The Duran Podcast
Biden debate debacle
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the United States, uncertainty in the United States since the debate between Biden and Trump last Thursday. And you have a lot of calls from donors, from the mainstream media, which has been very supportive of Biden, from prominent Democrats, from Republicans, like the Speaker of the House, they are all calling for Biden to step aside. You also have the Biden camp, his wife, many people close to Biden, apparently Obama, and I say apparently because who knows what Obama's angle really is, and they are coming out in support of Biden to stick around and to stay. The options, I mean, I was watching your video the other day, I was watching Robert Barnes talk about this as well. Axios also talked about possible Biden replacements. And it does seem that legally time, time wise, given the time constraint, given the legalities, given the fact that so much money has been raised, and it would be very difficult. Actually, Robert said that if you do have a complete change in candidates, the money can't be transferred over to the new candidates. Even if Kamala Harris were to step in, that money can't be transferred. It seems like it's going to be very difficult to maneuver Biden out of the race. But the easiest path would be for the Vice President to somehow step in. And that could be done in many different ways. Biden could simply announce, Robert Barnes says, Biden could announce that I'm going to stay in the race, but come January 2025. I'll start handing over the reins to Kamala. Of course, that would present a whole bunch of different problems for the actual race. Everyone would say, OK, so am I really voting for Biden? Or come up? I mean, there are ways that they can do this so that they can keep the money and avoid the various legal blocks that are present with this situation. But it's a mess. It's a complete mess. And the Democrats only have themselves to blame. Anyway, how do you see the situation? Well, I think the first point to start with is to go back to something that you said on one of our videos that we made way back in the summer, late summer of last year, which you said, you said, and you know, I remember this, and we discussed it several times afterwards. And this is last last year, last summer, that the Democrats really had a Biden problem about which they were in denial. They had only a couple of weeks at that time to sort it out, leaving it festering up to the start of the primary season so that Biden went through the primary season. And in effect emerged on the other side of the primary season as the person with all the primary delegates would create a crisis. And that the Democrats, if they had two brain cells to rub together, would not let themselves be put into that position. Well, it seems they didn't have two brain cells to rub together because they did let themselves be put into that position. And what we saw in the television debate is that all of those things that we've been saying about the president, about his problems, what his issues go back years now, has been demonstrated in the starkest, most undeniable way to the point where even the New York Times has now been forced to basically concede that there are problems and suggest that the president might be best advised to stand down. Well, it's all very well to say that now. But firstly, let's be clear for, well, I'm not going to discuss for how long, but the American people have been gas-lighted. They've been told repeatedly that they have a president who is in effective control of the government, who's capable of conducting a presidential campaign, who is a person who is fit and capable of leading the United States for four more years if he's reelected. And now what we see is that many people on his own side quietly understand whether they don't quietly are now publicly saying, well, that may not actually be true. We can't, you know, we can't look forward to him even winning the election against his opponent. So, you know, they've got themselves completely into this mess and they're freaking out. And if I have to say, I don't think there is a simple solution to this problem. I'm changing course now, picking a new candidate. And I have to say, I think the only candidate that they could reasonably be picked without, you know, reopening everything would become either Harris. I can't really see. That's the way it's looking, I agree. Who else it can possibly be? Well, she, as we know, is deeply unpopular. I think if Biden steps down from being a candidate for the presidency now, he says, I'm not going to stand for reelection. Well, I think at that point, people will say, well, if he's not able to campaign as a candidate, maybe the right thing for him to do also is to stand down as president so that Kamala goes into the election. No longer is the vice president, but as the incumbent. That might make more sense. I think this idea that, you know, Biden remains on the ticket as president, but agrees to step down on the 21st of January or whatever it is. I think that is incredibly far-fetched. And I think the American people who are being asked to choose between one president and another candidates for the presidency. I mean, what does this tell them, you know, okay, you're going to vote for the person who's the president, but in fact, what that really means is that you're going to actually end up with the vice president who you don't even really like because you've got all of this problem transferring money from one candidate to another candidate. I mean, how do you persuade people to come out and vote in that way? And then, you know, getting him to stand down, you know, run into the Kamala Harris problem if you don't want her. You then go into the convention with an open convention. You start talking about people like Newsome or Spritsler or whatever. I mean, again, there is no consensus around this. So I actually, what I think is actually going to happen, and I think this is the signs of it, is that the Democrats have completely panicked after the television debate. They've seen how terrible he is. They presented it to the American people, but they've now had a deep and hard look at the options. And I get to tell you what I think they're going to do. I think they're going to pull back. They're going to say disastrous as this situation is. We've now reached that point where changing candidate is going to create even more problems than it solves. So we're going to stick with Joe and keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best because what else realistically can they do? That's my own view. I'm coming to the same conclusion, actually. I completely agree with you. I'll take it even further. I think they are going to swap. I think that's their plan, and they're going to hope that they can win the White House. Let's just say they manage a way to get through all of this. I'm just throwing out hypotheticals now. 2025. Biden does step aside, and Kamala does take over, but they don't tell anybody. They don't announce it. They don't talk about it. Maybe this is not done within the first month or two of 2025. Maybe this is done towards the end of 2025 or 2026. Let Biden get through the first year of his second term. And then maybe in the beginning of 2026, we can start the swapping of Kamala for Biden. Let's not announce anything. Let's pull back. Let's circle the wagons around Joe. Let's start calling Trump demented, which is what Pelosi did the other day on CNN and Projection, which is their favorite tool. And let's just hope for a miracle come November 4th. Let's hope that we can find a way to get Biden through the election. I think that's the most likely scenario. But who knows? We are in a very uncertain period. Here's a quick thought, Alex, which I would like your thought of, listening to Robert. He brought up a very good point, which I haven't thought about. It would be very dangerous to to the geopolitical situation and given the wars that we have in Ukraine and the Middle East. If you were to have a Biden administration over the next four or five months making decisions while knowing that they're going to be pushed aside for someone else. If you imagine the decisions then that a Biden White House would make, what decisions Blinken would make Sullivan, Jill Biden, and Biden's team, if they didn't have any type of restraint, an election restraint to prevent them from not doing God knows what in Ukraine or the Middle East. I thought that was a really interesting point that I haven't heard anyone make yet. Yeah, I've not anybody make it and he's absolutely what. I mean, we are in an incredibly dangerous situation. We got two wars underway. We got one in the Ukraine, one in the Middle East, the United States is deeply involved in both of them. We have a major crisis with China. We have a group of absolutely visceral hardliners in the National Security Council and in the State Department and in parts of the intelligence agencies. And they are sensing that they're losing control, that they're losing control of the United States, even though, and this is an important point to say, we don't fully know now who is in charge of the United States. I mean, this is, for me, the single most frightening thing about this whole situation. I mean, it's all very well saying, you know, we keep our fingers crossed, hope that by, you know, monstery keys opponent, we can still get Joe across the finishing line. And then after a year, it's easy amount. But it means in effect that the United States is without a functioning president in the middle of a absolutely catastrophic geopolitical situation for a year and a half. I mean, that almost doesn't bear thinking about. And when I say, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, he's completely lost all trace of his mind, but a president of the United States in order to govern effectively needs to have intellectual mental energy. He needs to be fully on top of his brief. He needs to be able to give instructions. He needs to keep on top of his advisors. He needs to have levels of dynamism and force of personality, which to put it gently, Joe doesn't have. I mean, it's obvious. Anybody can see this now. So he cannot function effectively as president and cannot ride the United States through these crises. So yes, what they're going to do over the next couple of months with all the restraints in effect taken away, especially if they think that the election is no longer going to be going their way. As I said, it simply doesn't bear thinking about. We are in a very, very dangerous and alarming situation indeed. And a president who's hardly in control and people around him who are making decisions, who are not responsible or accountable for those decisions because they're not elected. And we just don't know where this is going. It's the worst possible situation that the United States could find itself in. And indeed, the world could find itself in at this particular time. And we have to remember who brought it about, who made the decisions that they did, who landed us in the situation by continuing to insist that this particular individual, who is normally the president of the United States, should remain in charge even though, obviously, he is not in charge. Just a final question. If you had to take a guess who's running things in the United States, let's say foreign policy from a foreign policy standpoint, and then maybe you may want to weigh in on the best. I think you have a lot of different groups that are running things or fighting to run things and to get their way. But who would you say are the people or the groups that are managing the situation, if you can call it, managing on a foreign policy and a domestic level? I think the two most important people in the US government at the present moment in time, the two key decision makers are Jake Sullivan running foreign policy and Janet Yellen running economic policy. But bear in mind that Sullivan is not the president and Yellen is not the president. So if someone like, say, Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice wants to do his own thing and Janet Yellen comes along and tells him, well, I don't think this is particularly helpful at this time. Merrick Garland, who is absolutely someone with his own agenda, will simply say, buzz off. You're not the president. Why should I listen to you? So I think that's the problem we have in the United States at this time. Jake Sullivan has access to the president pretty much all the time because he's his national security adviser. And many people think he's a genius, which of course he isn't. But I mean, he's probably got more control of foreign policy than Yellen has over domestic policy. But even his control of foreign policy cannot be absolute in the way that a president could be. And of course, if we ever get ourselves into a Cuban Missile Crisis situation, which we're closer to being in than at any time since the actual Cuban Missile Crisis. Even if Jake Sullivan had the brilliance of JFK, which of course he doesn't. He's not president. He can't do the kind of things that JFK did in 1962, which prevented the ultimate catastrophe from happening. So there we are. This is this is the situation in which we find ourselves in now. Yeah. And just just to wrap up the video, I imagine that Jake Sullivan gets most of his support from the State Department and probably gets most of the pushback from the Pentagon, not all the pushback, but if there's pushback, I imagine it's coming from the Pentagon. Well, absolutely. I mean, if you if you follow the various comments that have been made, I mean, especially since General Brown took over from General Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I mean, my sense is the General Brown is far less, you know, supportive of Project Ukraine, Jake Sullivan's foreign policy ideas. He's far more deeply skeptical to the extent that there is resistance to the current foreign policies of the administration. It appears to come mostly from the Pentagon. Even Lloyd Austin doesn't seem to be an enthusiast for many of the administration's projects. But ultimately, again, you know, the military are traditionally executives of policy, not makers of policy. And that's a very bad situation for them to find themselves in. Even if they do want to exercise restraints, the duran.locals.com. We are on rumble odyssey, bit you telegram, rock fin and twitter X and go to the duran shop, pick up some limited edition merch, link is in the description box down below. Take care. 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