of. I don't wanna say a mask dropping, because we know what Trump is, but it's so shocking and so depraved, and it's a usual format applied to something uniquely ghastly. And this is a little off kilter, but I. What occurred to me when I read that was I was in London for Trump's UK state visit in September, and I got to go to Windsor Castle the night that King Charles threw Trump the dinner. And I was just thinking, wow, like, this is everything Trump could have ever wanted out of life. It is like the apex, the ultimate thing he could have gotten. It's unique. That Royal was giving him a second dinner that never happens. All the most powerful people in the world were all there to kiss his ass. The room was amazing. And the second the dinner's over, he goes upstairs after getting everything he's ever wanted in life, and he picks up the phone and starts tweeting that Jimmy Kimmel is guilty of treason and should be punished or fired or whatever he said in that tweet. And I just was so stunned that even for one night, he can't just give it a rest. But this is his psyche. It's very unusual. It's not like a normal person.
- [11:06]
A
I think that that's kind of where I'm at right now, where I'm like, this person who is the President of the United States is a profoundly strange and. And deeply troubled person.
- [11:19]
C
You know, a lot of people in America can see that. Then there are a lot of people who don't really see that for what it is. But, you know, this tweet has really made those people see this in a way that they don't normally do. And, I mean, talk about an unforced error. It's like that's all Washington is talking about today and probably will be for the next week. And it's just such a strange thing for him to have picked up the phone and said that of all things that he could have said, I saw.
- [11:44]
A
Some people saying online like, well, now we're used to this. And I'm like, I am not used to this. This is very strange.
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C
His capacity to still be able to shock 10 years in is in and of itself shocking.
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A
Sean, thank you so much for joining me.
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C
Thank you.
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A
That was my conversation with Sean McCreesh, White House correspondent for the New York Times, covering the Trump administration. We'll link to his piece in the show Notes. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Deleteme Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, and harassment. But now you can protect your privacy with DeleteMe. As someone with an active online presence, privacy is really important to me. DeleteMe can help preserve yours, take control of your data, and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com wad and use promo code WAD at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com wad and enter code WAD at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com WAD code WAAD finding the.
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A
Here'S what else we're following today. Head of Lines.
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B
With this historic executive order I will sign today, we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is. No bomb does what this is doing.
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A
President Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office on Monday that claims illicit fentanyl is closer to, quote, a chemical weapon than a narcotic. It isn't. Trump made the announcement during a ceremony recognizing military service members with the Mexican Border Defense Medal, which is exactly what it sounds like. The executive order says, quote, the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated large scale terror attacks by organized adversaries is a serious threat to the United States, a thing no one contemplated until literally just now. Trump's new fentanyl designation directs the government to hunker down and focus on fentanyl related crimes. It calls for greater cooperation between the Pentagon and Justice Department on fentanyl and drug trafficking issues. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl overdoses are the leading cause of Death for Americans 1845. But could there be another reason for the order? Maybe to help the administration justify its ongoing campaign against alleged drug smuggling boats that probably don't contain fentanyl. Just a thought.
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D
So look, what we're trying to do.
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Is a couple things. As you know, technology is obviously incredibly.
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Important to the future of the government, and we're trying to reshape the workforce.
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A
To make sure we have the right talent on the right problems. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Cooper spoke with CNBC's Squawk Box Monday about the Trump administration's latest endeavor. The US Tech force. According to its official website, techforce defines itself as a quote, elite group of about a thousand tech bros and bro ets to bring the government out of the 1980s and into Trump's AI First America. Because everyone has always said, hey, I wonder what it would be like if that Grokbot that glazed Elon Musk ran the IRS website. So if you're skilled in software engineering, AI, cybersecurity, data analytics, etc. The federal government wants you. FYI, participants will have to commit to around two years of service to the program. Techforce employees will be working on projects across a slew of federal agencies, including the Departments of War, Treasury, State, Labor, Commerce Energy, Health and Human Services and Interior, according to the site. And in true Trump fashion, techforce has also partnered with America's billionaires. Core members will be working with a bunch of private technology companies like Adobe and Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Robinhood, Uber and Zoom, among others. That's the sound of populism. The program comes on the heels of an executive order Trump signed last week aimed at enhancing America's AI global dominance. The House Oversight Committee alleges Washington, DC's police chief pressured subordinates to manipulate crime data to make the city appear safer than it was. According to a new report from the Republican led House committee, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith threatened or punished commanders who reported crime spikes. She allegedly pushed them to downgrade charges in ways that underreported crime. A separate review by U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro's office shockingly found thousands of police reports were misclassified, artificially lowering crime statistics. Washington, D.C. democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser accused the committee of cherry picking testimony while failing to interview Smith or senior leadership. She also defended Smith, who recently announced that she is stepping down at the end of the year. Mayor Bowser accused Republicans of speeding to judgment, quote, in order to serve a politically motivated timeline. How could she possibly have gotten that idea? President Trump is heading to North Carolina on Friday to campaign for GOP Senate candidate Michael Whatley. Lucky guy. Trump has endorsed Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee who is running to replace Thom Tillis, the retiring North Carolina Republican senator. The visit is part of Republicans latest mission to sharpen their affordability message ahead of the midterm elections. Luckily, they have Trump, a messenger who cuts with laser precision. You know, like in Trump's recent rally in Pennsylvania where he honed in on what voters really care about. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt's machine gun lips, whether to call Joe Biden sleepy or crooked. And how, quote, wind is the worst. Or messages like this that he delivered in the Oval on Monday.
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B
But the affordability is on the Democrats because they have made it unaffordable to be in this country. But we're bringing those prices down and they're coming down quickly.
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A
Being a Trump speechwriter is a little like writing to Santa. You're hopeful that the fat man will read what you wrote, but there's no proof that he ever has. And honestly, you're starting to have doubts about the entire premise. And that's the news. Before we go this week on Bravo America, the Lovett or Leave it series where reality TV meets real Power Dynamics. Jon Lovett sits down with the Girls Next Door star Holly Madison. Holly gets real about life inside the Playboy Mansion, what it meant to be framed as the main character on TV while being treated like an object behind the scenes, and why she ultimately walked away. She also talks about reclaiming her story and how the MeToo era changed how people finally heard it. It's dark, revealing and a reminder that reality TV was never as harmless as it looked. Listen to all of the episodes of Bravo America on the Love it or Leave it feed wherever you get your podcasts and YouTube now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, go watch Stand By Me and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, I'm not just about how it's really worth Remembering that between 1984 and 1992, Rob Reiner directed films like Misery, A Few Good Men, When Harry Met Sally, and the Princess Bride. But my favorite of his has to be Stand By Me, a movie about what it means to be a kid who finally finds a friendship that fits like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe@crooked.com subscribe I'm Jane Coston and rest in peace, Rob and Michelle. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our associate producers are Emily Foer and Chris Allport. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters and Matt Burke. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adrienne Hill. We had help from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
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D
Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy Live and uncensored. Catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues and bodily ailments. With that kind of drama that seems to follow me, you never know what's going to happen.
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You can listen to Jeff Lewis live at home or anywhere you are.
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