>>  Welcome to another episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket, where you are the judge here. We brief you on the news of the day so that you can issue a ruling. Get ready to hear the arguments because court is now in session.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross Examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I’m alarmed. I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering a rise of christian nationalism in our country. Today is a rocket doc episode. These are unscripted reactions to news, and as you may have heard as of approximately 23 minutes ago, Biden has dropped out of the race. So we’re going to talk about what that means today for christian nationalism in the United States and what we can do to try to push back at this moment in history that is fairly unique, and we’ll talk about how unique it is. Like I said, these are unscripted rocket docket episodes. I’m just going to be going off the cuff. I have some contacts that are continuing to text me. I’m going bring you up to speed on what they told me, 749 this morning. Somebody, said that they’ve, heard Biden’s going to be dropping out today, which proved to be true. They importantly said he won’t endorse Harris, but rather have Harris pick among three candidates to run his vp. That sounds like that is also accurate from this contact. Later, when we were talking about what is going to happen, the contact, I don’t want to say exactly what they said, but basically there’s a couple of issues. So let’s talk about these issues. One, is Kamala Harris going to take over? It seems like the best choice for several reasons. One, she is the only one that has any legal right to the $100 million plus already raised by the Biden Harris campaign. That in and of itself seems to argue for. Let’s get on board with her. She’s got the war chest. What would happen if she’s not the nominee to that money? I don’t know. People donated it to a particular cause, I am sure. Well, let me say, I am fairly confident that the people who set up those donation sites had some sort of disclaimer in the fine print. You know, when you go to a site and you agree to do something, there’s sort of terms and conditions to what you’re doing. You’re giving them money in exchange for them using that money to try to get Biden Harris elected. There’s got to be some fine print somewhere that says, what if either of them is unable to complete the campaign due to death, infirmity, dropping out, all of those sorts of things, whatever those terms are, would apply. Assuming there’s terms about Biden dropping out but Kamala staying in, or either one of them dropping out, I doubt that the terms would say the money goes back to the donors, because that would be very hard to do. it could be that the terms would say that the money goes to the DNC. It could be that if Biden drops out, it goes to Harris. It could be if Harris drops out, it goes, still stays with Biden. if both drop out, DNC would be my guess, but they may return them, since in these days, we’ve got electronic transactions. But it would be a real pain in the ass to reverse all of those donations for 100 million. So that’s the first issue, is she’s got the money, she’s got the war chest. So that’s important. The other thing that this person pointed out was, two factors going against her as just not for the money, but one. this person’s claiming that the belief in the DNC is that she is no more popular than Biden, which may be true. I haven’t seen the polling on that. I believe that she is more popular than Biden. The last few polls I remember hearing about, were discussed on pod save America, the podcast. I recommend it. It’s run by a bunch of ex Obama people, and they are very insiders, and they know how to read polls. And they said Harris, was polling at least three, if not four points ahead of Biden. But that. That is an issue. but that is compared to Biden. Now, post debate disaster, Harris is an ex prosecutor, and if, you know, prosecutors, they think on their feet, and they’re great in debates. So this is why Trump has been terrified of Biden dropping out. Ever since that debate, it’s been a careful what you wish for moment. In fact, everybody knows I love Broadway musicals. All I’m thinking about right now is into the woods, where everybody gets what they wish at the end of act one, and act two is just, hey, how do you deal with getting your wish?

>> <name></name>: How can you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it?

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: What I know, all I know is.

>> <name></name>: I never wish what I want most for the reason is to know what I want.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Well, Trump got his wish. He demolished Joe Biden in that debate, and, now he has to deal with the consequences. And he has not been writing him on that debate, if you notice, no comment about how I destroyed him. He’s incompetent, he should drop out. Nope, just I’m awesome. That’s all he’s been saying. Because he knows anybody other than Biden is pulling ahead of Biden and will give him a run for the money. So the best play right now, I think, if you stay in the Harris camp, is for Harris to quickly assume the mantle and immediately challenge Trump to a debate, a series of debates, and she will absolutely thrash him. You want to talk about a prosecutor going up against a convicted felon and owning him on the facts? Everything. You were screaming on debate night when you were watching the debate and you were saying, why isn’t Biden saying, xdev, Kamala will be ahead of you and be saying it before you even think of it? That’s the type of prosecutor she is. Okay, so that’s first. That’s the first sort of issue directly related to Kamala. Number two, and this is also a big issue that we need to talk about today, is if the party just says, okay, we’re sticking with Kamala. She’s the presidential nominee. Will the party faithful, Beverly, disgruntled that there wasn’t a more democratic process? Will they view that as the party elite have deemed Harris to be the nominee without any discussion? They can do that. I think. I think they can do that because she’s on the ticket already. And they could just say, well, she’s a ticket. She’s going to pick a nominee and we’re going to go with it. The alternative would be to have an open convention. I’ve heard a lot of commentators already in the. It’s been 29 minutes, but I’ve. I’ve heard a lot of commentators. I’ve been flicking back and forth to see how all the channels are taking this. Fox is very skeptical that this is a good thing. By the way, I’ve heard a lot of commentators say that that would be, suicidal for the DNC to do an open convention where they don’t have a nominee at that point. I’m not convinced entirely of that, although I’m leaning in that direction. I think you need time to let the country get to know Kamala in the spotlight. She needs to be the front leader. Everybody needs to get out and say she’s awesome. She needs to challenge him to a debate. She needs to start doing events and appearing on all of the talk shows, all of the news clips, so people can hear her talk about how horrible Donald Trump is. Which Biden would never do. I do think with somebody like Trump, you need to go negative. I say he would never do it. He would do it in a very, careful and measured way. I think Harris would be more direct. I think she would have no problem to say, this man’s been convicted in a free and fair trial that his lawyers were, given every opportunity to object to. They helped pick the jurors, all of that, and he was convicted of over 30 felonies. What more do you want? If you think that this is a, frame job by the Justice Department, you need to explain Hunter Biden’s conviction and Menendez conviction, and all the Democrats that are getting convicted by the feds, the same federal department. Like, she could go on that rant, in a way, much better than I could. Very point, very pointed, very short, very sound clippy so that anybody who’s listening to her for more than 10 seconds gets a real taste for how intelligent she is, how quick on her feet she is, and how decisive she is, even before you get to policies of compassion and you talk about Dobbs ruining Roe v. Wade. So, I think that, yes, it would be better if we just get on board with Harris. She’s not necessarily the best candidate. I think maybe there’s some others that might be better, but it would take too long to find them. That’s the problem this close to the election. It’s July 21 right now, at 02:32 p.m. and it’s funny that the time matters. We’re this close to November, so that’s. That’s sort of. .2 and then, let’s see. I’m getting this information as I do the show. I apologize. so some insiders are favoring an open convention. groups of Democrats are making plans for all scenarios and vetting other governors and senators right now. And the reason they’re vetting them, according to this source, is that either they’re going to be the VP for Harris, or there will be an open convention. And we want a good, quality, stable, of candidates for that convention. And this was said even before they knew, that Biden was dropping out. So this has never happened before like this. This is uncharted territory. It is history in the making. You should definitely pay attention. Books will be written about this. People will go to school and get their PhD thesis granted because they study the history of this, the underlying causes. They will, from a political standpoint, perspective, be studying the polling data, running into this decision, and then running up to the election. It will be, it will be a major source of analysis, moving forward for decades to come. So politically, that’s where we are. Oh, I just got something new. okay, I’ve got a copy of Biden’s letter. He wrote a letter resigning. I am going to read it right now. my fellow Americans, over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a nation. I can’t disagree with that. That is absolutely, absolutely true. Inflation went up. That’s the only bad thing. And you can say he inherited an economy that caused that. We had tariffs out the wazoo because of Trump. We had a pandemic. We had false, inflation where people, companies used the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices. You can look at, graphs and charts, which, again, this will be written about where the inflation and cost of living goes up by x and the cost of products across the board for various industries, especially dining and retail, go up by x times three. So it wasn’t inflation as a result of a, cost of living increase directly. The increase in prices happened in a disconnected way. But the real telling stat is when prices went up by x times three. you would expect if it was to cost of living, if it was just because the cost of goods was going up, so the increased cost had to be passed on to consumers. You would expect to see a flat graph on the change in profits for those companies, for mcdonalds or yum, foods or whoever owns all of those things. And, target and Walmart would see flatdenne. They showed record profits. While we were going through inflation. Their profits increased by more than the cost of living. That’s the telling stat that you should be thinking of. So, yes, Biden have an inflationary increase. Then he brought it down. Meanwhile, he created a million plus jobs. He, lowered unemployment by a massive amount. He lowered gas prices. The interest rates are great. Confidence, in the economy is huge. gross domestic product is through the roof. All of these metrics are very, very good. If you remember, six months ago, a year ago, somewhere in that range, people were talking about we might be heading for another recession. Look at this inflation. And now where are those people? Nowhere. Because they realize the inflation was m corporate profit taking and that Biden handled the situation. Now, to be clear, I am speaking in a political sense right now. I am a person who believes that the president has the ability to affect the economy in short bursts, but the economy will self correct very quickly if Trump gets elected. The economy does something, and then within a week, or two after people have digested the news, it sort of levels back out to where it was before. If a president gets on and says, hey, we’re doing away with the income tax, that would really affect the economy for a short time, until, reality sets back in and you realize Congress isn’t in with it, all that stuff. So a president is steering the cruise ship. It’s very hard to make the economy make short, quick turns. So I don’t credit Biden like, economically, with having some sort of amazing thing that any, this one cool trick that any president could use to fix an economy. But what I do know is by being there, he led confidence with the rest of the world to do business with us. He gave confidence to business leaders that we would have a stable environment. I have worked in, in the business world since I graduated from college, and if there is one thing that, and I have owned my own companies, I have worked closely with the owners of private companies, and I have worked for publicly traded, very large companies. I currently work for a company that’s got 15,000, employees around the world. It does 3 billion a year. I’ve seen it all. Every business owner and every sort of VP c suite type of person wants one thing and one thing above all else, and that is predictability. If I know that things are not going to change drastically for me, then I know that any decision I make right now will be in my hands. If I decide to raise my prices, it’s on me. If I decide to, release a new product in this quarter, it’s on me. It’s not going to just get slammed by some crazy regulation change or some crazy tariff or a skirmish, between first world nations in a kinetic war. None of that’s going to happen. I’m happy. So that’s one of the areas where I credit Biden practically, in addition to politically. The other area that I credit Biden m practically, is he hires people who know what the fuck they’re doing. He’s not running. On top of a book that’s 900 pages called project 2025, that will utterly destroy the economy of the United States. Project 2025, which we need to do a whole episode on, will induce massive deregulation. It will make the tax cuts for the rich. That Trump did, this is Trump’s one crowning achievement, was giving a trillion dollar tax cut to the ultra wealthy in this country, while doing nothing for his supporters who were out there in the street wearing their MAGA hats and. And tampon bandages. Tampon, excuse me, maxi pad, bandages on their ears. For some cultish reason, he did nothing for them, but they vote for him because reasons, right? So he. That’s the one thing that he did, was give a giant tax cut to the super wealthy and not pay for it, which is why Biden inherited a bad economy. Because if you. You give a trillion dollar tax cut, we are now short $1 trillion, and we have no money to spend on the programs we have been using to keep the company going. Company, country. Yeah, I made that mistake. That’s a freudian slip. So sorry. I have to catch up with where I was. I’m getting another thing. I was reading Biden’s letter. So, anyway, that’s where I give credit, direct credit to Biden. Otherwise, the arguments I’m making for Biden, having this political advantage is really just a political thing. It’s like, you know, that’s the question of, are you better now than you were four years ago? Here’s all the metrics that show you should be. The problem is, do I feel it? The guy in the street may hear all of these things, but if he’s having a hard time, he may not feel like it. Or if he’s been brainwashed by Trumpville, he may not feel like it. Let’s continue. I read. I read one sentence. continuing with Biden’s letter. Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. That, again, this is what we were talking about. I agree with that. It is amazing. one might look at China and say their economy is outdoing us. And it was. Until recently. China has really hit a snag, and it’s not because of Trump. It’s in spite of Trump. So let’s continue here. We’ve made historic investments in rebuilding our nation and lowering prescription drug costs for seniors. It’s one of his best talking points. And in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans, we’ve provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Again, this man is a passionate, good man. He loves the armed services. He loved his son, who was in the armed services and whom he lost. He tries to take care of veterans instead of Trump, who calls them suckers and losers when they die. we passed the first gun safety law in 30 years, appointed the first african american woman to the Supreme Court, and passed the most significant climate. Climate change, excuse me, climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today. I know none of this could have been done without you. The american people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Thank you, Trump. We protected and preserved our democracy, and we revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. M I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision. For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the american people for the faith and trust you have placed in me. I believe today what I always have, that there is nothing America can’t do when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America. Sign Joe Biden. an excellent letter. I agree with him. Importantly, I think, my contact here was right. He did not endorse, Kamala directly, which is, I think, the proper thing to do in such a letter. That’s a letter to the entire country. As president, you don’t need to worry about who’s going to be running later. You just let the country know. And keep in mind, you are the president of everybody, every single American, whether they’re wearing a mAGA hat or they’re a blue anon left wing nut job, all of them are your people. So he is telling them, hey, for the good of the country, I’m sitting down. But importantly, at the end there, he said, we. We do it best when we do it together, united. So he’s the one talking about unity, unlike Trump, who promised to talk about unity at the RNC. And then when he gave a speech, couldn’t hold it together, he, he proved yet again that the first 30 minutes, an hour, however long he was on the teleprompter is what I like to call the hostage videos for Trump. When he’s reading something, and you can tell he’s just reading it and he’s bored by it, and he’s being made to say something that he doesn’t want to say, that is, that is hostage video trump. And then he gets off, he decides, fuck it, I’m Trump. I can do whatever I want. And he starts rambling. And apparently the thing that he thinks people need to know the most, about his candidacy, based on how he was speaking at the end of his speech when he went off script, is that he’s really good at golf. He. That’s the number one thing he wants you to know about him. he did not mention at the convention anything to do with Dobbs loss of abortion rights for women. He did not mention Joe Biden dropping out. He did not mention pretty much anything. He didn’t mention project 2025 either, even though they all work for him. So, this is where we are. What’s next? So we have, the potential for an open convention. If that happens, then we are going to see jockeying like you’ve never seen before. But it’s not impossible. Think of places, like England, right? If they have, the government collapses, which is not a horrible thing. That’s what happens in parliament when they can’t have. Get a vote of confidence passed, right? So let’s say they have this big initiative, the majority party, which now is the Labour party. Another great sign for us is that, the right, which had been ruling and for 14 years in Great Britain, has been rejected by the voters there and the left has taken power there. That to some degree is a rejection of fascism. But to a greater degree in England, I believe it’s a reaction to people waking up to the fact that, yeah, they really did Brexit and shot themselves in the foot because the. The Conservatives lied to them and now their country is falling to shit. So that’s, you know, take it for what you want. Also, in France, we had the prediction of this massive right wing victory. Fascism was coming to a rise of power. Nothing like that. It was way short of that. So we have some positive indications around the world that when people really group together and are informed about the fascist tendencies or the. The ultra rich taxation, plan tendencies of their leadership, they will reject it. So that needs to be the message. I think we can have a polite, quick debate. The reason I was talking about England is if that government collapses, to say that the left is ruling now and they do this big initiative and it fails to pass, that might either trigger or cause somebody to call for a vote of no confidence. And if that vote, if they cannot get past that vote, elections are triggered right then and there. And they have, I think it’s five weeks, maybe six weeks. and somebody correct me on that in the comments to run another election. So people in Europe are very used to being aware of who the politicians are that are already in the mix. At any given point, they might be running. Right. And, we can do that here. We can get people out there, get people to listen, the sooner the better, in my opinion, to get people on board on the Harris train. So if we do an open convention, then the delegates which have already been pledged to the Biden Harris campaign, I believe the DNC can free those up. So you’ve had delegates, you voted in your primary for the Biden Harris ticket. You voted for Biden individually, and you voted, I believe, for Harris individually. Depending on your state, how your ballots work, that commits delegates usually to go and, vote for them at a convention. If Biden drops out, at least the Biden delegates are now released, and they can vote for whomever they want. And you have to convince them to support you. That’s a tricky thing. That’s the thing. That’s. I mean, this hasn’t happened in my lifetime that I can think of that a. At least a sitting nominated president that has already been, won a primary has then dropped out of the race. So, I’ll have to read some history books to see when it last happened and find out what happened there. But it is basically uncharted territory. That can be done. It can be done well, but it will require a cooperation. And that’s the problem in politics, right, is the famous saying is you can get anything done you want. You can accomplish anything you want in the world as long as you don’t care who gets credit. Well, that runs directly, head on into the idea of politics, which is all about getting credit, even if you didn’t do the thing that you’re taking credit for. see, for example, Boebert and Bachmann and all of those people who forever have been taking credit for the effects of bills, they voted against. They vote against a funding bill, and then they go back. When it passes, they go back to their district and say, hey, I got you all this money. And then their opponent says, yeah, but you voted against it. It doesn’t matter. I got it. So, yeah, we can do anything we want. If we don’t care who gets credit, that’s going to run straight into each individual actor, right? Kamala Harris, Buttigieg. who knows who else is in the mix for, vp and president? But they all live their own lives like we all do, and they all have their own vision, and this is why Biden took so long to drop out. Everybody that can be elected to that level of office has an ego. They think they’re the shit. You don’t go through and do that unless you want it, you’re hungry for it, and you think you’re the, you’re the shit. That’s the problem is this is a time where we need them to drop some of that and come together and have a polite debate, which we’ve seen that happen before. We’ve seen sort of polite debates before. So hopefully they can do that. I think the better option would be for the DNC to have some quick action on the part of the leadership, the donors and the lawyers to figure out, yes, she’s got the money. Let’s just say it’s her and it’s still her campaign and she’s just going to replace a vp and have her out there tomorrow or this week stumping, for the election. More to come. Thank you for listening to me. I just wanted to get this news out here. Let’s check the latest news. let’s see. CNN is basically saying, this is the first time that a president has dropped out of election in, quote, unquote, decades. That’s not helping me very much. Let’s see what Fox is saying currently. They were not too ecstatic, last time. Fox, news headline is Biden pushed out, everybody else’s. Biden drops out. Fox, of course Biden pushed out. they now have, they now say, Biden endorses Kamala Harris. That is brand new news. all right, Biden tweeted. So again, as I said, he wrote a letter to the country as president. And then personally he tweeted, my fellow Democrats, I’ve decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on the duties of the president for the remainder of my terminal. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president. He tweeted, that’s not exactly an endorsement. Interesting. Trump is now saying, quote, crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for president and is certainly not fit to serve and never Washington. He said on a truth social post, he only attained the position of president by lies, fake news, and not leaving his basement. those around him, including his doctor and the media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being president. And he wasn’t. And now look what he’s done to our country. With millions of people coming across the border totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. Trump added, we will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly make America great again. So Trump is still running against Biden. That’s what, that’s what that means. Trump wants to run against Biden. So he is going to slam Biden. And by this tweet, this met m, this truth social post, he is indicating, I am going to keep slamming the Biden campaign and I’m going to slam those who enabled Biden. He’s going to probably, depict him as a doddering, old, senile man that the Democrats foisted upon you. So it’s the Democrats who caused the problems under Biden’s, the Biden, presidency. And that’s ignoring all the lies in there. Millions of people crossing the border that are coming from prisons and mental institutions. No proof has been ever offered for that by Trump, because he knows that is the second that he does, he will be called on it. Recall all of his claims about the election being stolen. Recall all of the lawsuits he filed, 60 something on the merits, 70 something total. None of them actually proved anything. In fact, I think one, one of them actually did find one case of one person having, having done something wrong with the election. and I don’t remember they were Democrat or Republican, but, but the irony there is one Democrat may have been found guilty of a false ballot or something. Meanwhile, we had news stories about all the Republicans engineering this false election stuff. All of the trials said there was nothing because Trump’s team never presented any evidence. They tell you one thing on stage and on true social and on Fox News, then they go to court where they could go to prison if they lie and they don’t introduce any evidence, and then the case gets thrown out. And then what do they do? They turn around and they say, these judges are not listening to me. They know what they did. They were very respectful. They didn’t lie. They just didn’t introduce evidence. And then they lied to their public. Again, this is why we have this podcast. You need to know what’s going on with these people, right? It’s not hidden. I’m not telling you anything new. I just want you to be able to talk to other people and say, this is why he’s lying to you. So, yes, Trump looks like, at least in the immediate reaction, his instinct, his political instinct, is to keep running against Joe Biden and blame Democrats. The, they, the, the shadowy figure boogie monster that he has tried to paint of the Democrats as being responsible for a, horrible man being in the White House when, when nothing could be further from the truth. so that’s where we stand right now. It is, it’s been about a half, almost an hour since he announced. I’m sure we’ll talk about this more up. let’s talk why this matters for christian nationalism. I hope it’s obvious. we will do a whole episode on Project 2025. Project 2025, as part of it, has an entire arc, that wants to do away with the separation of church and state. And while Trump has said publicly, I don’t know anything about tragic 2025, I don’t know who wrote it. When you look at the names on the sheet of who wrote this thing, 190 of them, the last I saw, worked for Trump. And they. They know, hey, we get elected, this is what we’re going to do. And he knows it too, but he is trying to distance himself because the details have started coming out and it’s terrifying. So I am working on getting an interview. I’ve been talking with Freedom from Religion foundation. You may remember I interviewed Ryan Jane last year. he is their sort of expert, from what I hear, on the separation of church issues, church and separation of church and state issues in project 2025. I’m hoping to get him on quickly to talk about this because it’s more relevant than ever, because we have a real shot now to, expose this information and making a talking point in this campaign to try to get Donald Trump resigned to the dustbin of history as a fascinating side moan of an. Of a side note of an almost Hitler, that’s where he belongs, and that’s where we should keep him. And hopefully, Kamala Harris or whoever is the nominee will be able to kick some ass and show people how a vigorous campaign should be run. So more to come. Thank you for tuning in. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

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