really happy to have you here. So 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

He had been a U.S. senator, you might remember. Had he lost that presidential campaign, he would

have returned to just being a U.S. senator, but he did not lose. He won. And because he became

president, that meant there was a vacancy.

He had to vacate his Senate seat in order to move to the White House.

And that meant the governor of Illinois would have to appoint somebody new to take that U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama was vacating.

Now, in pure partisan terms at the time, Democrats were not all

that worried about that because the governor of Illinois was also a Democrat. Obviously, Barack Obama

had been a Democratic senator. Just in terms of the partisan math, nobody thought it would be that

big a deal. But it turns out that for the governor of Illinois, his party affiliation was not the most important

thing to know about him.

The most important thing to know about him was that he was a total crook, a crook who

decided to sell that Senate seat for anything he could get,

and then to talk about it on tape.

I told my nephew, Alex, he just turned 26 today.

I said, Alex, you know, I called for his birthday.

And I said, it's too bad, you're not four years older.

Because I could have given you a Senate seat for your birthday.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I mean, I've got this thing, and it's golden.

And I'm just not giving it up for nothing.

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