Last week when the Supreme Court declared that Donald Trump was not going to be
taken off the ballot in Colorado. And by the way, there's now some
lefty reporters even who are getting viciously ripped apart on Twitter because they've posted a
map like an electoral college map. So it's a map of all the states,
and it's just showing based on the polls, how everyone's it's showing based
on the polls who's winning each individual state, Trump or Biden, and it's
basing it on the current polling. And right now, based on the poll
donald Trump is going to win. Basically, they've divided each state into solidly
Republican or solidly Democrat, Lean's Republican or Lean's Democrat. And then there are
only three toss up states Arizona, Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania. Even if Biden
wins all three toss up states. Right now, just based on the polling,
if the polling is accurate, Donald Trump is gonna win. Trump is
looks like he's winning Michigan, he's winning Georgia, he's winning Eras, he's
winning Nevada, which would be a shocker. Well, I guess it wouldn't
be a shocker. He lost Nevada twenty sixteen, twenty twenty. He seems
to be doing better in Nevada this time. So yeah, that seems to
be the outlook right now. And Chris Salizza used to be at CNN is
sharing this map, and all these liberals are just so angry at him for
daring to share this. And all he's doing is sharing this is this is
just what the polls say. Now. Basically, two weeks ago there was
this. The Supreme Court wound up deciding that Donald Trump should not be taken
off the ballot in Colorado. The Supreme Court heard, the Supreme Court heard
an appeal from the Colorado State Supreme Court. The Colorado State Supreme Court upheld
the notion that Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot in Colorado on the
grounds that he is a quote insurrectionist, that he engaged in insurrection, and
that therefore Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies him from holding office. And
as I've said time and time again, I think that is a silly argument
that is riddled with so many holes, any one of which will sink the
boat. First of all, does that section of the fourteenth Amendment even apply
to the president. I don't know that it does. It says in section
three of the fourteenth Amendment that no one can run for the House or Representatives,
no one can run for the Senate, no one can serve as an
elector for President of the United States, meaning like one of the party flunkies
who you know. When Texas votes for Donald Trump, donald Trump gets a
certain number of Electoral College votes, they actually send that many people as electors
to actually cast their vote for Donald Trump as part of a group of people
called the Electoral College. Each state sends a group of people, if a
Republican wins the state, a bunch of Republican Party flunkies, if a Democrat
wins the state, a bunch of Democrat Party flunkies to actually cast their votes
on behalf of one person or the other. So you're disqualified from being a
member the House, a member of the Senate, an elector for president or
vice president. And then what sounds like kind of a catchall, serving as
a quote officer of the United States, which I think applies to military officers
as well as other kinds of positions. But it never says the president or
the vice president which you'd think if you're listing out members of the House,
members of the Senate, you're listing out electors for president, but you don't
list the president. That seems like a big omission. I don't know that
section three of the fourteenth Amendment applies to the president. I don't know that
what Donald Trump did qualifies even as quote insurrection, given that when the Fourteenth
Amendment was drafted and when they were saying persons who engaged in rebellion or quote
insurrection against the United States are disqualified from office. Well, guess what it
was right after the Civil War that the fourteenth Amendment was ratified. That's the
kind of thing they were looking at the Civil War. That was the insurrection
they kind of I had in mind Donald Trump, since he has cannot actually
be legally tied to the actual violence that happened on January six, He can't
be tied to, you know, breaking onto the grounds of the Capitol or
beating up cops, which are you know, basically the only crimes that were
committed at the Capitol were various kinds of sort of various species of trespass,
basically being on a bit of federal property that you're not allowed to be on.
So, like if I try to walk onto you know, there's the
Air National Guard base right by the airport. If I just try to walk
into the Air National Guard base without like showing my ID or not having any
reason to be there, I can get in trouble. I can get some
kind of criminal citation for being on a piece of property that I'm not allowed
to be on. That's what most of the January sixth protesters who got prosecuted
were prosecuted for some species of trespass or some kind of assault or battery.
For the few guys who you beat up or who hit police officers. There's
also the issue that Donald Trump has not been charged with insurrection. One of
the things that subsequent Supreme Court decisions after this part of the fourteenth A Memo
was ratified, Supreme Court decisions said, well, there has to be some
kind of statute. A subsequent Supreme Court decision said that Congress has to have
some kind of statute where you can charge this person with insurrection or find them
civilly liable or something for insurrection. And that's what Congress did. They created
an insurrection statute. There was a civil provision and a criminal provision. The
civil provision went away, so now there's only the criminal provision. Donald Trump
was not charged with insurrection. He's been charged with a whole bunch of other
stuff in connection to January sixth, but insurrection, critically, is not one
of the things he's been charged with. In fact, he hasn't been charged
with anything that's connected to the actual violence on January sixth. The only stuff
he's been charged with is with various kinds of theories of inappropriately trying to pressure
Mike Pence to not certify the election results, but none of the stuff,
which, by the way, would Donald Trump be charged with that stuff if
the violent things hadn't happened on January sixth. No, if there hadn't been
a riot and all that had happened was Donald Trump trying to go to Mike
Pence to convince him not to certify the election results, there's no way Trump
would have been charged with anything, which is I think one of the fundamental
sillinesses of the charges against Trump is that he's not actually being charged with anything
like inciting a riot or anything like that. So he hasn't been charged with
anything like insurrection. He's been charged with other stuff relating to what happened on
January sixth, but he hasn't been convicted of a dang thing. And then
lastly, there's this that can Colorado just on its own as one state,
say no, we are disqualifying this person who's running for the one truly national
elected office. We ourselves are just going to disqualify him. We the members
of the Colorado Supreme Court, are going to disqualify this person running for a
federal office in a way that could impact people way outside of Colorado. Okay,
this isn't the Colorado Supreme Court ruling on the eligibility for office of someone
running for the governorship of Colorado. It's not the Colorado Supreme Court ruling on
eligibility to serve in Colorado's state legislature. It isn't even Colorado's a Supreme Court
ruling on the fitness to serve of someone running for a federal office that is
whose representation is limited to Colorado, like being one of the two US Senators
representing Colorado or a member of the House representing a portion of Colorado. No,
it's the president. Can Colorado on its own impact the whole rest of
the country in their choice of president, and ultimately that was the grounds on
which the Supreme Court ruled, No, Colorado can't do that on its own.
Okay, Colorado is not allowed to do that on its own. All
nine justices agreed to that that Colorado cannot disqualified Donald Trump on its own.
Now, one of the things I thought was funny as a lawyer is the
confidence that lawyers have. And I don't know what this is. It must
be something about the job. I think you spend your whole life as a
lawyer defending a position. You get a certain position, you defend it,
and you work so hard in building up the case that you believe it.
And I realized this a little bit when I was practicing, was like,
I'm so convinced of this one side. Would I be equally convinced of the
other side if I was just representing the other side? I think I might
be lawyers, you know, to represent your client vigorously, you wind up
believing your own bs. Sometimes you really do. I mean, you really
do wind up believing the side that you're defending, and I think they're with
that. There can be this problem for lawyers of feeling like whatever you want
to defend is therefore the thing that is obviously right, and you just talk
yourself into believing how obviously right your position is. That is what has happened
for Michael Lutdig, J. Michael Lutgig, who has a big piece in
the Atlantic, which is a very prestigious publication. I know because people tell
me it's prestigious. Supreme betrayal A Requiem for Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment
written by J. Michael Lutgig and Lawrence Tribe. Lawrence Tribe, longtime very
liberal professor at Harvard Law School, kind of like you know, like Pete
Best was the famous Fifth Beadle, the guy who was like almost going to
be in the Beatles and never actually joined the band. Lawrence Tribe was that
for like Democrat, but actually both Michael Lutgig and Lawrence Tribe were like that.
For the Supreme Court. Luttig was mentioned as a possible conservative like Republican
appointee to the Supreme Court for years and years and years and years, just
like Lawrence Tribe was mentioned as a possible Democrat appointee to the Supreme Court for
years and years and years and years and years. Clinton and Obama never wound
up appointing Tribe George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush or
W. Bush never wound up appointing Michael Lutgig to the Supreme Court as a
Republican. And there are some people like Ted Cruz who I think I think
Cruz used to clerk for Luttig, and Cruz has argued even until recently that
Ludig would have been a better Chief Justice than John Roberts. I don't know.
Luddig, though, hates Donald Trump so much and that basically he's started
to embarrass himself by taking on these legal opinions that just are him again doing
this I think kind of lawyery thing where you believe you want a certain position
to be true, and you spent your life kind of defending positions, although
he's spent a lot more of his life being a judge, which is a
different kind of thing from just representing people. Nonetheless, Luddig so despises Trump
that he's sort of willing to kind of contort himself into these bizarre pretzels.
And Luttig was very, you know, eighty thousand times the lawyer I'll ever
be. He's you know, incredibly distinguished federal judge, all these great accomplishments,
you know, brilliant man, blah blah blah. You know, he's
a giant, and I'm a dwarf, and I'm the little dwarf with the
microphone on the local radio who gets to make fun of him. So here
we go. He so despises Trump that he's sort of beclowning himself to sort
of say, oh no, he beclowned himself to say, first, the
Supreme Court would obviously disqualify Trump from holding office, to now flipping to the
opposite saying, how dare the Supreme Court not disqualified Trump? And that's the
thing I guess I don't get, Like it's one thing to think the Supreme
Court should rule something like I think all nine justices of the Supreme Court should
rule that unborn children have you a right to life under the fourteenth Amendment and
that all abortions should be illegal on the basis of the Constitution. I think
that's true. I think that's correct. I recognize that there's maybe one out
of nine justices who actually agree with me on that point, maybe one.
I don't even know that there's one, but I guess Ludig can't. We'll
dig into this next time. How lawyers who do political analysis sometimes can't discern
between what they think should happen versus what will happen. That's next on the
John Jerardy Show. I'm reading this piece in the Atlantic which I retweeted.
You can find it at my Twitter account at Fresnojohnny twitter dot com slash Fresno
Johnny where he's talking about he and Judge Michael Lutgig and Lawrence Tribe Ledig,
longtime Federal Circuit Court judge, the peak best of conservative Supreme Court appointees.
Lawrence Tribe, longtime Harvard law professor, the peat best of liberal Supreme Court
appointees are complaining that the Supreme Court did not disqualify Trump from the Colorado ballot
or uphold Colorado's state supreme courts disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot. And it's
this thing where it's this thing I see a lot when people are reviewing the
Supreme Court. You go from this is what this is what I want the
court to do, but I recognize it might be the wrong legal outcome.
I would love it if this happened, but I recognize the law is not
really on my side. You go from that to I think this is what
the law requires. I think this is the correct interpretation of the law.
But I recognize that I'm really in the minority here and or that most of
the Supreme Court justices or most of American jurisprudence doesn't agree with me. From
there to deluding yourself into thinking, yes, what I think is both what
is right and is what the Supreme Court will do. That's where Luttig and
Tribe had been, and this sort of anti Trump because I think that and
this anti Trump lawyer mindset had gotten all the way to there. Anti Trump,
that is what I mean. I think that is what's motivating things here.
Michael Lutgog's a very smart man. He's a brilliant federal judge. You
know. I keep making fun of him on this show, even though he's
twenty times the lawyer I'll ever be. Lawrence. Tribe is a brilliant man,
brilliant lawyer, twenty times the lawyer I'll ever be. Okay, but
I think they are so animated by their despising Donald Trump that basically they cannot
get out of this mold of just wanting to take every position, that is,
every legal position that is most harmful to him, and they're sort of
beclowning themselves. And that's why again, I just want to make this point.
When you're hearing people on the news talk about this, like the Supreme
So has this whole essay about how all we've eviscerated the fourteenth Amendment. And
look, I think there were actually some decently interesting arguments. So the court
ruled nine to nothing, Colorado can't do this on its own. A majority
of the justice is five of them, basically all the Republican appointees except interestingly
for Barrett ruled that no, the only way you can disqualify someone is that
Congress has to write legislation about it, and that person has to be prosecuted
pursuant prosecuted or have some sort of proceeding pursuant to that legislation. Barrett said,
nah, I don't think. I don't think we need to decide that
question. We're only called upon to answer this question right here. Kagan disagreed
with that notion. Now, Kagan agrees that Colorado can't do this on its
own, but Kagan, I thought, asked some very interesting questions So why
doesn't the Fourteenth Amendment enforce itself? Why does there's a bunch of other provisions
of the Fourteenth Amendment that we think don't need a law passed by Congress in
order to be enforceable. The Equal Protection Clause and the due process Clause we
enforce without specific laws that Congress passes to enforce it. Why isn't the disqualification
provision for insurrection enforceable just immediately? I actually thought Kagan made a pretty decent
argument, and a kind of an originalist argument, saying, yeah, just
because the Supreme Court decided, you know, in the eighteen hundreds at some
point that yes, you need some kind of legislation to enforce this provision of
the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mean well, maybe the Court got it wrong then.
So I think Kig and I thought Kagan and Barrett made some decent points.
Now, the five justices in the majority who were Roberts, Thomas, Alito,
Gorsuch in Kavanaugh, I think one of the things they were trying to
forestall was, look, well, what if someone tries to bring a federal
lawsuit after let's say Donald Trump wins this election. What if someone brings a
lawsuit to stop the certification of the election results. Then on the grounds that,
well, this would be federally enforced, not just one individual state,
this would be federally enforced to stop Donald Trump from winning the election. So
I think they I think this was sort of the Court trying to forestall any
future sort of challenges that would be really disruptive to the electoral process, which
is fair. But I again, I just find it funny, like there's
a lot of stuff where I think the Court is totally off base. Okay,
I think Supreme Court decisions over generations are off base on certain kinds of
things. I think the way they treat the due process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment does not make sense. I think it was fundamentally a procedural protection to
protect fair processes and procedures. If the due process Clause and all the rights
that have been sort of created out of it, I think are kind of
silly. I think it's silly to think that those rights exist in what is
I think a procedural guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was I think it
was the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment. We're trying to say, you know,
Thirteenth Amendment abolish slavery. Fourteenth Amendment made newly freed slaves into citizens.
Fifteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote. Fourteenth Amendment was saying, hey,
equal protection clause because the due process Clause. So basically, you can't
have separate court you can't have separate courts for black people from white people.
You can't have separate judicial processes for white people. You can't take their life,
liberty, or property without due process of law. The focus was not
on life, liberty, property, it was on due process. That was
the point of it. That's why it's called the due process Clause. So
there's a lot of things where I think the Supreme Court is totally off base.
But I'm smart enough if I'm predicting things, or even if I'm recommending
what the Court should do, I'm smart enough to realize, like, hey,
I'm not going to convince all nine justices of John Girardi's pet legal theories.
And that's why I think so much of the commentary that is happening in
mainstream media is based off of like ultra, It's based on like the John
Girardis of the left, Like people with extremely left wing views that don't have
much purchase with the Supreme Court right now, even with the liberal justices trying
to act as though that's the norm or that that's obviously the norm, and
how dare the Supreme Court not agree? When we return, I want to
talk about the tragedy of former Packers current Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, how he
became a media pariah. Next on The John Girardi Show, I have been
loving It's a Friday. I'm going to talk about some wacky topics today.
So my first wacky topic was a federal judge writing a don article in The
Atlantic. Oh. The Jude Girardi Show so wacky. I want to talk
about Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers, the current currently quarterback for the Jets.
Whether he's gonna play very many snaps for the rest of his career. I'm
not sure. He got signed by the Jets last year and immediately in the
first game had a season ending injury, So I don't know how much he's
gonna play this year. He's supposedly he's back. Oh, Aaron Rodgers coming
back. I don't know. Not crazy about thirty eight year old or however
old he is. He's in his late thirties, quarterbacks coming off of really
serious season long injuries. Not exactly sure that that's got a great track record,
but anyway, we'll see. So I want to take you back in
time to say the Obama era. You know, let's say it's twenty fifteen.
Aaron Rodgers was the darling of sports media. And by the way,
sports media, the only thing more liberal than normal media is sports media.
If you are a conservative who exists in sports media, you will probably get
hunted down and fired. There are so few conservatives who still exist in sports
media. Like one of the few, I mean Sage Steele, who was
like an ESPN anchor, she got canned. I think there's some like football
commentators who kind of maybe they're you know, sort of more devoutly Christian.
They kind of keep things under wraps. Chris Broussard, who I think he
got canned from ESPN. I think now he works for Fox Sports. He
was pretty conservative. Anyway, sports media is so flippin' left wing it's like
unbelievable. And that there are a lot of sports media figures who want to
be normal left wing media figures or who think of themselves that there's been this
sort of trend of like sports media figures so full of their opinions about sports
that they think that they should have opinions about everything. And that was you
know, the Keith Olberman track, who went from you know, an ESPN
Sports Center anchor who became fam Oh it's Olberman and Dan Patrick. Oh,
they were so incredible. I don't know, there's a part of me that
things it was mostly just Dan Patrick was great. Patrick is the one who
went on to a very very successful careers post Sports Center, whereas Olberman has
bounced around and gotten fired pretty much everywhere he went. Now, sports journalists
in the twenty tens loved Aaron Rodgers for basically the whole Obama administration. They
loved loved, loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Aaron Rodgers.
And Aaron Rodgers was a very good quarterback. Aaron Rodgers was perennially in the
Pro Bowl. Aaron Rodgers won a couple of MVPs. He only won one
Super Bowl, which is, you know, if you're trying to say that
he's an all time great quarterback, like, you know, one is not
very many. When we're talking about this super duper ultra elite pantheon of you
know, the Tom Brady's, the Joe Montana's, the Terry brad Shaw's,
Johnny Unitas, you know that that kind of tier. You gotta maybe have
more than just one championship. But Rogers was thought of for most of the
Obama administration and into the Trump years. It was very often people would say
that the quarterback ranking was Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and then everyone else,
and often it was Rogers won a and Brady one b. Over a lot
of individual seasons, there were people who were saying, in spite of the
fact that Brady was often having more team success with the Patriots, that Rogers
was a little better. And these liberal media people loved Aaron Rodgers. Oh
my gosh, I remember, like there was this guy on ESPN Radio,
this Dan Patrick, Dan Levittard and Levatard is super liberal. He loved Aaron
Rodgers, Oh, just fond over him and would have him on the show
and thought he was so funny. And there was this sense Rogers was different
from all the other football players. There's always this sense that football players were
kind of more conservative leaning, that they were meatheads, jocks, They didn't
want to say anything too interesting. I think a lot of PR the PR
machine for NFL teams is always just be boring, don't say anything interesting,
say cliches. And that's why interviewing coaches is often terrible radio for sports radio.
Like you'd interview a coach and he just said, oh yeah, we
gotta take this one game at a time, and you know the good guys,
we got to the developmental toughness and blah blah. It's a bunch of
like, not interesting stuff. And most football players were like that. Rogers
was a little willing to be a little different, and he projected this sort
of image of being a little transgressive. You know, yeah, I know
all those sort of you know, meathead conservative football players think like that,
but you know, hey, I'm cool. He projected this image, whether
he explicitly said anything or not, that like he was cool. He was
with it. He was a little more liberal, he was a little more
progressive. He was willing to kind of hang out with these media, and
he was He played the media game very well. Media members liked him.
Media members were like, he's the coolest guy ever, and he wants to
talk to me. So everyone loved Aaron Rodgers everyone, and then COVID happened,
and oh my gosh, Aaron Rodgers didn't want to get vaccinated with the
COVID vaccine. That was it. The love affair between Aaron Rodgers and the
media ended that day, the day when Rogers said he Rogers actually made some
kind of public statement that he was Ah, what was the specific wording he
used. He didn't say vaccinated. He said he was like inoculated or that
he was immunized, which basically was him trying was him saying, I already
got COVID, so I've got immunity. Yeah, I think he said immunized.
Basically, he was trying to argue, I got COVID, I already
had COVID, so I have natural immunity, so I don't need to be
I don't see why I need to be vaccinated. Also, I don't want
to get a vaccine. He didn't want to get vaccinated. And because he
publicly said he was immunized but he hadn't been vaccinated, Oh my gosh,
the media was so freaking mad at him, just furious. And there's one
kind of popular ESPN show now currently in ESPN property that he kept appearing on
very very frequently and making all these comments and public statements, and then all
the stuff about Rogers where I had sort of thought Rogers was a jerk for
a while. He was always kind of subtly ragging on his coach. You
could tell he was always leaking negative things about his old coach, Mike McCarthy
to the media. He was always slamming him, slamming him, slamming him.
He would never say it outright, but all these media members who were
really tight with Rogers, they were always slamming Mike McCarthy, his coach in
Green Bay, McCarthy who went with Rogers to his one Super Bowl, the
only Super Bowl Rogers one was with him. And you could tell Roger was
constantly just slamming his coach, slaming his coach, slam and his coach,
uh, slamming the organization, slamming the organization, slamming the organization. Has
all these like drama, all this drama between him and the organization, blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah. Where the media carried water for him,
but now the media is like, we're not carrying water for you. So
now Rogers is being portrayed as this toxic personality. Oh, just a team
killer. Oh just you know, he was so spoiled in Green Bay.
He had all these great players around him. The team was doing so right
by him. Actually, was McCarthy actually that bad? Oh? I don't
know all these media members who were slamming McCarthy left right in center. But
because Rogers had one wrong opinion about one thing done, Aaron Rodgers is no
longer cool. Aaron Rodgers no longer hip. We had never even liked Aaron
Rodgers to begin with. So now that he's like talking about which I'm I
highly doubt it's even serious. He's talking about like running as RFK Junior's vice
presidential candidate, which I think is hilarious. I highly doubt he's going to.
But now that he's doing that, oh my gosh, this is like
the last straw. Like the idea that he would cause Joe Biden to lose
the election by teaming up with RFK is Oh my gosh. The media is
just having an utter, absolute cow over him. I just for for any
of you anyway. I just want to bring this up because I'm guessing a
lot of you don't really pay as much attention to sports media as I do.
And it's so freaking funny how the entire sports media has gone from uron
Rome like a bunch of nerds. Who got to hang out with the cool
the quarterback of the football team who just loved him and he wants to hang
out with us. Oh my gosh, he's so cool. Oh he's so
lefty and transgressive. Oh he's he's cool. Like to just a viciously turning
on him because again he had a wrong opinion in their view on one thing,
on ah thing, getting a COVID vaccine. He'll never get in their
good graces again. He's always going to be a pariah from here to eternity
when we return the massive expansion of utility fees that will probably have to come
with the mandate for all electric cars for new car sales in twenty thirty five
in California. That's next on the John Grardy Show. This big story and
cover of the bee of the big, big old lead story on frisdob dot
com. Pgenie utility bill is about to soar again in central California. Here
are the reasons why. And it looks like for various reasons. I mean
pgene rates are going up. They're always going up. They never go down,
up up up, up, up up up. Let me tell you
a couple tree things. As Phil Liotado said on The Sopranos, California has
all these grand plans to have one hundred percent of all new vehicle sales be
electric cars by twenty thirty five. Two, we don't have the infrastructure to
do that. If you're gonna put twelve million new electric cars on the road,
the current electrical grid cannot sustain it. Three, we're not going to
be able to build enough capacity to sustain it all by twenty thirty five because
one, we ain't building any nuke power plants, which would be the obvious
solution. Two, we're not even building more hydro power plants. We have
to build only wind and solar. So the idea is, let's develop offshore
wind and solar farms, which are not even in the planning phase. I
mean they're not even started. So the idea that in eleven years we're gonna
have all this up and running in time for one hundred percent of new cars
to be electric boggles the mind. Also, no one in California will therefore
be allowed to have like five or six kids, because hey, guess what,
there are no electric cars that fit that many people, certainly none that
a family can afford, or very few families. So with all that being
said, we're gonna have a lot of demand, not gonna have a lot
of supply. You know what happens when there's high demand and low supply,
Know what happens to price skyrockets. It goes up, up, up,
up, up up up up economics one oh one, baby. So if
you think your PGE bill is high right now, just wait till they're about
twelve, you know, just wait till pgn's grid is supporting you know,
two million more electric cars. Yeah, that's gonna be great. If you
think it's high now, it's gonna be wildly unsustainable. I mean, I
don't know how it's gonna work other than California realizing twenty thirty five is a
ridiculous goal and that's not what we're gonna shoot for. That'll do it for
John Girardi show seey'all next time on Power Talk