Well whiskey coming thing, pay oh don't you? From Powerline blog dot com
and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with
your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You, and power Lines International Woman of Mystery
Lucretia. Thank you gotta giving let that whiskey clone when you're feeling low down
and load. Welcome everyone to the three Whiskey Happy Hour. This is your
host, Lucretia, the International Woman of Mystery, happy to welcome my co
host John You and Steve Hayward. How are you, gentlemen. I'm good,
guys. I'm trying to show John how you have this energetic opening to
three Whiskey Happy Hour because John always starts off like he's bored to be there.
You know, have you noticed that? You know that's funny. I
know, because somebody does other people's podcasts. He comes in like Gangbusters.
You know it's that's because that's because of the other podcasts. I'm not afraid
of the hosts. Yes, by the way, I should tell you I
was just on this National Review speaking trip in Orange County and Silicon Valley and
it was mobbed by Lucretia admirers. Or many people. I would say at
least five people came up to me and asked me for her secret identity?
Did you give it away? You know who? Of course not. I
was like, you're what you're reading National Review and you're too stupid to figure
it out yourself. Well, one could argue that those two actually go together,
but I won't. You just set me up for it. How could
I not? I know he walked into that one. Well, so,
so John has a very important squash game, probably with members of the Supreme
Court and the Ukrainian military. I'm guessing somebody you beat me to it.
I was gonna say, with the members of the American military industrial complex.
I actually had to find we're looking at new countries to invade to make money.
I had dinner the other night with the general, the commanding General of
the Mexican Army. Was it interesting? Aha, Well, we should be
careful how much I talk about it. But it was a genuinely nice man.
Turns out I didn't know this. I said, your propaganda machine is
not very good, because what we hear about you is just you know,
all of your corruption, et cetera, et cetera at the cartels. But
it turns out that they do a lot of things like the National Guard does
in the United States. They go to horrible emergencies, hurricanes, that sort
of thing all over the world. Well, look, one, the Mexican
Army has no natural enemies and so they don't really have to plan for fighting
wars. But b do you want your generals to actually be nice people?
Like? Do you think that after people met George Patten, they're like,
he was such a nice Well, you want generals to be mean bullet chomping
jerks. He so, so, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean he
had to be that way with everybody, but he was nice with me.
But there was also a translator, so maybe the translator was making him sound
nicer than he was. That's always a fun project conversation. But the translators,
doing their job, they censored half the things Lucretia said, so they
never made it into Spanish. Maybe. Actually, my Spanish isn't terrible,
so I could I could tell a part of what he was saying. But
he talked very fast, and then I could tell what the translators, if
they were accurate. It's I'm just not good enough to formulate it. Myself.
Anyway, we have a lot to cover today because it's been a crazy
week. I am going to call this episode Steve will put it in the
as the title of the episode, the old Nixon adage, never murder a
man committing suicide. And is that from Nixon himself? Yeah, that's what
Nixon said, And I don't remember the context. Steve probably does, well,
I don't know. Well, I think it might have been well,
I think there earlier versions of that from like Napoleon, But in Nixon's case,
I think when he might have said that was, you know, he
stayed up and watching the Democratic National Convention in nineteen seventy two when George McGovern,
because of the disruptions of the student left, which right remained subject today
right at that convention, did not give his acceptance speech until three in the
morning, and Nixon wrote his diary it was like some college skit that got
out of control. But he realized the Democratic Party was melting down in front
of him and that this was going to be an easy reelection. So you're
going to hate this though, because when I ask, you know, the
all powerful Wikipedia, they actually attribute the quote to Woodrow Wilson. Oh No,
well, they don't mention Nixon saying this even a blind squirrel. John,
That's okay. But at the same time, what we now know about
Wikipedia when that twit from NPR was in charge of it, that everything she
did was censored, everything Wikipedia produced was censored. So I'm not sure I
trusted anyway. I actually will fail students if they use Wikipedia, I warn
them, But I will fail them if they try to use Wikipedia on a
as a source on a paper. But anyway, that's a different story before
we get to committing never murder a man committing suicide. I do want to
ask John, if you had any opportunity to watch your friend Hope Picks today.
Yes, Well, so first I should mention that Hope's a friend of
mine. I think she's one of the few people who emerged from the pre
Trump White House and the Trump White House with her reputation fairly intact, if
not somewhat improved. So she testified today in interest. It doesn't hurt that
she's gorgeous, by the way. That's I know, it's I don't you're
not. I think I'd be committing some kind of University of California regulation if
I commented on her appearance speech that we're going to get to that as we
are, so so she it was interesting because what she said, first of
all, this is the prosecution's witnesses we're going through now. So these are
the best people for the government for Alvin Bragg, which is turning out to
be such a disaster for them. She was under subpoena. She didn't want
to show up. Yeah, she didn't want to show up, but you
have to. And this is not even this is not even under cross examination
yet. This is just the prosecutions asking questions. And one thing she said,
which was it really undermines the prosecution's case, is that when news was
breaking about President Trump potentially possibly having affairs with the Stormy Daniels and then Harry
McDougal I think is the name of the other one, President Trump's reaction was
to try to make sure that his wife Milania didn't know about it. And
so he said, she said, he asked that none of the newspapers he'd
be delivered to the residence of Trump Power. And you can ask why is
this important, And the reason it's important is because that's not illegal, I
mean if and in fact, it points to the idea that this is not
anything having to do with a campaign, because the DA has built his whole
case, which I think is unconstitutional anyway. But he's built this whole case
that what Trump did was violate the federal election laws by giving himself an illegal
campaign contribution when he allegedly paid off these women. Now it's unconstitutional, I
think, because I don't Alvin Bragg's not allowed to, you know, regulate
federal campaigns. It's not his job to worry about how the election is going.
His only job is to enforce New York law within the borough of Manhattan,
which he says he's doing because of the business practice, the fraudulent business
entries. But again, who does that hurt? Why doesn't hurt anybody?
And also the time to bring those cases past long ago, So he has
to plug it into something bigger and more important, a felony, and so
he's trying to plug it into the campaign finance laws. But this is the
interesting thing. I don't see how Trump could have done anything but what he
did, because if he had tried to pay these women off and use campaign
funds, that would be a violation. The Justice Department essentially prosecuted John Edwards
for doing exactly that, and I'd wish he was admitted. Yeah he was
hung jury, he got a hung jury, but he's got he got lucky,
and the Justice Department decided not to prosecute him, And then right he's
being Trump's being prosecuted for doing what you're supposed to do, which is not
to book it as a campaign contribution, but to pull it out of your
own accounts, your own money. So I think actually Hope's testimony today,
even though the prosecution was trying to you know, illicit information favorable to itself,
actually undermines Yet again, it's the legal theory of the case. Steve
your muted. Yeah, I was coughing because I'm still rich. Lowry had
a great column about this a few days ago that I can't believe I didn't
think of this. And essentially the argument, boy, is down to what
kind of case could Alvin Bragg have bought if he had or if anybody had
investigated the bimbo eruption squad that was flanking Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety two.
How many people did they pay off? How many witnesses did they intimidate?
Right? I mean, I mean this is ludicrous right. I mean,
I think that once we decided in the nineteen nineties that well some I mean,
never mind whether the story of Stormy Daniels was true or not. The
point is is the nineteen nineties, the nation made a decision we don't actually
care about this. Remember Joe Klein's cover story Time magazine, A character doesn't
matter, We only want results in America said yes. So now we're back
to the pre Clinton standard. Apparently the applies only to Trump. But isn't
there also a question John that these entries in the ledgers that were made were
made in twenty seventeen, which means that they couldn't possibly have had an impact
on the twenty sixteen election. I mean, the farther you dig into this,
the more you realize this is just the worst kind of law fair with
no backing, and the only thing that allows it to move forward is the
fact that they've got a corrupt judge and a jury made up of a bunch
of leftist idiots. I mean, I don't know any other explanation for it.
I mean, I have the same worries that you do. I don't
think the judge is corrupt. I'm not sure about the jury being leftist idiots.
They might just be leftists, but well, I think Lucretia treats those
of what yeah, I know, as if there's a difference Lucretia and Lucretia's
house you don't want, you don't war. Until later on that leftist idiots
was actually two words. But you're rightly cretient in this sense that some of
the activities before twenty sixteen, but it continues into twenty seventeen. If it
really was about influencing the election, then why doesn't it just stop after Trump
selected? And this is the other thing that came out earlier this week that
I thought was pretty extraordinary. Again under the prosecution's witness, the head of
National Acchoirer. He described doing this for Trump, but he also described doing
it for lots of other people who are just celebrities, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for
example. So apparently what's been going on is that. I mean, I'm
sure I wonder what's going on in that household now. So apparently this guy,
the interestingly named David Pecker. I mean, you can't make this stuff
up. But where's tom him? Right? I know? And so he
goes out and when there's a story that's negative about celebrity, he goes and
buys the rights to the story, and then he effectively kills it. He
refuses to publish rather than publish, and he kind of does this as a
favor. It sounds like to different celebrities that he wants to have a good
relationship with. Now, again, this goes to lucrecious point to the extent
he's doing this before the election and after the election and doesn't have to seem
to do with the timing the election. Again, that undermines the idea that
this has anything to do with the twenty sixteen election, which Bragg is not
allowed to regulate anyway, right, right, So I have a deeper reflection.
I'm interested to think what both of you think about it, and that
is that one of the things that has become more and more clear to me
is the tendency in all of these cases, the state cases and the Jack
Smith case, to flip our system of criminal justice constitutional protections on its head,
and where prosecutors are somehow arguing for the government the government's constitutional rights to
a speedy trial, for instance, and the government, I mean the idea
of putting a gag order on the defendant in the brag case. You put
gag orders on people so that they don't undermine the case against the defendant.
And it leads me to By the way, so I'm thinking about this as
I'm driving to work, and so I pick up my iPhone and turn it
on to so I can record into it, and I say that this makes
me think of that idiotic statement again by the leftist idiot Justice Kaitanji. But
when I actually say her name in a kind of normal voice, believe it
or not, to my iPhone, and it comes up as cat Angie.
So from now on she is kat And but remember kat Angie said that,
uh, that that the First Amendment might hamstring the government's ability to do what
it needs to do. So my argument, John, you're looking at me
like I'm a little nut, so but you always look at me that like
that, so I shouldn't make much of it, is that this whole lawfair
thing has had an even more insidious effect to miseducate the general public about the
idea that somehow it's the government that needs protection from the constitution. It's the
government who has rights in a criminal trial. It's the government who needs to
be have its its powers insulated from those horrible restrictions of the First Amendment.
Do you do you understand what I'm saying by that, guys? And do
you agree you stump us? Not really, I've got some fus. I
well, I well, let me try first. I don't think that this
is an issue which only runs in one direction, because there are also conservatives
here who have suddenly found new appreciation for the constitutional rights defendants. So if
you were the stereotype it, you know, conservatives are generally generally pro police
and generally want to get rid of things like Miranda and the exclusionary rule.
And so this is the one thing I have found. I don't think it's
intentional, but I do think it's striking a court out there. One thing
that Trump has done in his travails is he has revealed how much power prosecutors
have, which most people in the public did not understand. Now I think
they do, and how much the potential for abuse there is amongst prosecutors.
And the main limit has always been prosecutors self restraint. There the courts have
you know, long said we're not going to police the most of what prosecutors
do. And you know, Robert Jackson, one of the great attorney generals,
FDR's main legal visor, became a Supreme Court justice. You know.
He cautioned us that because prosecutors can destroy a man's reputation and his wealth and
his property and his family before ever going into a courtroom, just by all
the things he does to you before you get to court, prosecutors have to
be especially vigilant on themselves. And he said, so the it's interesting,
and he has this famous speech about the federal prosecutor and he said, the
worst thing you could do in our system. It's almost like he anticipated Trump,
is to pursue a man because you don't like him. And the worst
thing you can do is to investigate the man, not the crime. And
that's I think what's going on. So I wouldn't say it's I mean,
I always enjoy it when the left always call for someone to be prosecuted or
you know, but I think it's also thee. There's a revelation going on
amongst conservatives that may not have been there before. Well, I don't know.
I've been saying for years that the police are bureaucrats in uniform, doesn't
mean they're bad people. But let's remember their units of the government, and
I think and I actually blamed liberalism for them my next sentence, which is
they became bureaucratized because of liberalism. And maybe some of the professionals of the
police that as evolved in the last fifty years are a good thing. You
can say more about that, but I'll skip over for now. But on
the prosecutor business, this will seemed like a digression, but not really of
all the unlikely people who have blown up the narrative as we is. Al
Sharpton, who on MSNBC a couple of mornings ago, said, I don't
see how we go on talking about January sixth when you have these kinds of
things going on at college campuses, at which point Mika Brazinski blew up and
said, you can't say that, you can't compare this to January sixth.
You can see the panic about this. Now, my point on prosecution is
this, apparently it is true that an awful lot of the people rested are
not students at Colombia and some of the other places. In those places,
right and unquestionably some of them must have crossed state lines. I think that
gives the justice Department jurisdiction to investigate and bring charges. By the way,
I think they might have had jurisdiction anyway, through civil rights laws and so
forth, But never mind, here's U And so I think a great question
to watch is are they going to pursue any of these people with the kind
of vigor that they did from some of the you know, January sixth defendants
to that who they chase down for the most marginal offenses. It seems to
be in this is going too far, though I know it's like, I
mean, there were these campus protests are a problem, but do you really
want the Justice Department investigating them? And this is actually this is where I
thought the speaker went too far. I can see why politically it makes sense,
but I really don't think this is the time that we need to call
the National Guard out to suppress the protests. Oh my goodness, a bit
of an overreaction. I mean, so there's like I'm all for. I
think what we can easily do to squash the protests as just say, automatic
expulsions for everyone who refuses to disperse, starting like now, and you get
a notice and then if you're still there, you're automatically. You know.
Look, I mean maybe not. It's not it's not a right, it's
a privilege. And you send them home, give them a refund to the
parents, say now they're back, and they're they're your problem again. We
don't. Well no, what Look, maybe not for pas of people take
their space, but the FBI and the Justice Department, the National Guard,
that seems well, look at sauce for the goose. I just want consistent
law enforcement. That's my point. And okay, uh, there's I gonna
go to all that. I was just going to mention one thing, Well,
you're thinking about what you couldn't remember, Steve, and that is that
I agree with John. Oh, I know. Sorry, let me tell
me. There was a poll, so how far out of sink you are?
John? A poll was taken the last couple of days. The result
was the question was do you believe the police and or the National Guards to
be called out to the campuses to quell these demonstrations. The spread was seventy
six percent yes, seventeen percent No. So there you are, John,
you're with the seventeen police. No. Police are fine, I mean like
local police, campus police. But I mean I don't think you want to
militarize it. I think that's playing into the hands of the protesters. I
do. I want to go back to what John said about uh. Isn't
it interesting that the table seem to be switching to some extent where Republicans,
conservatives, et cetera, are all of a sudden screaming about the rights of
the criminally accused, and the it's the leftists that want to prosecute January sixth
protesters, you know, Trump election deniers, et cetera, et cetera.
I think that there's some truth to that. For sure. I have more
and more of my conservative friends who aren't intellectuals and academics who are becoming more
and more anti police every day, seriously, and I never would have expected
that. And to some extent I'm the same, especially when I get pulled
over. But that's a different story. I mean, I live in a
store's tesla. Actually, wait, love this story. It was actually my
son driving, but we were driving the Tesla and he was behind a dump
truck and the speed limit went down from sixty five to fifty five and he
didn't slow down. He stayed at the speed that the dump truck was being
passed on the left by other people, gets pulled over by this, shall
we say hefty I'm not supposed to engage in lookism, but so you get
what I mean. When I pick sheriff in an onmark car, he doesn't
pull anybody else over. He pulls over, you know, this really fancy
car and gets and acts like he's doing this huge favor by not giving a
speeding ticket. He gives a ticket for guess what, wasting finite resources.
Yeah, because when you remember, back in the old days of fifty five,
that was supposedly the optimal right and all that crap back John's too young
to remember, but anyway, that's what the ticket was. But you know,
to my son's credit, he didn't argue about it. But of course,
you know, here's what we're sitting there thinking, First of all,
you didn't you didn't pull over people going faster than us because they didn't have
probably have cars that looked like they could pay the stupid fine. And second
of all, you can't be in a tesla speeding wasting finite finite resources when
you charge it from your own solar system. It was a total digression,
total digression. Anyway, My point is that you're right about that to some
extent. However, John, I don't know that Republicans or conservatives, whatever,
people on the right are necessarily opposed to the idea of rights for the
crimly accused. And I will use the examples you use, which were exclusionary
rule and miranda rights, if you will recall you cannot show me anywhere in
the Constitution where either of those exist. On the other hand, right to
a speedy trial right that's a guarantee in the sixth Amendment. So I think
that you know, it's a little bit a little bit disingenuous to say that
conservatives who argued against those things because the Supreme Court enforced them upon us,
and you know, seeing that, seeing genuine lack of objectivity, a genuine
partiality in the way that the law is being prosecuted across the board, I
think those are two different things. Although I do agree with your premise that
you know, conservatives are starting to say, Wow, I'm worried about how
much power the government has, and I'm not so sure I like it,
And I'd really like to make sure that those constitutional protections we have against governmental
tyranny stay in place. Anyway, that's just my thought, but I don't
know what you think about that. Well, for part of it is the
worst abuses are going on here and with regard to Trump or by state and
local prosecutors. Right, so, uh, you know this is like you
know, brag Fanny willis right, the real prosecutors of Atlanta woman, This
is so you know. The thing I've noticed is that, yeah, I
know the same thing as you, Lucretia, My conservative friends have become much
more uh you know, not as fully supportive of the police and prosecutors as
they used to be, and particularly local Now. I mean I think that
what this is all revealed to people is local politics, which I you know,
Conservs also generally tend to trust local solutions and federals, but they're also
seeing now the seemy underside of local government. Well, we do know there's
been corrupting influences on that. I mean there's millions and millions put by George
Soros into you know, electing corrupt left leftist idiot same word John prosecutors like
your San Francisco friends, and you know los the Alvin Bragg. I don't
know if he's a Sorows plant, but I think Lutitia James was anyway.
I mean, there is there is some perfidy going on there. We might
say, yeah, so you know that makes it well, you know what
it's like. Okay, they beat us fair and square, though, like
they were open about what they were doing. They ran these outrageously left wing
candidates, and not only did they get elected, they've been re elected.
I mean Philadelphia is a good example. Maybe the worst of the progressive das
is sky Krasner. He got re elected after the murder went way up,
after they didn't bring prosecutions they should have. But I think, like maybe
we should maybe conservatives shouldn't be so in love with local solutions all the time.
In local government. You know, there's there Jeffersonian ideal because they're also
you know, what we're seeing is the local government can be more easily corrupted
than the federal government. I think, yeah, but I'm sorry, go
ahead, Steve, I'm just going to say that, I mean, there
is a broad problem, and I think we're slow to figure out that law
enforcement was included in the broad problem, which is the culture of the administrative
state. It's like the old story of turtles all the way down. It
may arise from the centralized impulse, but it has infected the lowest reaches of
government. And my story about that is the forty cases I traced about a
decade ago, a little kid's lemonade stance being shut down by local government for
not having a business license for some other pretext. Right, and now that's
not very many in the big country, except the real number should be zero.
No little kids lemonade stand should ever be shut down. What's the impulse
behind that? Pure bureaucratic mendacity. And that's not something Washington caused. That
is now self generated at every level of government, and we shouldn't be It
is true, though, John, I mean, you know, Das you
know, I'm will enough to remember in California, when the most boring Republican
would win the local DA and the state attorney general races people now long forgotten,
like well, not Vincent Buliosi because he of course prosecuted Manson, but
evil younger George Duke Magen, nobody who'd set the house on fire with his
charisma, but was a you know, attorney general and then governor and good
in both of those jobs. And now we don't seem to be able to
do that anymore. John's right too that they beat us at our own game
in that respect. And the Progressives, I mean the Progressives in California and
Arizona, from the very beginning of our constitutions targeted local governments and said,
how can how can we take over local governments? And they couched it in
terms of getting rid of corruption, the corruption of the party's at local governments,
and of course it has allowed in ways I'm sure they imagined. I'd
love, you know that corruption at a level unheard of or at least reform
reform government. Yeah, at a level unheard of, you know. So
all right, if we're going to get John out in time for his squash
game the next one, so you guys may continue after I after I go,
well, we need you for this. John. Don't murder a man
committing suicide. What is up with idiot Republicans? That's gonna be one and
their stupid bill restricting trying to define what anti Semitic speech is. I know
that the reach of the bill is not that great. I get all of
the details of it, but look, the left is imploding on itself.
That people are watching what the left is doing, you know, Biden's going
like this in the polls, and what do Republicans do the stupidest thing they
possibly could and talk about having an unconstitutional infringement upon free speech enforced by the
government. Am I being too Yeah? I mean, look, I think
they are too clever by half. I'll sort of meet you halfway on this.
So, I mean there are two clever aspects of this bill. One
is you're going to get Democrats. Well, first of all, they said,
let us adopt I forget the Internet group, let's adopt the international definition
of Semitism. Is that? And you know that's a in my cynical way,
is that's a brilliant political move because the left is all about international institutions
and the international community. So uh, and the globalists like the left.
Well okay, But then the next point is you're gonna get a bunch of
Democrats voting against that, and that makes them look bad. This is an
attempt at it's an attempt at a wedge issue to fracture the Democratic coalition.
I agree with you on them miserably. No, it passes the House by
a big majority. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It was it didn't
fracture and it was ninety one Republicans who voted against it and a few of
the squad people. Right, well, I think there's seventy Democrats, but
I don't remember the numbers. Now it's it's going to die in the Senate.
But that's going to caust them some heartburn, and look, it's a
dumb idea. On the other hand, I do remember it's six or seven
years ago. Now maybe no, it's not that far back because the Santos
was governor. But Florida passed UH sometime around two thousand or twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, a bill target any anti semitism on campuses and in the
schools in Florida, and people raised some of the same objections, which is,
I think this is an infringement on free speech and it's unconstitutional, and
I think maybe it was challenged. I lost track of it, but there
was a lot of the same issue came up. Right, So there's already
was done once in Florida, and like I say, we ought to see
where that landed. I think, I don't think this is going to get
any legs one way or the other. It's it's going to die in the
Senate. And I don't know there was a gimmick. That's I don't know
who thought of it. It's you know, typical John the idea, but
I didn't think of it. Of it from my favorite absolutist on the First
Amendment, I'm coming more to your side these days. Well, First,
I worry about the Department of Education being given the power to write, do
anything. But it's a lot probes into whether certain kind of speech is being
favored or disfavored on college campuses. Although I'm very suspicious of college administrators,
I think you just compound whatever problems there are by having the bureaucracy of Washington,
DC's education departments starting to, you know, make censorship decisions or what's
allowed. Look, I abhore this anti Semitic speech that's going on, these
anti Semitic protests going on on campus. On the onther hand, I'm glad
the American people can see it. Right, I'd rather have these protesting students
out there with their openly anti Semitic speech and their anti Semitic encampments, and
the American people can see it. And I think the American buple discussed by
it. And that's why you're getting these kinds of poll results. Steve's talking
about where you got seventy whatever, seventy nine percent of the American people want
the police or the military sentence to squash these protests because they they are abhorred
by it. That's the way I think that the free you know three marketplace
of ideas should work, and actually is working. So I I I agree
with you. I think there, you know, I what our guys should
be doing is saying, let's have the Department Education Speech Mission hold back even
farther because it's obviously failed. Right, It's obviously failed, So let's get
them out of the business of policing viewpoint, discrimination, speech, unsafe.
You know, people were about you know, unsafe environments on campus. Right,
That's what this all stems from. So the thing, the last thing
I'll say, the the problem with the law is that it buys into in
the end this idea, oh, you know, you can suppress viewpoints or
speech because you want to have a safe college campus. Right. That's what's
really going on here. Every every time I hear someone in all of this
say the words safe, I feel unsafe or saying that that that that waves
a warning flag for me, because safe is just now the new word that's
used to justify the infringement. Blond be that said the you know the I
think it was Harvard. The students at Harvard almost missed their their seminar on
microaggressions because they were out protesting kill the Jews. Yeah, yeah, right,
no, that's what That's my comment is. I always thought safety school
meant to college that was easy to get into. I didn't realize it.
Now, man, every college. And remember our friend Ben Sassy was very
clear about it that we are not daycare here. Yeah, that's why,
you know, let's remember I mean, never mind the Charlottesville business. We've
mentioned a couple of times. Remember what the fuss was at Yale six seven
years ago, eight years ago. It was about Halloween costumes. Oh my
god, you were thought they had to shut down the campus for teachings because
someone might wear a sombrero. And right, faculty got fired. I don't
think they didn't. That's not quite right. It was the christ they got.
They got kicked out, as noted from headmasters. The headmasters at at
the residential colleges, they did. You know, I don't know if you
follow this, John, They made Nick Christokus, who's a you know,
well known figure in social psychology I think who has swung waved the right from
that experience of being yelled at by crazy kids. They made him a sterling
professor about two years later, which I thought was a makeup because that's one
of the highest honors at Yale, right, And I thought that was their
makeup call by the administration, who was embarrassed about how shabbily he was treated.
Even though Peter Salivey totally capitulated to all the crazy students. I wish
he'd turned it down. He should have turned it now. That would have
been fun. But and you know, I know it sounds stupid, but
I always wanted to say to those people, you know what we learned when
we were little kids. Did you learn this in your nice Korean household?
John, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt
me. No, didn't learn that one a lot. By the way,
I can connect with your first story. You see Lucretia and you said,
you know, don't don't murder a man who's committing suicide. I thought you
were going to talk about the and maybe you are the wider campus scene.
Could I tie together the first story. In this one, you mentioned the
almost Tom Wolf quality of the first witness of the Trump trial, David Pecker.
Did you see the video of the woman demanding the Columbia send food into
the protesters who are occupying Hamilton Hall. Her name, she want to see.
I want to see what you'll make of her name. Her name was
Joanna king Slutsky. Yes you know hyphen name king Slutsky. And what she
said was she wanted She said that they were did they? The last of
it was, do you really want students to be dehydrated, hungary and possibly
become ill because you don't agree with our views? Can't we at least get
a glass of water? Yeah? It was. It was unbelievable. But
she also is doing her dissert I don't think it's their dissertation. I think
it's what she her. Her Her research is in a Marxist perspective. I
have a poetry right, I have it right here. It's not too long.
Let me read it to you because it's too fun to not share with
listeners. It is. My dissertation is on the fantasies of limitless energy in
the Transatlantic Romantic Imagination from seventeen sixty to eighteen sixty. My goal is to
write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marxi's term for the disruption of energy circuits
caused by industrialization under capitalism. I'm particularly interested in theories of the imagination and
poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens, in order to update and propose an
alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the romanticy. Yeah, that was that's not
even a fake yawn. I really just yned down. Well, there's more
about how she was a progressive activist and all that. No, and that's
Joanna King Slutsky. Don't murder a man when they're committed committing suicide. That
thing went so viral. And on the other side of it, I don't
know, John, I never know what you're up up with them. The
the you know, the news. The real news was what happens inside your
hallowed halls at Berkeley the so at u NC some frat boys, frat boys
fraternity. The protesters had pulled down the American flag and oh yeah, and
put up a Palestinian flag. So it wasn't boys who they I think it
was the campus police, but I forget. But so the American flag goes
back up and the Palestinian protesters try to take it back down, and this
huge group of frat boys surround the flagpole and the protesters are pelting things at
him and spinning on them. They're just standing there and they start singing the
national anthem, and they and they keep the flag up and the protesters finally
give up and go away. Well so somebody just you know, this goes
viral on social media, and then somebody starts to go fund me to throw
the bros a rager, a party, right you know, to celebrate them,
thank them for doing this. So they started gofund me. As of
last night they shut it down, it was over half a million dollars right
and Ros and the biggest their biggest contribution was ten thousand dollars from Bill Ackman,
who has really got religion over this. No, they wanted to raise
like one hundred and fifty thousand bucks and they raised five hundred thousand. This
is fantastic. They're going to get most of it to charity, but a
bunch of a bunch of right wing celebrities have said they'll play John Rich is
going to write a song and play a free concert for their rager and others.
Yeah, so Christopher Scalia tweeted out that he's working on a country song
called Don't Try This at a State University. So again, what I want,
I want to have a little bit deeper conversation about this. We've had
a discussion for several years at least now, about what do we do about
this rot at at our universities, and especially our elite universities. And they've
you know, the gay and the other person who testified before Congress obviously did
great harm to the reputation of elite universities, and it's been going downhill for
some time. Anyway, higher education in general does not get anywhere near the
respect it used to. And you know, there's all people who have jobs
instead of academic degrees are looked on more favorably than they used to be.
Okay, is this going to signal a huge jump where our elite universities and
degrees, sorry, John, degrees from elite universities really won't matter very much
anymore. What do you think I have? It's interesting and part of this
speaking, Tory went on, I met a professor whose name will be kept
anonymous, whose son is going to a very prestigious prep school. And he
said his son and his friends, even though their parents are sending them to
his prep school to get them into the kind of colleges that the CREATU is
talking about and that I was very happy to go to. Said these friends,
this son and this many friends are all decided to go to SEC colleges
Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Flord And he said the parents are horrified by
this, but they also want to know why, and they've been told by
their kids. And this was going on before the protest, but the protest
is just, you know, it's just exacerbated. It is that they feel
they're going to be harassed and discriminated against because of their traditional views and these
colleges and they feel, meaning this is not true, but they feel that
at the SEC, the large Southern and Western Land Grant colleges, that they
will be treated much more fairly and that their careers will be better off.
That's right. I still don't think that's true. Well, I can see
why youngsters think that, but I'm still not sure that the credentialing effect of
the I League school is going to it's been suffering, it's going to suffer,
but I still don't see it being overthrown by this. Maybe there'll be
a sort of time limit. Like you know, I'm John you I went
to Yale and Harvard, but it was pre nineteen nineteen ninety five or something
like that, and so my degree actually matters. But anybody who went to
Harvard Yale in the twenty tens and beyond is you know, basically an illiterate
moron who's been propagandized and brainwashed by a bunch of lefty professors. So I
know, John, you have to go in a couple of minutes the quick
question did you ever have any courses at Harvard from Nat Laser? Nathan Glazer?
No, No, I know who he is, but I didn't take
it. Yeah, you know want the famous sociologists, So a sociologists.
I just dusted off. It came out of a box of you know,
books of wine have been stored for a long time. By the way,
everyone can't see how nice Steve's background finally looks because he has unveiled his new
library. And I know he's been posting on Facebook every time he files a
book in his new bookshelf, he puts a picture of it. On Facebook.
This is my actual detached home office that hasn't changed. I know it's
beautiful, It's really beautiful. Oh no, no, John, I got
my poster at the Oh your Churchill posters, yeah, deserve great church posts.
I've got mine from the world from the in London, the Imperial War
Museum. That's what the Imperial War Museum. So so Glazier, you know.
He became known as one of them conservatives. But he was at Berkeley
in sixty four for this free speech movement and was at the very center of
the faculty trying to broke or a compromise. And I found his collection of
essays called Remembering the Answers Essays on the American Student Revolt, and I've read
a few years ago, but one written in nineteen sixty eight. Just two
sentences from it, because this tell you how how radically things have changed from
them to now, and then raises a question. This is a chapter called
the Jewish Role in Student Activism, published in nineteen sixty eight. First sentence,
this is not a period in American history in which there is much danger
that Jews will suffer from unequal treatment, prejudice, or discrimination. That's his
first sentence right, and then the next page a little longer. But because
indeed, since Jews are no longer attacked except in publications of small circulation,
and there he has in mind, you know this old old crazy right wing
stuff. Perhaps yeah, right, since jew actually the Birchers weren't Semitic,
But never mind. From now, since Jews are no longer attacked except in
publications small as responsible for the destruction of morality, religion, personal liberty,
and private property, it becomes possible to discuss and analyze, even if with
an apology for doing so, the reasons why the children of generally liberal,
enlightened and prosperous businessmen and professionals, which is what Jews for the most part,
are, are to be found predominantly both in the leadership and among the
followers of the broad and variegated body of student protesters and radicals. So two
things have changed. One is Jews are not immune in fact of the principal
target of discrimination and hatred on campuses. This is obvious. And second,
a lot of this essays concerned with the questions goes back decades is why were
so many Communist leaders Jews, even though Mark was anti Semitic and all the
rest of that. I am wondering two things, if we're going to see
another generation of people like Glazer. This whole book says, I can't believe
I thought of myself as a radical and now I'm a conservative and it was
the student revolution the sixties and seventies or what did it? And he explains
all this a great detail. I wonder if we're going to see that kind
of transformation again from you know, smarter liberals in the academy, and whether
we're going to see especially Jewish students of whatever disposition turned conservative. Also that
I've got I've got a few colleagues that I've talked to who have not just
at Berkeley, other schools, who've told me, because of all this,
they will not be voting for Biden this time. They're not going to give
any money to Biden. They hated Trump in the last two elections, but
they're going to vote for Trump. I was, I was actually flabbergasted by
this. I do think John's what John always accuses our arguments of being this
sort of the cut rate Marxism. I think that's there is a lot to
that in this particular case, when you look at I mean, never mind
the fact that we know marxis Marx was an anti semi so, but what
the whole narrative forgive me again around free speech is no longer a free speech
for all. Free speech as a principle absolute free speech. It's free speech
for the oppressed, but not the oppressor. And when Jews became identified not
with the oppressed but with the oppressor, they no longer have they a They
no longer have the right to free speech. I mean, we've even seen
instances where police will shut earlier in this whole debacle, police would shut down
Jews speaking out against the pro Palestinians or pro Israel getting shut down. But
also just this idea that that what those dumb pro Palestinian idiots are out there
screaming it makes no sense of free speech. It's about power, and it's
about power of the oppressed against the oppressor. And that's the only thing that
they can that they have to bring to bear against against Israel, because if
they actually understood and even one fact about the situation, they couldn't say any
of the nonsense that they say. Right So, so I think that as
more and more Jews realize that they bought into the leftist nonsense and that whole
oppressor oppressed dynamic, Marxist dynamic has now turned against them. I think I
think you're right. I think more and more Jews will have to become conservative.
John has to go because he's that's okay. We'll carry on without you,
John, any other people depended on me showing up. We will will
talk about you behind your back and truth to our listeners why you're wrong about
it. As I tell people, Lucretia always goes to stab you in the
front. Don't worry exactly. I never stabbed people in the back. I
never say anything that I wouldn't say to their face. Ever. There have
fun, John, I see you next week. Yeah, well, let's
see. I mean, where to go with all that? I mean,
you know, we'll just see. But I think that this is another cataclysmic
moment that takes a while to play out, right, I mean that I
did think that's true. We'll see a little bit of a respite because you
know, it's the end of the school year and some of this will die
down. But but talking today with the person who's in charge of incident command
on my university and one of the things that they are doing to because we
have convocations and graduation next week. One of the things that they are doing
this is very interesting, I think, to forestall any kind of violence or
disruption to these you know, important ceremonies is they've they've set up a security
perimeter where they're stopping students or others from bringing in paces of water plywood,
which he showed me pictures of the protests that that they put down on Tuesday
of this week, and somebody had brought in a couch. A couch,
I mean, and you know, just so obviously these things are being funded.
They're not grassroots operations by any stretch of the imagination, and they're obviously
being probably funded by Iran and or George Soros and some combination of other awful
groups. But but how interesting that that you that these protests, these these
idiot students are so pathetic that they can't make it through a protest without cases
of bottled water, alkaline bottled water and vegan burritos. You know, sorry,
I'm big, but I know not you I know, interesting that it's
not as if these really are grassroots uprisings of students who are somehow all of
a sudden in solidarity with Gaza. You know, I'm sure a few of
them are, you know, the result of the brainwashing by their professors.
But you know it's I do think it will be a watershed moment, Steve.
We'll see it will take it day out, right, I mean it.
But also I mean, yeah, things may go. I mean clearly,
these cowardly administrators are playing for time and saying, gosh, the school
year is almost over. If we can just get through graduation in the next
two weeks, it'll all die down and things will calm down and we can
go back to normal and we don't have to do anything serious, right,
we don't have to discipline anybody, or if you're like the Columbia professors sent
out the email to his students saying, oh, you've all been through so
much. I'm not going to hold the final. I'm going to just give
you all a's in the class. Right, Yeah, that's right. That's
gonna be good for Columbia's reputation. Do you remember what John said last week
Babylon B He said, any Asian kid who is relegated to Columbia would be
an embarrassment to his family. But I'm not so sure by the way,
that that that that hope on the part of the coward administrators is right.
So I meaning what, well, I don't know if we mentioned this,
but you know, their little detail came out the evening of Iran's sort of
slow motion, slow cruise missile attack on Israel, and the news items said,
oh, several groups at planning meetings for the Democratic Invention in Chicago broke
out into cheers that news of the Irani attack on Israel, and what the
people's takeaway was, Oh, it shows that the people protesting are not anti
war at all, they're anti Israel. And I thought, wait a minute,
they're having planning meetings to disrupt the Democratic Convention in August. I think
that now, of course, you know, the people who actually ride in
sixty eight, they're all, you know, eighty something years old now,
they're still alive at all. But I think there's the sort of historical legend
of that, and I think there's going to be a real attempt to recreate
that. I think, by the way, it's unlickly to succeed, only
because I know a little about this that convention security now is so much more
intense than it was in the sixties. The perimeters are much farther away from
the halls and the hotels. That doesn't mean they won't cause some action and
rowdiness, mostly probably outside the perimeters. Right, Yeah, that's right.
And I think the Democrats are going to work very hard with their media friends
to not televise it and not report on it very much, and then they
will have discipline inside the hall to not call attention to it. I mean,
one of the things that happened in sixty eight is the riot outside cost
almost literally a riot inside. And okay, but then I also think that
if Israel opens a second front against Hesbola, which is thought to be on
the way when they finally get done with Gaza or something else will touch it
off. And again the cycle of protests in the sixties, there were several
phases to it and it didn't take you know, once the energies have been
released, it doesn't take much of a spark to set it back up again.
And you know I do, by the way, see people on the
left saying this is not going to end until we have a repeat of Kent
State. That's where you know, young National Guard troops, many of them
the same age as the protesters, probably not well trained in that circumstance they're
in. It's still, by the way, unclear whether there was an order
to fire or somebody panicked, but you know, four kids got shot.
And by the way, there were opinion polls taken after that, and you
know, majority of Americans sided with the National Guard, just as the overwhelming
majority right now of Americans are disgust at what's going on on campus and Democrats
can't seem to figure this out. I mean, if ever there was an
easy sister soldier moment of legend of the Clinton years, it's right now and
they can't do it. They can't do it. But you know what music
and Republicans, which leads to me to my first Babylon b Well wait a
minute, Well all right now, let's linger on that for a minute.
I mean, I won't get into the substance of it. But you know,
the one person who knew how to exploit this was Governor Reagan. And
you know, both of my books were actually the first volume has a lot
of detail about the way he would. First of all, just the one
thing I'll mention only he did call out the National Guard at Berkeley in nineteen
seventy and had the helicopter spray an air raid on students. He had the
helicopter spray tear gas versus drub everybody out their minds. But he also never
the university shut tear guests and rubber bullets. All this. Well, good
for you guys, and I think maybe other places have done this too.
But the other thing is is Reagan never for a moment humored any of the
pretensions of the protesters. Everybody else will saying, well, they're Idealistsy're just
misguided. Gregan said, no, there are a bunch of punk idiots.
Yep, you know, full stop. He said it more eloquently than that.
But look, I mean, there's all I'm going to say is this,
and then you can do your headlines and we'll get im just gonna say,
Steve, a whole bunch of clips of that were all over Twitter,
black and white of that right. Well, And of course Reagan used his
wit, which Trump could do too. I think, by the way,
I'll say that, well, you know, Reagan used to say, uh,
well, the hippie say make love not war. Doesn't look to me
like they're capable of much of either one, right, he would mock them.
And you know, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed I
owned a laundromat in Berkeley. Ro was great stuff, right, So he
would be tough and angry and also funny and ridiculing and mocking. Who is
better at that combo than Trump? So remember last thing, I'll say,
Sorry, I'm going on along here. Remember in Charlottesville when he said the
next day when he's both find people on both sides, comment was wrenched from
contract context and light about he said, don't think they're going to stop Roberty
Lee's statue. They're going to go after Jefferson Washington next, right, And
some reports said, oh no, that would never happen, and Trump said,
excuse me, they were slaveholders. You're not paying attention, are you?
Well guess what that did happen in twenty twenty in the George Floyd riots.
And then coming to is you may have seen the picture where the statue
of George Washington on the Columbia campus. It wasn't toppled, but it was
defaced and wrapped up in cloth and painted, you know stuff, and you
know, obscured. And my joke about it is what these students think they're
Christo. You know that crazy artists would wrap castles and things. I think
that ought to be a Trump ad. I think you got to put that
up and saying I told you so, and this is crazy stuff, and
they're they're whole, they're wholly owned by Joe Biden the Democratic Party, which
is true. And I think you hit a lot of mileage with that.
It's sure worked for Nixon and for Reagan in the late sixties and thirty seventies.
So and I do say, go ahead, they will. But again,
Republicans in Congress man oh man, Sorry, I actually don't see the
cleverness to that, but maybe maybe it'll play out differently to the to the
legislation, make it all right that whatever it's called, right, Yeah,
okay, So, which leads me again you can you can still on anything,
but I was I wanted to get this one out there. Moments from
victory against Democrats, Republicans decided to start attacking First Amendment is headline or yes,
yes it is, but it's really not satire. Yeah yeah, so
this one, this one is satire but still funny. Uh. Immigration crisis
ended as frat boys deployed to guard southern border. Yes, and Congressional Democrats
demand forty billion for UCLA protest border security. Did you see what they put?
I mean, it's just amazing to me. And then we didn't get
to this story. Fine, you heard about the whistleblower who, the healthy,
young whistleblower ended up dying of natural causes at fort whistleblower right sadly announces
whistleblowers shot self and back while falling off skyscraper directly into wood chipper while wearing
cement shoes. Yeah. The other joke I heard someone say, is this
Hillary Clinton on the board of Boeing or something like that. You know it's
no, that's just very weird. Well, a couple of little ones.
History repeats itself as Communists run out of food and they show our friends slut
ski kind Lalla ended with this tragedy. AOC announces she was killed during New
York PD raid at Columbia and is dead again, going to be John tonight.
Yeah, you get to do the whole thing, So always drink your
lafroug neat. Let's go Brandon and God saved the Queen Man lips nothing.
Nothing makes sense. What's you're talking about? Stay out of the way.
Gotta make this creep, don't me. I don't love you. It's hot,
so you you do you that, I'll do me. They'll do you.
No love lost, no reson. We've got lessons. We've got to
No love loss, no reason, no reason. Ricochet joined the conversation.