In short
The episode argues that Trump’s administration is hiding an “unprecedented” number of presidential pardons tied to a pay-to-play scheme, including DOJ scrubbing pardon lists and J.D. Vance hosting anti-fraud meetings with “pardon fraudsters.” Guests claim the pardons are a distraction from broader institutional dismantling and from economic/political failures. They speculate about motives for pardoning figures connected to Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell and criticize Melania Trump’s comments about a “direct channel” with Russia/Ukraine, saying it produced no results for Ukrainian children. They also discuss Rubio inviting Putin to G20 and alleged leverage over Trump.
Notable examples
Maxwell/Epstein, “Einstein visa” claims, and Senate/gubernatorial forecast shifts (Cook Political, Florida).
Guests
Josh (criminal defense attorney) and Jennifer (“Pumps” co-host).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOTrump's Pardon Controversy
0:42 to 2:06
Discussion on Trump's pardon schemes and the implications.
“All right, Donald Trump and his DOJ, you know, they have this pay-to-play pardon scheme.”
Impact of Pardons on Trump's Image
2:06 to 4:36
Analyzing how pardons affect Trump's standing and strategy.
“I think there's some irony in the fact that just I think in the same week, J.D.”
Distracting Tactics Ahead of Midterms
4:36 to 6:41
Examining how Trump uses distractions amid political challenges.
“So obviously they're trying to cover up this really serious headline grabbing thing.”
Trump's Relationship with Russia
7:11 to 11:39
Exploring Trump's connections and dealings with Russia.
“I think the people, there are smart, evil people surrounding him that are using these things as distractions to entertain the president, like Russ Vought.”
Melania's Perceptions and Claims
11:39 to 14:00
Discussing Melania Trump's comments on her influence and Trump’s presidency.
“Melania talks about her, quote, direct channel with Russia.”
Melania Trump's Visa and Accusations
14:00 to 22:32
The hosts discuss Melania Trump's alleged Einstein visa and related controversies.
“but I think he's doing the best that he can.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Visible puts unlimited 5G data and hotspot in the palm of your hand. powered by Verizon's 5G network with no contract holding you back. And for a limited time, you can get Visible for just$19 a month for 12 months when you use promo code SAVE6. All the features of big wireless service for half the cost. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply. Standard rate applies at month 13. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. I know holiday magic starts at home and Wayfair makes it easy. They have everything from Christmas trees and mantle decor to outdoor lighting and inflatables that I'll use year after year.
0:39Head to Wayfair.com today.
0:47All right, Donald Trump and his DOJ, you know, they have this pay-to-play pardon scheme. If you're a white-collar criminal, if you're a drug dealer, whatever it is, doesn't matter. If you can pay, he will make it go away. Well, now the DOJ is trying to cover up Trump's unprecedented amount of pardons. Pop this up. So here we have just a scrolling list put together from the Midas Touch. And for those of you listening, Kylie is scrolling and scrolling and scrolling of all of these criminals, fraudsters, crooks, all the stuff he says illegal immigrants are, are all in the epicenter of his very circle, getting pardons.
1:29Josh, how difficult is it, you're a criminal defense attorney, in a normal presidency, if you have a white-collar crime, let's say Joe Biden's president, to be able to access the president of the United States for some white-collar swindler to get a pardon, presidential pardon? Well, pardons have been notably extremely rare in the past. And, you know, there's a form, typically you'd work through the Department of Justice and applying. And with this president, if you have money, he's proven the fact that you have access to his office and he's going to consider giving you a pardon if you have enough money.
2:06I think there's some irony in the fact that just I think in the same week, J.D. Vance has announced the fraud czar that the DOJ scrubs their website and tries to hide the fact that they're pardoning so many people. And I also saw some reporting that two or three of the elected officials that are in Trump's in the audience at that particular event were recipients of pardons for fraud. Wait, in J.D. Vance's fraud czar? At the event. No. I've seen reporting that there were several people, there were recipients of pardons for fraud that were there to celebrate the fraud czar. There is no bottom. We'll try to track that down a little closer.
2:54Oh, shit. All right, Pops. Now they're trying to distract us. Let me just say this. Am I crazy that I think the reason he pulled these pardons off, number one, he knows everybody's watching, Ghislaine Maxwell. I mean, I think the fix is in. I think he's going to try to slide that one through. And I mean, I know I'm down the Jeffrey Epstein rabbit hole and have been from jump, but I I think that's one of the reasons he took it down, so he can slide in a pardon for Galang. And that might be what takes him down to 25%, if he does that. Possibly. It might nudge him down four points by pardoning someone in Jeffrey Epstein's pedophile ring.
3:32I think they're going to hold her right where she is and say, you keep your mouth shut until the coast is clear. There's no way they're going to pardon her right now. I think they are going to keep her right where they want her. and he's told her i think we all think todd blanche has said look it's coming for you sis i'll transfer you to this you know cream puff prison you're going to have a puppy in yoga classes and whatever and you keep your mouth shut no more leaking to the wall street journal and it'll come for you but i think he's gonna i think he's gonna wait and and it would be hilarious i mean i'm probably gonna get cut up and rip for saying this would be hilarious if biology cut up caught up to him trump before she got her pardon.
4:12Agreed. And all the other people he's promised pardons to. Well, I think the relationship between Todd Branch and her lawyer, I think David Marcus is his name. Those guys are close. They've appeared on podcasts before when Todd Branch was a criminal offense lawyer. And so there's a relationship there. There's a plan in place. We don't know exactly what that plan is, but it's in place. We all know that. All right, Pumps, I want to get your take on this story. So obviously they're trying to cover up this really serious headline grabbing thing. The president of the United States selling pardons, scrubbing them from the website.
4:46J.D. Vance is hosting anti-fraud meetings with pardon fraudsters. And then they're trying to cover up all of that stuff and distract us with stuff like this. Pop this up. Trump aides explore attaching president's name to Ford's theater site of Lincoln assassination. And I think a lot of these things, of course, number one, Trump likes it. But number two, I think they are using these to distract the reflection pool, the Kennedy Center, the Arch. They use a lot of this stuff to distract from the more dangerous dismantling of institutions that we have. Well, and also we're coming up to the midterms in a very short order.
5:30Prices are through the roof. And he goes on and he says, oh, well, there's no fraud. I mean, I'm sorry. Affordability's down. Inflation's down. All of which is objectively false. Everything that he ran on, no forever wars, affordability, all of those things have disappeared. Immigration, he's upside down on immigration. So I do agree with you. it's somewhat red meat because then if we're talking about the no bid contract at the reflection poll and jd vance being the fraud fire that's absurd and now he's putting his name on the lincoln assassination memorial 100 we're talking we're not talking about how his approval rating is through the tank how even the florida republican candidate for governor that he chose donald's is Is it Donaldson, Byron Donaldson?
6:21Yeah, Byron Donaldson, yeah. Byron Donaldson has taken him from his, I mean, he is distancing himself. Republicans that want to win are distancing themselves from Trump. So, of course, if he's talking about all these other stupid things, we're not talking about what a disaster Trump 2.0 was. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night.
7:00They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Okay, let me tell you what I'm talking about here. I think the people, there are smart, evil people surrounding him that are using these things as distractions to entertain the president, like Russ Vought. That's what I mean by this. They're stroking his ego. The people that want to dismantle, the Christian nationalists that want to dismantle. Trump doesn't give a shit about policy. He doesn't really genuinely care about the Department of Education that much. He cares about Trump.
7:41So I think the people surrounding him, Putin manipulates him, Benjamin Netanyahu manipulates him. It goes to say that all of these people, these far, far right fringe right wingers and the people in big tech that want to dismantle these institutions, that want to dismantle democracy, they are using these for him to distract him from the stuff they're doing. You're so right. You're 100 % right. I do think that anything that has Trump's name on it 10 or 15 years from now is going to be treated like the Confederate flag. They're going to want to take every one of those things down. Yeah, but sadly, in Trump America, they love the Confederate flag.
8:22They try to put it back up. Exactly. Okay. So, Josh, Marco Rubio says the U.S. invited Vladimir Putin to the G20. Play the clip. People you might have some issues with. So we've invited President Putin to the G20. We think it's an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president, but with other world leaders. We hope that's an invitation he'll accept. There's an opportunity in December if that happens. If there's another opportunity for them to meet and there's a purpose behind the meeting, that would be good. You know, Marco Rubio used to, I mean, if you go back two years and what he said about Putin and what he said about Russia, and I always go back to and I know people are like, oh, it's not that, Jennifer.
9:03But I just genuinely think Putin, a former KGB agent, I think they have the goods on Trump. I just do. I think they have something on him. I think they've had it on him for a long time. I think the Steele dossier was probably spot on. He's got hookers peeing on him and all sorts of crazy stuff. I kind of do because this is insane. It's utterly insane. And you can tell that Marco Rubio in that clip, it's like he's got his knee pads ready to get out and get down on Putin. I mean, the way that this administration caters to Putin is simply amazing. I mean, I know we saw it in 2016 when he basically Trump is just sitting up there on and on talking about how great Putin is.
9:47But can you imagine if a Democrat was president doing half of this shit with with the foreign leader like Vladimir Putin? Could you imagine the things that would be said day in and day out? And it's just like you said, there's no reasonable explanation but to think that they've got some kind of leverage over him. And here's the fascinating component of this. Russia is in a really weak position. They have no leverage on the international stage. Their economy's in tatters. They're at war with Ukraine. They thought that they would just bulldoze over Ukraine and it would be really quick. That has not happened.
10:24What Putin does have over Trump and Tweedledee and Tweedledipchin, for those of you that are new, those are our pet names for Kushner and Whitcoff, is if you go help me with this, I'm going to have all these billions of dollars of deals with my oligarch friends. And so Putin has personal leverage over them financially that motivates them to want to make Marco Rubio debase himself even more than he already has. But it's fascinating, a psychological case study, the Republican Party, tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And what national security mantra that is within the Republican Party, and they are being dominated by a very weak, weak, weak Russia, depleted military, shitty currency, international pariah, yet they still can put a leash around the United States of America and dog walk it.
11:19It's fascinating. And it's like that recording that we talked about earlier with Kevin McCarthy and Speaker Ryan that they had back in Trump's first administration, you know, where they were whispering about, God, what is the deal with Trump and Russia? Whatever, you know, they want. He seems to do it. You know, they basically admit that off camera. They thought he was on Putin's payroll. Exactly. And then comes the next story. Melania talks about her, quote, direct channel with Russia. Play the clip. Like that. Well, we have a direct channel with Russia and with Ukraine. My representative is working on that, and we are working on another reunification.
12:01This is ongoing, and we want to reunite as many children as possible.
12:11I cannot even believe we're having this conversation. Okay, number one, the last time the U.S. rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, didn't she give a handwritten note to Putin about the children of Ukraine? To my knowledge, all of this back-channeling communication has produced exactly zero results in terms of the children of Ukrainian parents that have been taken from their country and held by Russia. none of that has helped and the fact that she who she called herself a visionary a visionary this is just for her to sit on there i think she believes it i think she thinks i'm going to save the ukrainian children and russian control i think she believes that even though it is absolutely preposterous on every level because i think she's every bit a narcissistic fact as her husband I'm just more upset that we haven't heard Jennifer's Melania impersonation.
13:16Do we get to hear that before this is up? I have to focus on the children and my direct channel with my husband. He is doing the best he can working on architecture, mathematics, and other things in the White House. Jesus Christ, Can you believe these Melania's? Okay. And then they ask Melania how Trump is doing in his second term. And then when it ends, pause and I'll do a dramatic reenactment. Play the clip. How is the president doing in Trump two as compared to Trump one? How do you see him handling the job differently? He's very focused. He has a lot on his plate. It's very different what's going on around the world now.
14:04but I think he's doing the best that he can. He works nonstop. He has the most energy than anybody. He's from morning till evening nonstop working. That's what we see. Absolutely. That's what we see. That's what we see, except for those naps. Okay, let's hear this. Let's hear it. Except for the 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. when he issues 57 true social posts that are completely batshit. keeping in the office. That shit fucking crazy. Yeah. My husband works round clock with Bunny Boiler, produce AI slop in middle night of feces being dumped on Americans and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, who I hate, doing racist things with Bunny Boiler.
14:54I mean, it's just, here's the thing on top of all of that and to anybody who has an accent, I love accents. That's not the point. We're not trying to make fun of people. All of us on this channel only speak one language. So if you speak two languages, I already admire the shit out of you. The situation with Melania is we were told, oh, she's here on an Einstein visa. Okay. And she speaks seven languages. If she spoke seven languages, she's been the first lady twice. There's not a bigger stage. There's not more cameras in the world than that position, aside from the president in the United States.
15:30If she's able to speak Italian and then just switch and go to French, and then she's able to just switch and go to German, that shit would be on video. The Einstein visa is a scam. The Democrats, this is how petty I am about this thing. After they investigate all the big stuff, I want a full investigation into this Einstein visa. I want a relentless Benghazi style hearings about the Einstein visa. And furthermore, I want an investigation into her link with Jeffrey Epstein because it's all linked to the to the Einstein visa. And I want Democrats to go there and stay there and give it to them and let every fascist two bit lying Einstein impersonating twat know we're not going to tolerate this shit anymore.
16:18If you want to you want to do crazy shit, they could have stayed at Mar-a-Lago. He basically pretended like he was president for four years when Joe Biden was in office, they could still do all that shit. There's enough cultists that are all down with all of that. Do you remember when they would be like, the good liars would go interview people like, Joe Biden's really not president right now. It's so crazy. To your point, Jennifer, Melania Trump has profited to the tens of millions of dollars on the stuff that we are aware of. So I say, let's get in her financial accounts too. She's put herself up for that.
16:55Teeth up. And here's the thing, Barron's of age right now, and apparently he's worth 150 mil. Yeah. Best friend with Andrew Tate. We got to go full tilt on this thing. And I can see it now. Fox News, I've had it once to go after Barron Trump. I mean - You're right. Yeah, we do. You're right. Next up, this is great news. Hopium across the board for everybody. The Cook Political Report, which is a very conservative political report that places lean Democrat, lean Republican, and they are very, very conservative when they move people to the right or to the left. They have moved more Senate races over to Democrats, and this is something worthy of a watch.
17:37Pop this up. New this morning from Cook Political with under six weeks to go. Six weeks. Our revised Senate outlook. Dems poised to pick up one to five seats. We are moving three ratings. Georgia goes from lean, den, dem to likely dem. Kansas goes from likely R to lean R. Kansas, you guys. Kansas. this. South Carolina Senate, and I believe that this is Lady Graham's sister, Darlene. She's gone from solid R to likely R. So something is definitely, definitely happening. But let's not think that we're winning this because we all have massive PTSD because we have a dipshit of a president. So clearly there's something wrong with the electorate that I just simply do not trust.
18:26But this is really good news for everybody to feel very, very motivated because a big, big, big, big blue tsunami shifts a lot of the power of the public and Trump's ability to be so brazen. And it also helps provide cover for Republicans at that point, because they're too big of pussies otherwise, to start being more overly critical of him. And I think we're seeing in a lot of these red states, you know, people are just pissed off. And we talked about this earlier but with the economy and the rising cost of everything that you pay for gas people are mad and it's starting to reflect that and it's becoming less of a partisan issue and just more about people just being pissed off i mean a lot of people are just not happy with trump and of course you're going to have that base you're going to have that you know what do we say 29 30 percent but but we're trying to peel off another sect we're trying to peel off another four five six is all.
19:30And they have those right now. The second concern is going to be if we do get this blue tsunami, are people going to be able to vote legally in this country? And it's really kind of a shame that you even have to ask that question. Do we live in a democracy where people can go vote? Are you going to have FBI agents or ICE agents at the polls intimidating people, threatening to arrest people? They're already calling state officials and threatening them that if there's any voter fraud in your state, you're subject to being charged with a crime. So, I mean, it's this intimidation tactic that scares me because I think the blue tsunami's coming.
20:04Are we going to have a free and fair election? That's the question. And Pumps, you alluded to this earlier, but it's so bad that even Florida is in play for Democrats. Pumps this up. Lean's Republican moves to toss up. In our gubernatorial forecast update Florida's gubernatorial race has shifted into the toss up column column Byron Donald's now has a 60 % win probability down from 68 % at the start of September. And as pumps reported, Mr. Donald's has been scrubbing Trump from his website. And this I think is just incredibly disrespectful. I think this is just incredibly disrespectful. We need to get this out there.
20:49to make sure this gets right across the bunny boiler's desk, right across her screen. Byron Donalds, how dare you disrespect the president that you debased yourself for, the president who appointed the Supreme Court justices who are dismantling the Voting Rights Act so that black people in Florida, like you, are going to have a problem voting. this the disrespect in this man to just passive aggressively remove him from the website you don't like trump say it big boy don't be a pussy don't do this passive aggressive shit and silently scrub it off don't you think pumps no i completely agree and he's not the only one there are a lot of political candidates that were all in on trump that are now distancing themselves and whenever i look at these forecasts i also saw that north carolina they're the republican party is kind of abandoning North Carolina and Georgia and saying, okay, we've lost those.
21:46And so when I, let me just tell you what I do because I live in fantasy land. The minute I see these polls and these forecasts, I immediately start ticking up. What's two thirds of these bodies? What's it going to take to get him impeached? That's my first thing is I get out my pen and pencil. Okay, so that's going to take how much to impeach this motherfucker, then Hexeth, then Rubio. I mean, just straight down the list. Clarence Thomas, we cannot forget. All their asses need to be hauled in front of oversight. I like where your head's at, Pumps. That's the exact type of leadership the Democratic Party needs.
22:20Like, subscribe. We'll be back later with more news.
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Melania just keeps putting her foot in her mouth.
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