Welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Natahebi. I'm Katie Halper. And where are we in time right now?

We are now pre-debate depending on when you hear this. Right. It will actually be after. Yeah. By the time you see this it'll mean. If you're watching this it'll mean that I've been...

Right. Well if that we didn't die during the drinking game. Yeah. Or usually it's the opposite. But in this case it's that. Right. So we're gonna have the second part of our interview with Chris Hedges on in a little bit. And we thought we'd do just a little bonus episode beforehand. Well, Matt you have a big story. Yeah. Did the latest campaign trail feature. So the next in line was Joe Biden. Went out and saw Joe on the campaign trail and did kind of a write-up of...

where he's at. And it's just kind of an interesting story because Joe Biden's an interesting figure because he's had a lot of disasters in his political career but yet he keeps kind of being projected upward because of them. Right. And this impeachment thing is kind of breaking in an interesting way for him because it could either ruin him. Right. But it could also...

It's forcing the whole Democratic Party to throw themselves behind him too. Right. Because if not you're letting the Russians win. Yeah. Or Trump being right or something like that. Right. So he had a really bad dirt quarter in terms of fun raising. He was...

I didn't right. Yeah. He went way down from like 24 million to like 15. And he's behind even Buttigieg and Bernie was at the top actually. And Warren was just behind him.

But they're now considering putting a pack together to create a like a defense fund for Biden. What?

Yeah. So this was in the news as well as as I was putting this the bed there. There's a group of high-profile Democratic donors who are now weighing whether or not that's the smart thing to do.

So and the reason they would have to do it is because they they're trying to figure out how to best how best to counter some of the information that's coming out about his son.

And the stuff about his son is I don't know how do you feel about it. I think we said this a couple episodes ago but it's not it's not great. Right.

And I think it's kind of a sign of how much Trump it's like any you know there's anybody but Trump. This is like anything but Trump. Right.

So anything that happens that isn't Trump level right or Trump related I guess kind of gets a pass. Yeah they've got it. They've got Hunter on with interviews today and the day of the debates and they're basically asking him should you have.

Did you ever maybe have second thoughts that you know getting on the board of a of a you know Ukrainian gas company without actually having any expertise with a good idea.

And he kind of he says you know in hindsight you know maybe yes you know so but the other interesting thing and you know I asked the Biden campaign about this is that.

One of the talking points about all this is that Joe Biden when he asked the Ukrainians to fire.

Victor Schoek and me prosecutor that there were no active investigations of barisma at the time and in the last week there are a couple well there's an old story that was actually published in Russia and Ukraine in 2016 that that suggested that barisma's CEO CEO was actually had his property seized after that moment.

So that kind of runs counter to that and then there was a story that no big is yet to which is the like the Russian opposition newspaper they just did a big expose a last week that was ignored here in the state said it.

I know the reporter who wrote it this woman Julia Latina.

Latina X. Latina X. Just kidding. Yeah.

I will.

And she basically what she says is that there was an open there was an open case in Ukraine involving this guy Sergei Kurchenko who was like stealing money from Ukrainian businesses and funneling it to among other things Rose Monsanica.

Biden's sons company through barisma so that story just came out and they didn't they didn't exactly deny they didn't comment on the record about it but that stories out there and it's going to come out so this all this stuff about Hunter Biden it's I don't know it's hard to say I think it's going to be it could break both ways.

...