Well, what a couple of weeks. What a couple of weeks for our
national politics, as we almost saw live on TV an assassination of a former
president and the assassination of the leading candidate for president that that was avoided by
about an inch two inches. Now, my problem here as the thirteenth straight
hour of talk radio on this fine station. You know, three hours of
Glenn Back, three hours of Clay and Bug, three hours of Trevor and
then me. You know, I'm not sure that I've got anything all that
unique to say, but let me let me see what I can find.
Let me see what I can scrounge around the edges here to see if I
can have something interesting. Now, first all, we'll get to this later
in the show, but one of the things that's been in the aftermath of
Trump's shooting, and in fairness, we've had about it's only been about forty
eight hours since that happened. One of the things that's been discussed is the
need to lower the temperature in our politics. Even President Biden sort of seemed
to kind of acknowledge that, and a lot of conservatives point out, well,
if you're going to call Donald Trump an existential threat to American democracy,
then if you're going to repeatedly call him a fascist, if you're going to
repeatedly compare him to Hitler, then of course someone's going to react this way.
I mean, if you elevate the stakes of politics to such an extent,
then yeah, someone's going to do that. And if as the Democrat,
you think this person has to be gotten rid of at all costs,
even to the point of initiating procedures to try to throw him in jail in
order to prevent him from running, which is clearly what the Democrats have done.
Joe Biden himself has done this via his Attorney General appointing a special counsel,
Jack Smith, to initiate prosecutions of Donald Trump, either on grounds that
really stretch credulity, as with all the January sixth prosecutions, or for things
that Joe Biden himself did, like unlawfully retaining documents at his home in Florida.
And we'll talk about by the way, Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida dismissing
Trump's case the document's case due to her belief that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed
as special counsel, which I'll get to later in the show, because I
thought that that was really interesting argument that was made was an argument chiefly that
was put forward in amicus briefs to the US Supreme Court by Ed mess the
former Attorney General, whose opinion really only Clarence Thomas kind of took seriously in
a concurrence with the with the recent immunity case. And maybe i'll talk So
I'm going to talk about the Jack Smith, Jack Smith's qualification Eileen Cannon dismissing
the case and the immunity case. So I'll talk about that in sort of
the latter half of the show. But one of the things that people point
out is, hey, you know, it would be a great way to
lower the political temperature of the country is maybe dismiss these charges against President Trump.
These are all they're all real stretches. And because here's the thing.
The argument for Democrats is Donald Trump attempted to overturn the results of the twenty
twenty election. He interfered with the peaceful transfer of power. In that sense,
he is a threat to democracy, capital D democracy. Now, the
problem is, I think sometimes democrats use the word democracy sort of in ambiguous
ways. Sometimes when they're talking about threat to democracy. What they mean is
a threat to liberalism, like the classical liberal order. But basically that's always
been sort of the trump card that they can play is that Trump is a
threat to democracy because he did not proceed with the orderly transfer of power.
He believed, without sufficient evidence, that the twenty twenty election was fraudulent,
that its results were the result of voter fraud. He did not have sufficient
evidence to established that. He tried all the legal means, legal challenges in
different states, etc. All of which went nowhere. And then when he
couldn't do that, he tried to pressure Vice President Pence against certifying the election
results, and his conduct led to the crowd getting unruly on January sixth.
Now, the problem with that narrative, well, and the narrative is donald
Trump incited the January sixth riot, which was designed to violently block the peaceful
transition of power. And the problem with that narrative is that it just isn't
really quite backed up by the facts. Notice that Donald Trump has not been
charged with anything relating to the violence on January sixth, because quite simply,
he didn't order the violence, he didn't encourage the violence. He just maybe
you can argue he encouraged it, but he explicitly told the crowd go and
peacefully make your voice known. The idea that Donald Trump getting elected is going
to lead to the end of American democracy, I think is preposterous. It
just does not. I just don't think it makes sense, even the whole
thing with you know, Mike Pence trying to influence Mike Pence not to certify
the election results. First of all, it didn't work. Secondly, even
if it did work, the role of the vice president seemingly is a ceremonial
role anyway, And so whether or not Mike Pence agreed to do what Donald
Trump wanted, I don't think it would have actually altered the results of the
election. And by the way, what Trump was doing was I think it
was incorrect, but he was following it legal advice from a highly respected law
professor advancing a certainly minority legal theory that the vice president had this ability to
do this. So I guess I just don't agree. I think we have
this slide from is this so implausible illegal theory as to slip into criminal conduct,
And that's certainly what the left has embraced that this was such a spurious
legal theory that it's just criminal conduct. And I don't know, I think
it can be an incorrect legal theory without being criminal conduct. Anyway, I
just don't believe that Trump winning presents this existential threat to democracy. And why
do I not believe that, because we lived through four years of Donald Trump.
He didn't even prosecute Hillary Clinton. In those four years, he didn't
prosecute anybody. He didn't instigate like violent reprisals against his political foes. He
didn't do horrific, evil punitive measures against immigrants or violate people's fundamental liberties.
He just didn't. The kids in cages stuff at the border was initiated under
Barack Obama. Where the I mean? I think every president has had serious
problems with the manner of enforcement of immigration law. It's a fundamentally broken system
because American law says you have to detain people who come seeking asylum, and
we don't have enough cells to detain everybody. There are a lot of these
fundamental things, but the idea that Donald Trump's presidency represents something uniquely bad relative
to the utter chaos and insanity that we've had at the border for most of
Biden's presidency. I just don't think is right. So and this kind of
brings to mind for me sort of these Roman parallels, where so the Roman
Republic was this very complicated governmental mechanism. Sort of the mechanisms of the Roman
Republic were very odd and developed over the course of history, and it was
kind of this very complex, complex, complicated legal constitution that the Roman Republic
had. But basically one of the most significant things that happened was around one
hundred and twenty five BC. There were there was a pair of brothers,
the Groki brothers, who were Plebeian politicians. The older Groky brother was elected
to be one of the tribunes of the plebs, so a representative sort of
of the plebs who had the ability to veto certain kind of legislation and introduced
certain kinds of legislation, but through a different means, not directly, not
through the Senate. The Senate was the more established, often more wealthy class,
and traditionally any legislation passed in Rome would go through the Senate first.
The Graki brothers introduced this sort of innovation by when the Senate rejected their desire
for certain kinds of land reform bills bypassing the Senate and going directly to one
of the popular assemblies who could it's an assembly of a group of the population
that was able to vote directly on legislation. They bypassed the Senate. The
reaction from the senators was to kill the one Gracchus brother and then to one
of the two Groky brothers, and then to kill the second one about a
decade or so later, several years later, and that act killing someone because
they introduced innovation in politics and shook up politics and did something that was radical
that like the Roman word for revolution was literally resnove, which means new things.
Romans were very conservative. They they were very suspicious of anything that was
innovative, that was sort of deviating from the most majoram the way of the
ancestors. But the introduction of violence as a possible solution for political problems that
started in one twenty five BC, and it would continue to be an essential
element of Roman politics, an essential and terrifying element of the Roman Republic for
the next century until finally Octavian beats marc Antony and becomes the first princeps or
Emperor of Rome Augustus. Once violence gets introduced into politics, it's very hard
to eliminate it, and you start this slide. And I've been thinking over
the last you know, or three years or so, four years or so,
starting with the George Floyd riots, going from the George Floyd riots to
the obvious threatened riots that were going to happen around the country if Donald Trump
won the twenty twenty election that were clearly being planned two perhaps January sixth.
I just see that violent, that the hatred the two sides have for each
other, which media has sort of fanned the flames of this. I think,
you know, calling one side calling the other side traders, using that
kind of rhetoric is bad and it spurs the worst impulses of both sides.
Now, Frankly, I think the left is trying to paint this as well.
It's really only a problem on the right because of January sixth, and
January sixth is the one expression of heated political rhetoric, and nobody on the
left ever did anything like this, overlooking the whole George Floyd riots, which
obviously went way beyond the George Floyd stuff into you know, Portland you know,
lefties in Portland trying to firebomb federal courthouses. Lefties. Anytime a leftist
group trespasses into a state capitol to protest something, it's never a big deal.
January sixth is the only big deal. So I think the media has
this myopic focus on January sixth, ignoring all of the bad stuff that liberals
have done. So I think that maybe the assassination attempt on President Trump,
maybe this is an opportunity, and Trump is sort of really saying this.
He's saying that he wants this to be a moment of national unity. Maybe
this can be a moment where both sides can kind of take a breath and
really forcefully disagree with each other, really forcefully disagree with each other's policies,
but maybe try to change the tone a bit, try to change things for
the better. And maybe this can be a moment to shift away from that
historical norm of violence just growing and increasing until the system collapses. All right,
When we return, a couple of little random thoughts about the shooting event
itself, especially a couple of little random thoughts of about the Secret Service,
before we talk about the dismissal of the mar a Laco case. That's next
on the John Girardi Show. All Right, my random thoughts, random thoughts
my wife and I sort of expressed to each other following President Trump's assassination attempt.
So let me sort of go through these in no particular order. First,
there's those female US, the female Secret Service agents who are there with
President Trump. Now, I believe that men and women are different. Okay,
there are physical differences between men and women. This is seen in the
military, where physical fitness standards and things like that are different from men and
women. I am not saying that every man is stronger and more capable than
every woman. I am sure there are some unbelievable kick ass women out there
who are able to rip, you know, rip me in half from my
torso, who are strong and fast and capable. Okay, I acknowledge that
it can happen. But men and women are different. And some of those
women who are assigned to President Trump's Secret Service detail were clearly not that.
I mean, some of them frankly looked like a lot of people have joked
that some of the women on Trump's Secret Service detail looked like Melissa McCarthy,
the sort of chubby comedic actress from like the Ghostbuster movie whatever. It was
not a great look, and my wife and I were sitting there asking ourselves,
why are there any women in a detail assigned to Donald Trump? Right
now? I was gonna go to the point of why are there women in
the Secret Service at all? My wife did point out though, that,
well, no it. You know, you have Secret Service detail assigned to
like the first lady. You have Secret Service detail assigned to like the president's
kids. If the president has kids, you know, there are probably some
legitimate reasons why you might need some women as Secret Service agents. And I
was like, okay, that's fine. But I also sort of noticed,
like Donald Trump's a big guy. Donald Trump's like six foot three. Why
do we have someone who looks like she's five foot four assigned to be standing
in front of this person and willing to take a bullet for him when she's
a foot shorter than he is. Doesn't seem to make sense. I now,
all this video has been circulating about the woman who's the head of the
US Secret Service, whose prior job had been head of security for PEPSI doesn't
seem like it seems like maybe this is a slightly different kind of job.
The security needed for the president of the United States seems a little bit more
secure than you need for soda. And one of the things that she kept
talking about in all these videos of hers, oh, the need for heightening
diversity within the US Secret Service. For the love of God, there are
some jobs for which there is absolutely no need to focus on Well, maybe,
frankly, for any job, if you want it done competently, you
shouldn't be focusing on diversity. Diversity should be a happy byproduct of a meritocratic
approach to whatever the job is. But if the job is literally protecting the
president from life and death, then boy, do I really not care about
diversity. Every single person in the security detail assigned to the president one of
the two major presidential candidates, in this case, a former president who is
a major presidential candidate. Every person assigned to it should just be, you
know, a former United States marine who's a six foot two inch tall killer,
Like, that's who I want guarding the president. I don't care about
diversity. I don't care if that six foot two inch killer is black or
white, or Asian or Pacific. I don't care. I don't care where
they're from as long as a they're a dedicated American citizen who loves this country
and is willing to take a bullet for the president and is a six foot
tall six foot plus tall killer. Okay, I should not be a Secret
Service agent. I'm a shrimpy little five foot nine torp okay with a little
pudge in his stomach. Okay, I should not be a Secret Service agent.
Everyone on the Secret Service should be six foot two and an absolute killer.
Now, the other thing I noticed, Twitter is big on this where
something will happen, people will have a reaction, and then someone will come
on with a long thread saying, Hi, I'm an expert on such and
such. Here's something to explain what's going on. And then often it's interesting.
The thing I've noticed is that all of those kinds of threads about oh,
as a former US Secret Service official, here's what I think. First
of all, don't call us the SS. That's offensive, all right,
Sorry to offend the guys who just let a former president and current presidential frontrunner
almost gets shot in the head, actually gets shot in the head. Sorry
to offend you with an acronym. Yes, I know it sounds like the
SS like you know that yes, bad bad World War two parallel, but
you know, chill out, guys. And all of those threads I've read,
they all suspiciously seem to point to, Oh, it's not the Secret
Service's fault, and it leads me to think it's kind of a resips a
lockwitter situation. So resips a lockwitter is the legal term if you're accusing someone
of negligence of negligent conduct that harmed you, and you're trying to sue them.
Sometimes there's a thing that happens that the only way it could possibly happen
is through negligence. There is no if something is completely within the control of
the defendant, the thing caused harms you, and there's no way that such
a thing could possibly happen without negligence. So like you're walking down the sidewalk
and a piano falls on you, Well, there's no way a piano could
fall on someone unless somebody screwed up, unless someone definitionally did not exercise the
level of caution that's needed for handling a piano, the level of caution that
a normally prudent person would exercise in transferring a piano Okay, a president of
the United States getting shitt a former president and current presidential candidate being getting shot
is almost definitionally something that indicates that the US Secret Service screwed up, given
that that's their only job is to make sure that the president doesn't get shot.
So, I don't know, I just feel like there's this this gets
you know, especially with the Secret Service, they're just trying to seed thing.
It's almost it almost feels to me the way like intelligence agencies would possibly
work. Oh, we're just gonna spread throughout the internet these narratives that actually,
no, no, no, US Secret Service didn't screw up. Well,
who did the snipers saw the guy before he fired at Trump? He
had him in his sights. Oh, the Secret Service isn't supposed to shoot
until someone else shoots. Really, if I have a gun that's pointed at
the President of the United States, you're really you don't think the Secret Service
is supposed to shoot me? First? Pretty sure you're not supposed to be
shooting. Second when you see someone with a gun pointed at the president.
So again, I'm not getting into like conspiracy theories that the Secret Service was
into in it, in on it or anything like that. But boy,
it doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence. And it's one of these things
where it feels like it's another thing. This happens all the time in the
Biden administration, where you know, we have the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, thirteen
soldiers die, we abandoned tons of weaponry and machinery that costs billions of dollars.
Nobody gets fired. Mark Milly doesn't get fired. Everyone keeps their jobs.
It's what it feels like is going to happen here with this Trump thing.
A former president, current presidential front runner gets shot in the ear,
and no one's gonna get fired. When we return, we're going to talk
about Eileen Cannon dismissing the mar A Lago case against President Trump and why I
think it's legally interesting. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Very interesting
today as Judge Eileen Cannon, the federal judge in Florida who is overseeing Trump's
mar A Lago case. Judge Cannon has gotten a lot of flack from liberals.
She's a beloved punching bag of the left. Has dismissed the charges against
Trump in for the mar A Lago Documents case on the grounds that Jack Smith,
the special prosecutor, was unlawfully appointed. Now, let's talk about this
whole issue. This has been a brewing legal argument, a legal argument that
was sort of discussed during the Trump immunity decision from the Supreme Court, and
one of the big proponents of the idea that actually Jack Smith was illegally appointed
now and then, and I kind of need probably a little bit of background
to explain everyone who Jack Smith is and what he's doing. All Right,
So President Biden comes into office his attorney general, with or without direction from
Donald Trump, from Joe Biden, although clearly simpatico with Joe Biden that Donald
Trump is a horrific threat to democracy and needs to be stopped. Biden very
explicitly said things like we need to stop him from running again. He cannot
be allowed to run again. Biden said several things like this, and Merrick
Garland clearly is completely in agreement with Joe Biden on this. Merrick Garland wants
to prosecute Donald Trump. Joe Biden wants to prosecute Donald Trump, but it
would look to Banana republic ish to just do it, to just have the
Department of Justice directly under the control of Merrick Garland, prosecute Donald Trump through
the normal mechanisms, having, you know, the having the Department of Justice
directing the prosecution via the US attorneys that Joe Biden is appointing, having just
the US attorney for the District of DC prosecute him, et cetera. They
were thinking about when Biden took office, thinking of prosecuting Trump for all the
stuff relating to January sixth, if there was a case there, But Biden
was afraid that this would look too nakedly political. If one president is prosecuting
his immediate predecessor and likely next upcoming opponent, So what do they do.
They try to create some degree of separation by having the Attorney General appoint a
special council. Now, the special council is kind of a successor to what
used to be called the independent Council. And some of you might have remembered
this. There was an independent council mechanism back in the Clinton both looking at
Nixon and looking at Clinton, and the law authorizing an independent council was changed
due to a lot of constitutional concerns and some agreement from both Republicans and Democrats
that this kind of sucks to being a special council. So Jack Smith was
appointed a special counsel. And what is a special council? What's the idea
When the Department of Justice feels that it has an internal conflict of interest such
that it cannot prosecute a case without there being an obvious conflict, Okay,
in that situation, the Department of Justice could appoint someone from outside of the
mainstream of the DOJ to come in and be a quote special council. So
the special council would have the kinds of authority that say a US attorney would
have US attorneys who are the chief federal prosecutors for different regions of the country.
So the whole country is divided into these different federal regions. Some states
just tore the whole state is just one federal region. So for example,
I think Alaska is just one federal region. There's one US attorney for the
state of Alaska, Okay. Whereas California has multiple federal judicial districts. We
in Fresno live in the Eastern District of California, and there is one US
attorney for the Eastern District of California, And what can US attorneys do.
They have some ability to direct, just like a DA does. They have
some ability to investigate and then prosecute crimes, investigate and oscute federal crimes.
But US attorneys are part of the mainstream of the Department of Justice. So
if the Department of Justice as a whole has some kind of conflict of interest,
they can bring someone else in from the outside to come in. They
make them a special council, and this person has the ability on his or
her own to investigate alleged criminal conduct and prosecute alleged criminal conduct. They have
prosecutorial power kind of the same way that a US attorney does. Jack Smith
was appointed to be that special council. The Biden administration's theory is that,
listen, it would look to politicize. There's kind of a conflict of interest
for the Department of Justice to prosecute President Trump, given that you look at
the org chart of the Department of Justice, and who is at the top
of that org chart. Ultimately it's the President of the United States. Okay,
the President of the United States is the head of every single executive department
of the federal government. So if Joe Biden's the head of the DOJ.
It would be a bit of a conflict of interest for him, or the
appearance of a conflict for him to prosecute Donald Trump. So they appoint Jack
Smith, and this gives Biden a kind of political cover. Oh, it's
not me prosecuting Donald Trump, it's the Special Counsel working totally on his own.
Now, Joe Biden could shut down the Special Council Investigation with the snap
of his fingers. He doesn't direct its day to day proceedings, but he
is in charge of it. He oversees it, His Attorney General oversees it,
and he oversees the Attorney general. President Biden could shut down the whole
investigation tomorrow. If he could shut it down today, if he wanted,
he might be in bed by this time. Yeah, well it's past nine
pm on the East Coast, so he's clearly asleep. Anyway, Tomorrow he
could shut down the Special Council Investigation. So that is the mechanism that was
put together by Merrick Garland for prosecuting all of Trump's alleged federal crimes. So
everything having to do with January sixth plus added on to it were all the
allegations of Trump violating federal law by his retention of classified documents in his home
in mar A Lago, Florida. So you have The special prosecutor nominated was
Jack Smith. Now, Smith was obviously picked because he is a very very
aggressive Liberal who has clearly done everything along a very politicized timetable. Smith has
been urgently trying to get a case to trial before the election. That's clearly
been what he's doing. His timeline clearly aligns perfectly with Joe Biden's political interests.
Now, some conservatives, chief of whom has been the former Attorney General
Ed Mess So Attorney General Meis he served as Attorney general under President Reagan.
Attorney General Meie has argued and argued this during the Supreme Court proceedings regarding the
president's immunity from prosecution. Attorney General mess argued that we shouldn't even decide this
because Jack Smith is not lawfully appointed. He's not the right kind of person
who can serve as a special prosecutor. Why. Well, basically, he's
exercising the authority of an officer of the United States, which is what all
the US attorneys are. They exercise the the work of being officers of the
United States. But to be an officer of the United States, you need
to be appointed by the president, and your appointment needs to be confirmed by
the United States Senate by a vote of the Senate. It's you know,
how like when the president nominates his secretary of state, for example, he
nominates and then the Senate votes on the confirmation. And often when a president's
trying to appoint his cabinet, members of the other party will be you know,
they'll kind of give more leeway. The idea in Washington, it's always
kind of been well, you know, look, the president should be able
to have the cabinet he wants. You know, it's his administration. And
yes, I disagree with this person obviously, but you know it's the president's
cabinet. They're exercising his decisions. He won the election. I mean,
if we don't confirm this person, then the president will have like interim appointments
who will just be doing the same thing anyway. So generally, unless someone
is like manifestly unqualified for the job or has some real like personal baggage or
something that comes out during the confirmation proceedings, the Senate will kind of reverstamp
the people that a president picks, although Democrats really slow roll things with a
lot of Trump's appointments now they Basically what Edmes is pointing out is that Jack
Smith was not already serving as a federal prosecutor of some sort. He's not.
Basically, he's never received any Senate confirmation. So if he's never been
confirmed by a vote of the Senate to be an officer of the United States,
he can't exercise special prosecutor powers. This is a constitutional basically, Basically,
this is an inadequacy. For this inadequacy, the lack of having been
confirmed by the Senate renders all of Jack Smith's actions. Should render all of
his actions null and void. He's not fit to be a prosecutor in this
case if he hasn't received Senate confirmation. Now, this argument was put in
front of the US Supreme Court in the immunity case about again Jack Smith bringing
charges against President Trump for stuff relating to September eleventh, excuse me relating to
January sixth. The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump has a certain degree of
executive immunity from prosecution, but one of the arguments that was raised was does
Jack Smith have any authority at all to serve as a special prosecutor. Clarence
Thomas issued a concurrence agreeing with that position, but none of the other justices
really took up that question. Cannon in Florida has bought that argument completely and
so she's dismissed the case in Florida. Now Jack Smith's going to appeal.
But I think this is a pretty significant moment. If this gets to the
Supreme Court, it could result in maybe all of Trump's federal prosecutions going Wait,
now, this doesn't get rid of the state prosecution that's taking place in
Georgia that Fanny willis so royally screwed up. This doesn't get rid of the
state prosecution in Manhattan, where we're still waiting on the sentencing. But it's
a pretty significant development and for a pretty I think, interesting legal question.
When we return, just a quick thought on the RNC and my hopes about
some shift on the Republican platform. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
The Republican Convention is starting, and one of the things that I'm sort of
interested in is the desire from a lot of Republicans to alter the Republican platform.
Now, I've talked about it a lot on this show, how dissatisfied
I am with the twenty twenty four Republican Platform. One of the things I
also noticed about it is that has no mention of Second Amendment. So it's
not just the pro lifers who are upset here. This is a very different
kind of document, and maybe that's the thing I this is one the aspect
of it that's maybe mitigating a little bit my concern with the lack of pro
life language and any language about the abortion issue that's in there was pretty darn
inadequate. My hope is that there are enough Republicans at the convention who care
about the life issue who will be able to, if not demand, at
the convention some alteration to the wording about life at the very least to get
from President Trump some commitments which I don't think he's boxed himself out of,
to greater protection for abortion during against abortion during his administration. That's my hope.
Peace for America, that's the big hope. Thank you all for listening.
This is the John Girrardy Show on Power Talk.