Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.
Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.
Matt Taibbi: Do we need an intro like NWA had like, “Welcome to America This Week, coming straight from the underground.” I don’t think that would work for us. “Coming straight from-
Walter Kirn: Get ready to be horrified. It’s America This Week.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. We need a tag. Yeah. We’ll work on it. Yeah.
Walter Kirn: Yeah. Well, I looked back at our Monday livestream and I saw a guy who, in my case, who was overwrought, overimaginative, morally far more outraged than I have any right to be given my own life. I made a vow this week that I was going to ratchet it back and hang back and be a little bit more-
Matt Taibbi: Oh, don’t.
Walter Kirn: Okay. Well, I mean, I haven’t kept a single resolution I’ve made on this show. Not on vaping. That didn’t work.
Matt Taibbi: Well, a lot of your predictions came true.
Walter Kirn: Oh, those will always come true. That’s the only thing I’m good at. The problem is that it’s very lonely. The space between making the prediction and other people realizing it is accurate, that’s a lonely time.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Credit is a difficult subject at the moment.
Walter Kirn: Right.
Matt Taibbi: Actually, that’s a good lead in to probably the first thing we want to talk about. Look, this week is dominated by pardons. We talked about it on Monday after Joe Biden pardoned his son. And then, there is fresh news about potentially a whole range of pardons that may be coming. But before we get to that, some of the leftover reactions to the Hunter Biden pardon are amazing beginning with this monologue by Jon Stewart.
Jon Stewart: The problem is the rest of the Democrats made Biden’s pledge to not pardon the Hunter the foundation of their defense of America this grand experiment.
Speaker 1: One political party remains committed to the rule of law and the other. It’s that simple.
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden’s not above the law. No one is above the law. Democrats stand for the rule of law.
Speaker 3: We accept the outcome because that’s how the rule of law works.
Speaker 4: Because the justice system that convicted his only surviving son is the same justice system he’s about to protect. And if that doesn’t tell you who Joe Biden is, I don’t really know what does.
Jon Stewart: I think I know what does.
And now, look at the dance Democrats have to do.
Speaker 5: Be honest. The only reason why they went after Hunter the way they did, and I’ve talked to many federal prosecutors about this, is because he’s the president’s son.
Speaker 6: People have to remember. The President has lost two children already and he does not need to lose another one to more political witch hunts.
Speaker 7: The crowing from Republicans. But we’re talking about Donald Trump is a convicted felon who literally pardoned his daughter’s father-in-law and just made him ambassador to France.
Speaker 8: So for anyone that wants to clutch their pearls now because he decided that he was going to pardon his son, I would say take a look in the mirror.
Jon Stewart: Ma’am, we will take a look in that mirror, but we are taking off. So if you could just put this shit on airplane mode and let us get home for the holidays.
Matt Taibbi: All right.
Walter Kirn: Yeah.
Matt Taibbi: He goes on and you can predict where he is going with it and it’s great. It’s Jon Stewart circa 2007 doing exactly what he used to do which is rip both sides. And here’s a moment where the Democrats deserve some ripping, that there’s video where they’re plainly being hypocritical on a gigantic scale. It’s tailor-made for Jon Stewart.
Except, Walter, I got to confess to you, when I saw that, I felt a surge of rage welling up within me. Like are we just going to go back to this without acknowledging that people like you and me were in the wilderness for eight years and we’re shunned for making basically those same kinds of observations? I-
Walter Kirn: Matt, yeah, we are because this is the new multiverse model of media. In which, they’ve always been hard on the Democrats and they’ve always been crusaders for truths, anti-censorship, anti-corruption, and so on. Matt, you just didn’t notice. And in fact, I expect not only will we go from being shunned to not properly recognized for our immense moral courage in those years. But we will soon be criticized for not going far enough.
Matt Taibbi: Right.
Walter Kirn: Matt… I mean, come on. These are people being tough on the Bidens and on the Democratic Party’s failures that we have only superficially skirted. And for them, it’s painful because they really, really believed. But they’ve kept the lights of their conscience burning and we’ve just shilly-shallied and made dumb jokes.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I like Jon Stewart and I think he did signal at times that he wasn’t down with a lot of the craziest stuff that went on in the last eight years. But we needed him to pipe up-
Walter Kirn: But did he ever spend a summer or two or five being shunned? Did he ever have things thrown at him or was he ever called a Russian? See? Unless you’re called a Russian asset and have been for years, then you don’t get to play in the new arena as far as I’m concerned. Former Russian assets, at least alleged only, going forward. Jon always manages to… How can I put it? Get into the game just as it’s being won, just as the tide is turning.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. A little bit of front running, right? Isn’t that the sports term I think we would use for that, but-
Walter Kirn: It’s also the stock market term. “Oh, it’s starting to go up. I’ll get in on the momentum. And then, I’ll portray myself as having created the momentum.”
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Look, I’m glad he is doing it. But there is this rats fleeing the sinking ship thing that’s going on now, where some people are turning around and criticizing the Democrats in ways that they never would have over the last eight years. Another example, I think we should probably look at this too, because this is actually interesting. Chuck Todd, on Meet the Press, gave a blistering opening monologue, I think on Sunday. And it’s interesting because he is going farther than almost everybody in what he’s saying.
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Author: Matt Taibbi
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