April 17, 2025

Biden's midnight emergence, Harvard's billion-dollar standoff with Trump, and a White House tree massacre!

Biden emerges after dark to blast Trump's Social Security "hatchet job" while Harvard risks BILLIONS challenging federal demands! Plus: White House chainsaws JFK memorial trees, Trump floats deporting American citizens, and Earth's forests go on...

Show Notes
Transcript

WEBVTT

1
00:00:03.160 --> 00:00:09.880
Callaroga shark media from Washington, DC, where when George Washington

2
00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:13.240
chopped down a tree, you guys didn't complain. This is ballot.

3
00:00:14.119 --> 00:00:16.600
That's right. Washington should have been sent to a gulag

4
00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:21.640
and El Salvador. Let's hit this, ladies and gentlemen. The

5
00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:25.879
Mummy has risen. Former President Joe Biden has emerged from

6
00:00:25.879 --> 00:00:29.640
his presidential crypt to criticize the Trump administration. And wouldn't

7
00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:32.039
you know it, he waited until after eight pm to

8
00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:36.320
do it. I guess even political zombies need their beauty sleep. Hi.

9
00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:39.640
I'm Patrick Guttfield, and before we begin today, I just

10
00:00:39.719 --> 00:00:42.479
want to say Biden is the worst ever. So is

11
00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:44.640
Hillary and Obama. And I don't want to go to

12
00:00:44.679 --> 00:00:49.479
El Salvador this summer. Also, Harvard sucks. The eighty two

13
00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:53.280
year old Biden finally broke his post presidency silence in Chicago,

14
00:00:53.719 --> 00:00:56.399
claiming the Trump administration is taking a hatchet to the

15
00:00:56.439 --> 00:01:00.320
Social Security Administration by pushing out seven thousand employees. And

16
00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:03.280
he did this all while never once mentioning Trump by name.

17
00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:06.799
That's like me giving a restaurant review without mentioning the food,

18
00:01:06.959 --> 00:01:10.400
which coincidentally is exactly what happens when Biden tries to

19
00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:13.640
eat solid food. Biden warned that for the first time

20
00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:17.400
in history, Americans might see their Social Security benefits delayed.

21
00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:20.640
He reminisced about his lengthy career, joking that he was

22
00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:24.040
a senator four hundred years ago, which shows how far

23
00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:28.480
his memory has slipped when the real number is ninety seven. Meanwhile,

24
00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:32.000
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt fired back, announcing Trump

25
00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:35.200
would sign a memorandum to stop illegal aliens and other

26
00:01:35.319 --> 00:01:39.439
ineligible people from getting benefits like that tight end who

27
00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:43.760
lines up offside. No benefits for number eighty seven, repeat

28
00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:47.719
second down. Trump previously claimed the program is paying thousands

29
00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:50.599
of people who are supposedly one hundred and sixty years old,

30
00:01:50.879 --> 00:01:53.560
a claim that's been thoroughly debunked as Joe Biden went

31
00:01:53.599 --> 00:01:56.400
to school with those people and attended all their funerals.

32
00:01:57.159 --> 00:02:00.519
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley slammed this as the big

33
00:02:00.599 --> 00:02:05.040
lie about a massive zombie apocalypse of dead people. Interestingly,

34
00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:08.560
social Security benefits was the main plot of season eleven

35
00:02:08.599 --> 00:02:11.680
of The Walking Dead. Long after you stopped watching, President

36
00:02:11.719 --> 00:02:14.520
Trump has a new solution for crime in America. Just

37
00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:18.360
shift the criminals to other countries. During El Salvador President

38
00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:21.879
Nazi Bukele's White House visit, Trump casually suggested he'd like

39
00:02:21.919 --> 00:02:25.000
to deport American citizens who commit violent crimes. When asked

40
00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:27.759
directly if he was talking about fully naturalized US citizens,

41
00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:30.840
Trump doubled down faster than a blackjack player with two aces.

42
00:02:31.639 --> 00:02:33.960
If they're criminals, and if they hit people with baseball

43
00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.599
bats over the head that happened to be ninety years old,

44
00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:40.560
if they rape eighty seven year old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, Yeah,

45
00:02:40.719 --> 00:02:44.680
Trump responded, apparently forgetting about that pesky little document called

46
00:02:44.719 --> 00:02:47.360
the Constitution, which, if you ask me, we should just

47
00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:49.919
get rid of. Did I mention I don't want to

48
00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:53.960
spend the summer in El Salvador? Trump did acknowledge, I

49
00:02:54.039 --> 00:02:56.080
don't know what the laws are. We always have to

50
00:02:56.120 --> 00:02:59.199
obey the laws, which might be the understatement of the century.

51
00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:03.719
Online reaction has been about what you'd expect, absolute chaos,

52
00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:06.879
with many questioning if this is even real. The good

53
00:03:06.879 --> 00:03:09.439
news is the United States doesn't currently have a legal

54
00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:13.039
framework for exiling its own citizens. The bad news is, well,

55
00:03:13.159 --> 00:03:16.400
I think you can figure that one out. Meanwhile, it

56
00:03:16.439 --> 00:03:19.560
looks like Harvard decided to take its fifty three billion

57
00:03:19.639 --> 00:03:23.039
dollar endowment and put it where its mouth is. The

58
00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:25.520
Ivy League giant has just told the Trump administration to

59
00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:28.000
take its demands and shove them right back into the

60
00:03:28.039 --> 00:03:32.240
Oval office. After receiving what one former Harvard president called

61
00:03:32.639 --> 00:03:36.639
McCarthy on steroids, Harvard President Alan Garber took just seventy

62
00:03:36.680 --> 00:03:39.479
two hours to decide that Harvard wouldn't play ball with

63
00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:41.759
the White House's list of demands that would have essentially

64
00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:45.719
let the government run the university. The Trump administration wanted

65
00:03:45.719 --> 00:03:49.919
Harvard to ban masks at protests, reduce faculty power, adopt

66
00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:54.240
merit based admissions, shut down diversity programs, and submit regular

67
00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:59.039
compliance reports until twenty twenty eight. In response, Harvard basically said,

68
00:03:59.240 --> 00:04:01.560
we've been around for three hundred and eighty eight years

69
00:04:01.879 --> 00:04:05.439
and will outlast you too. Joe Biden backed them, saying

70
00:04:05.919 --> 00:04:09.360
I was there when Harvard was founded. Now the government

71
00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:12.919
is freezing over two point two billion dollars in federal funding,

72
00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:16.399
with nearly seven billion more at risk, including money for

73
00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:21.120
Harvard's hospitals. They've even threatened the university's tax exempt status,

74
00:04:21.920 --> 00:04:24.839
even for the world's richest university this is going to

75
00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:27.560
hurt worse than a freshman philosophy course. After an all

76
00:04:27.639 --> 00:04:32.040
night kegger. Harvard made its decision after watching Columbia University

77
00:04:32.079 --> 00:04:35.959
try the appeasement route. Columbia cave to the administration's demands

78
00:04:35.959 --> 00:04:38.959
back in March to restore four hundred million dollars in funding,

79
00:04:39.519 --> 00:04:42.279
but guess what, they still haven't seen a dime, and

80
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:45.120
now the government wants a court monitored agreement giving them

81
00:04:45.240 --> 00:04:52.480
leverage for years. The White House landscaping saga continues. President

82
00:04:52.519 --> 00:04:55.439
Trump has reportedly taken an axe to yet another historic

83
00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:58.879
White House tree, this time a Saucer magnolia sitting right

84
00:04:58.920 --> 00:05:02.199
outside the Oval office WHI Apparently the tree was getting

85
00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:04.319
in the way of his plans to pay paradise and

86
00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:08.360
put up a parking lot I mean rose garden. According

87
00:05:08.399 --> 00:05:11.160
to reports, Trump is replacing sections of the grass with

88
00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:14.319
pavers because he's tired of guests sinking their high heels

89
00:05:14.360 --> 00:05:18.120
into wet grass during events the horror. During a Fox

90
00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:21.680
interview with Laura Ingraham last month, Trump complained, the women

91
00:05:21.839 --> 00:05:24.839
with the high heels, it's just too much the grass.

92
00:05:25.040 --> 00:05:28.519
It doesn't work. This isn't just any tree, mind you.

93
00:05:29.279 --> 00:05:32.079
According to the National Park Service. Three of the four

94
00:05:32.079 --> 00:05:35.639
magnolias in the garden were planted in remembrance of John F. Kennedy.

95
00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:40.480
Nothing says honoring presidential legacy quite like ripping out memorial

96
00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:43.600
trees and replacing them with concrete. Just to think in

97
00:05:43.680 --> 00:05:46.279
fifty years someone will be upset that we're ripping out

98
00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:49.839
the concrete that honors the legacy of Donald Trump. This

99
00:05:50.120 --> 00:05:54.279
arboreal assassination comes hot on the heels of another tree removal.

100
00:05:54.360 --> 00:05:57.879
Last month, and Andrew Jackson planted magnolia that Trump claimed

101
00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:00.959
was in terrible condition. He did replace that one with

102
00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.720
a sapling dubbed the Magnolia. I'm not making this up, folks.

103
00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:07.120
That's the actual name and a way better joke than

104
00:06:07.160 --> 00:06:16.399
anything our AI ever comes up with. So here's a

105
00:06:16.439 --> 00:06:19.480
story that'll really heat things up, and not in a

106
00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:22.959
good way. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just shot

107
00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:26.319
up at the fastest rate ever recorded. We're talking a

108
00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:29.360
three point seventy five parts per million increase in twenty

109
00:06:29.399 --> 00:06:33.160
twenty four alone. That's twenty seven percent higher than the

110
00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:36.560
previous record. You know how everyone's been counting on forests

111
00:06:36.600 --> 00:06:40.079
to save us from our climate mess, Well, those trees

112
00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:43.399
just called in sick. Turns out they're so stressed from

113
00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:47.360
global warming they can't absorb our pollution anymore. It's like

114
00:06:47.439 --> 00:06:50.720
they finally read the employee handbook and realize they don't

115
00:06:50.759 --> 00:06:53.680
actually get paid for this. And here's where it gets

116
00:06:53.759 --> 00:06:57.959
really interesting. This massive carbon spike wasn't even mainly from

117
00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.439
burning fossil fuels. Those emissions only went up about zero

118
00:07:02.519 --> 00:07:06.879
point eight percent. No, this came from our forests themselves.

119
00:07:07.839 --> 00:07:11.519
The Amazon and African rainforest were so parched and stressed

120
00:07:11.759 --> 00:07:16.000
they actually started releasing carbon instead of absorbing it. Talk

121
00:07:16.079 --> 00:07:19.519
about a toxic relationship. We've been counting on these forests

122
00:07:19.560 --> 00:07:22.639
to clean up our mess for centuries, and now they're

123
00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:26.680
breaking up with us. Scientists are blaming El Nino mixed

124
00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:30.839
with extreme drought conditions. Nearly forty percent of the Amazon

125
00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:34.839
was bone dry, rivers hit record lows, and wildfires burned

126
00:07:34.879 --> 00:07:38.959
through an area larger than California. That's not a climate pattern,

127
00:07:39.319 --> 00:07:43.240
that's nature's way of sending a breakup. Text insiders tell

128
00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:45.360
Ballot that Trump is looking to build a wall to

129
00:07:45.439 --> 00:07:49.040
keep El Nino out. The real question keeping scientists up

130
00:07:49.079 --> 00:07:52.920
at night, are we witnessing a tipping point where warming

131
00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:56.959
triggers more carbon release, which causes more warming. It's the

132
00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:00.199
world's worst feedback loop. And no, you can't just lead

133
00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:03.480
your account on this one. So remember kids, the next

134
00:08:03.480 --> 00:08:06.160
time someone tells you climate change isn't real. Either of

135
00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:08.279
the jokes in today's show made with the help of

136
00:08:08.319 --> 00:08:08.639
AI