Well whiskey coming take my pain? Does my brain? Oh whiskey? Don't
you let me whiskey? 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's gotta give me and let
them whiskey blow where you're being in low down in Lowell, Welcome everybody to
another episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, where we come to you from
all over the globe. I'm John You, you're co host, and I
am in the Riot Center of America aka Philadelphia, where people have been an
upset nationwide about his series of riots that occurred in our major downtown shopping center,
but which those of us in Philadelphia call Friday Night. And we're joined
by partners in crime Steve Hayward and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
I must say, Lucretia looks wonderful in her French philosopher's outfit. She's wearing
a black turtleneck and you can just see the galwas cigarettes smoke offscreen going up
in the air. And Steve, Steve is Steve has somehow, somehow,
somehow attracted her to coming to where hungry. They're both in Hungary. Now,
what are you guys playing there? You know? I don't. I
mean maybe Steve I got invited all on my own. Yeah, that's we'll
come to that in a minute. But Lucretia, I don't. I don't
get it. I mean, maybe John's tired out from rioting and looting.
But sometimes, once again, he sounds like he's on Zamix starting out tonight,
Whereas usually John, you come on a podcast or a Fox News show
and it's boom, and you're there with a joke and there's high energy,
and I don't know, you're trying to be too a proper or something.
I don't get it, you know, Okay, Well, because I'm in
Philadelphia. It's because I'm in Philadelphia where we say that things the old way,
old school here, right, Tell guys, what are you doing in
Hungary without me? Well, I'm here for a whole month doing all kinds
of things, but Lucretius here for a few days because we're presenting together.
I should let me say that again. We're both presenting papers at a conference
on Monday and both of us are not finished with our papers yet, so
we're sitting here not unlike what you were saying, without the cigarettes, but
lots of coffee working on our papers together because we're behind together and we're working
on them separately. Yeah, what are your papers about? And what's the
conference about? Christianity and politics? Is the name of the conference. Mine
is on equality and the rule of law. Mine is on metaphysics and the
theological political problem. I think it's okay big. It's at the National Public
Service University, and it's amazing how much stuff goes on here. You know.
I'm used to the think tank world in Washington, where there are lectures
and seminars and panels every day all over town, where there are lectures and
seminars and panels and events and conferences going on all over town every day.
Here in Budapest, it's and people from all over the world who are here.
I run into a lot of famous Americans. I ran into Scooter Libby
my first day here. He was at a conference. JD. Vance is
supposed to be coming this week, except he may be stuck because of the
government shutdown, which we can come to. So and then I'm meeting lots
of Europeans, so it's I'm having a great time. Lots. If people
follow Steve's Facebook feed, which they should, they will notice at all Steve
Steves eat over. There's cheese and salami plates every day. It's a new
picture of a different kind of saloni. Well, I haven't hanging out in
cafe scrutin a lot, which is fun and lots of other caf So yes,
it's a fun way to do things. Yeah, thank you. So
now we've established at Steven you actually say Facebook. Yeah, Facebook, and
that's what the old people use to community. No, I'm not. I'm
not old enough to use Facebook for the latest on the cresis TikTok recipes.
I don't go on TikTok either the other There's only one other thing I have
to tell you, John. So, I have my closet at home.
I have my shoes on a very high shelf all the way around the walking
closet. I have a ladder for them, and I went and we're gonna
have to post a photo of that onto the website. I went to get
a pair of shoes to pack, and I missed judged which rung of the
ladder was on and I crashed down on one of my on my right leg,
and so I'm walking around looking like an old lady that ought to be
using Facebook with a king and because yeah, it's ridiculous, just so you
know, so so so Steve can actually keep up with me now. But
Lucrisia, now that you've been there, you know, Steve A. Chris
has been stationed there abroad for a month. Now, this is what's your
first impression of Hungary? What do you think of it? Your taxi driver
maybe I don't know. You know, I had a lovely taxi driver,
very conservative guy. I wasn't a taxi, I was more of a like
a car service. And he wanted to take me around and show me Budapest.
He said, do you mind if we it's a little bit longer to
get to your place. I said no, that's fine, and so he
took me all around. He did you know you were married? Yeah?
Yeah. We talked about my husband, we talked about his girlfriend, I
guess, and kids. But he was very conservative and he was a little
careful how he said it to me at first, until he kind of encouraged
him. But it was very interesting, So that was fun. Other than
that. I've just been tired. You know how that goes for your first
twenty four hours. Yeah, she just got here yesterday, didn't He properly
complained about the American ambassador who tweets almost daily complaints about the Hungary's government,
which seems very undiplomatic to me. People here really outraged about it. He
actually, he said, I don't care what you do in the privacy of
your flat, but you know, anyway, Yes, so that was fun
and it's lovely here. Actually people seem very nice. Yeah we are.
We're trying to fix up with dinner with the Spanish lawyer i've met, who's
really interesting. He's really sound, very conservative. Didn't start out that way,
but working ten years at the European Union in Brussels changed his mind.
So he's full of great stories. But John, I mean, look,
you're the host. But on the other hand, you know, you've got
some news force on several fronts. One is I mean, seriously, the
riots in philadel close to where you live. I think, did you see
this or hearing you? Know? So, Actually, this is the funny
thing. I was in town the day of the riots, and that night
John Bolton was speaking in Philadelphia at the Union League, and so I went,
I took my mom, we went to watch this speech. So we
were actually two blocks from where this was happening at the time it was going
on. So you hear a lot of noise and the police have closed off
these, you know, the probably though maybe the wealthiest blocks in Philadelphia.
So, like I said, I was like, no big deal, It's
just another Monday night in Philadelphia. But we're like, why, you know,
why are the police blocking off all these city blocks? And then you
know, we discovered that there had been one of these flash Now we're used
to in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, you see those videos of people's
you know, jumping attacking Macy's and Nordstrom, but this really hasn't happened in
Philadelphia to the extent. So not only was there this attack on the nicest
shopping street, but I take it there were over eighty eighty attacks on liquor
stores, convenience stores, and the It's incredible. There's been these people.
Some of these people engaged in these riots video themselves while they're doing the riot
and posted on Instagram and the other social media sites that Lucretia uses. And
the most incredible things, Like one person is saying people got to eat,
people got to eat, while people are running out a foot locker with sneakers.
That's nothing to do with you know, there's not a class of starving,
hungry people. I could see, you know, this are like the
French Revolution in seventeen eighty nine. I could see breaking into a food store.
But the stores that were hit were Apple Apples. So the stores that
were hit, there's also interesting, these were not you know, subsistence stores.
One of Apple store. One was a lu Lu Lemon, which I
guess is a store for yoga pants and foot locker. And I give to
stop on the Lulu limit. Not only is it a store for yoga pants,
it's for yoga you know, three dollars worth, three dollars yoga pants
that they sell for like one hundred and fifty dollars, while while they are
trashing capitalism. Yeah, and so you know, given the you know,
the socioeconomic you know appeal of the places that hit, I thought they were
going to break in a whole Foods next. They're not even going to dagn
to break into a Starbucks. They're looking for a PiZZ Yeah. So that's
all that you know, I mean. But one lasting about the riots was
there was a protest earlier that day, a big protest because a police officer
who had shot an unarmed suspect but who the police thought was armed was a
judge refused to allow us prosecution to go forward that day. So it's a
big controversy in the city. So during the day there was a largely peaceful
protest in front of city Hall. But then at night, I think people
you went too far. Maybe they're different people than the rioters. Maybe they're
the same people who are in the I'm sorry, different people in the protests,
or maybe they're the same people participated in the protest, but I think
they definitely took advantage of it. The other sad thing, here's one last
observation. The other sad thing is they media interviewed people. So this is
a great shopping street, lots of restaurants, so there are people sitting in
all these restaurants eating outside. It was a warm day, and so they
interview people who were who watched, and they said to one person, did
you do anything? And the person shamefully says, I averted my eyes.
And they said why there's like, what am I supposed to do about it?
And then another person said, oh, this is terrible. Where were
the police? And then they said, well what did the police do when
they got there? And they said, well they let everybody go, oh
one marry on our times. Yeah, I mean, well they right,
I did. There's one police video that's making a lot of rounds on Twitter,
as you might expect, and then may be the only one. But
so the police really get into a fracus with several people and there's you know
a lot of beating down on each other. I will say that people were
to put it mildly resisting arrests or more than that. The other one was
is you know the Apple store. All the devices in the Apple Store,
as people may know, are disabled, So you steal them and take them
out of the store. You can't use them. So what do people do.
They just smashed them on the sidewalk. And so that's just nihilism at
work. That's that's not even thievery for profit one less. That's what the
one less policy issue is. I hate to see it, but the city
gets what it wants, and this is a city that has one of the
most progressive of the Hungarian funded prosecutors, right, because they are funded by
the George Sorrow's charitable network, and he so he when he as prosecutor,
he has said he's going to de emphasize property crimes and he has as as
a grounds for proscution. And even despite this, even despite rising crime rates,
historic murder rates, Philadelphia reelected them just last year, right, whereas
even San Francisco recall their Sorrows prosecutor exactly by the landslide. So I don't
get it. So anyway, sorry for going on so long, but it
really is all right, Yeah, yeah, this week was really really symbolic
of what's going on in our inner cities and what's going on with crime.
I heard it. Sorry, I'm just gonna quickly tell you, John,
I heard somebody talking about I think it was Jesse Waters as dry as I
was drying, talking to somebody in Seattle, and Jesse Waters kept saying,
how is it that I care more about what happens to the people of Seattle
than the people of Seattle do? And why, you know, why do
they keep But the argument, I don't remember who he was interviewing was that
they really go out of their way to make people afraid to be afraid to
be uh, what's the word critical even of that kind of activity of the
drugs, the homelessness, saluting that all the things going on in Seattle as
well, and that that it's the attempt to sort of mind control people and
to feeling guilty and accepting that is so great that people in less maybe in
the privacy of the voting booth, will not even admit to not liking the
situation. How you know, what what is that? Is that what you're
seeing in Philadelphia? I agree? Like, why are there no? Why
is it there a candidate coming forward to say I'm The only issue I'm running
on is we're store in law and order? Aren't you sick and tired?
Yeah? Basically the Emperor without clothes. Yeah, it's not basically Nixon's platform
in sixty should be said, though, I mean you mentioned Seattle. Uh,
Seattle actually elected a Republican district attorney last year with considerable support from some
prominent non crazy Democrats, and it's a woman. And my understanding is they
have actually reduced some crime in Seattle, but one thing. But look,
I mean, you still have the same stupid laws about homelessness that they can't
do much about. But one of the things they did was something incredibly old
fashioned. The DA got together with the police and said, you know,
we noticed that an awful lot of crimes are committed by the same people.
You know, one hundred people commit a thousand crimes something like that, And
they made a point of targeting those people and not letting them out on bail
and prosecuting them much more strictly than they have been doing. And people say,
gosh, who knew. I know. The New York Time set a
story a few months ago that said, good grief, it turns out six
hundred criminals that keep getting released over and over again are responsible for half the
crime. This has been known since the Reagan years, right that was the
Reagan Justice Department at first said you know, bet if we quantify this,
we'll find hyderpensti criminals are half the problem, and why don't we target them
for long sentences? And that was a big part of the reduction of crime.
And now we're really learning that lesson. And so there's a lot of
problems still to go in Seattle, but they've actually taken some steps and elected
a DA who's not insane Glad Lucretia mentioned Jesse Waters because Jesse Waters has made
one of the podcast hosts a nationwide star as a piece of scenery, because
if you haven't seen her hit, Heather McDonald was on Jesse Waters, which
has led to millions and millions of views and hits of the Pacific of the
Public Law and Policy Program video page at the Brookley Law School, because what
happened. What happened? We had Heather McDonald come, there was a protest,
and who was right next to Heather while Heather was defiantly attacking the protesters
and her actually very rational, measured way was one Steve Hayward. Steve,
So that was my job. But tell us about this because it also ties
in with the first star we're going to talk about, which is the collapse
of the original, the original gangster of the d EI movement, Ingram Kendy.
But before we get to that, Steve any thoughts he is viewed by
being viewed by millions and millions of Americans. Well, I guess I've been
overseas, so I've miss dulls well because right, oh no, this clip
of you and Heather talking under tack under fire for by Pope can't see the
protesters are off camera, but the protesters are saying being at Berkeley Law every
day is being subjected to racism. Yeah, and Heather saying back, you
are the most privileged class of people in the university if you are black.
The university is doing everything you can to help you, to admit you.
And Steve, you show no expression. But I know the viewers and listeners
of the Powerline podcast they really want to know, what were you thinking this
this clip? This clip has been viewed millions millions of times. I mean,
our fox had probably had you know, two million, three million viewers,
but then it's been has been, It's been downloaded and viewed millions of
times. Now. Yeah, I keep worrying John that you and I are
going to get a lot of blowbacks from that from the on campus. But
good thing we're both out of town right now. I guess. Look,
I mean, look on my job as the moderator, of course, and
also Heather is perfectly capable of defending herself and doesn't need any help from me.
So that's one reason I h I was mostly concerned, of course,
with making sure it did not spin out of control, which did not actually
everybody, if they watched the whole video, Steve actually successfully stopped any kind
of outbursts protests from breaking into Heather's right to speak. Yeah, yeah,
so I'm on the whole It's pretty pleased with not only the fact that it
has gotten a lot of attention, but that the event did come off without
blowing up and becoming a shout down or you know, the kind of things
that happened. You know, most recently Robbie George, who you know.
I know Robbie, but I think he's a pretty tame guy, well respected,
and he got shouted down at I think it was mary Washington College in
Maryland. And so far no consequences from this have happened to any of the
students from my understanding. But we'll see. As someone who's just sitting in
the audience enjoying that I was not the moderator, I have to say to
me, the good thing about these kinds of events, even with disruptions,
is I got the feeling this might have been the first time several of these
protesters and other people audience heard a measured, careful case against racial preferences.
They were and they were shocked, you know, they couldn't believe I hurt
people saying that can't be true. Are things that there's a statistics that how
they was saying. So even despite all the circus like atmosphere, I think
it is important to continue to do these kinds of events. Yeah, Campus,
I don't know what you had to show. One thing you can't see
for just the straight video feed is that there were the protesters I think were
outnumbered by people who said nothing, people who were there to listen and learn.
And you know, I noticed one of us over quite a number of
people came up to Heather with copies of her book, wanting her to sign
them. So I think there was an equally or maybe even larger group of
people in attendance who they may have been on the side of them, may
have been on her side, who knows, but I think that she made
an impression on them as well. Okay, so then the other. Let
me move to the other. I think news coming out of the universities with
the di business. I'll ask Lucresia her thoughts about this. Is the news
about Ibram Kendy at Boston University. So this the news here this week was
that Kendy had to lay off half the staff at his Lucretia will love this
title Center for Anti Racist Research at Boston University, and the university has opened
an inquiry now, an investigation into his writing of the place because, by
the way, but apparently employees themselves have claimed that there was poor pay,
employee exploitation, no research produced, all for forty three million dollars in donations,
Lucretia, what do you think of this? Is it? Is it
inevitable? Is he getting his just desserts? Or is this just an isolated
example of a bad apple. So tell me where we've seen any kind of
critical race theory BLM anti racism, Ingram Candy butthole professor, any of those
people who are ethical and above board and actually do anything to advance the interests
of the marginalized communities that they claim to be patronizing here And just give me
an example if you can of a single one. You know, every single
one of them is corrupt, every one of them ends up being you know,
sucking in huge amounts of corporate dollars. And then of course, you
know, we find out what's happened to that money, We find out,
you know that Ibram Kendy is not even capable of doing research, as you
put out. He I think that they claim that one paper that was co
authored by six other authors outside of the center was published during this entire forty
three million debacle. And you know, we have to listen to that scumbag
Kendy butthole professor lecture us about our white racism. I couldn't happen to a
nicer guy. Help they find that he embezzled at all, and they put
him in jail. But by the way, it's not just white racism he
complains about. He complains about blacks who he says they're racist, like a
John mccorder he called racist. Right, it's if you disagree with him,
you're a racist. That's the basic definition. Actually, it was our great
teacher Harry Jaffa forty years ago said racism in practice means any descent from the
program of the left and course, and Kendy says, you have to be
anti capitalist, right. But I think I mean, first of all,
just a little brief history about this. Kendy was the big star of this
whole scene at American University in Washington, and Boston University lured him away I
think back in twenty twenty or twenty nineteen, with the offers of more money.
Jack Dorsey was then still running Twitter, gave Kendy quite ostentatiously ten million
dollars in an unrestricted grant, says you gas go use it however you want.
And so you know, I predicted, and I, by the way,
John mcwarder and Glenn Rowley predicted that this was going to come to no
good end for Kendy and Boston University where by the way, Len Lowry taught
at Boston Unity University for many years before going to Brown where he is now.
So it happened a little quicker than I expected. But it's the fallout
from this that has been the most interesting in my mind. First of all,
the Left is rushing to disassociate themselves from Kendy. They are turning on
him with a ferocity that I did not see coming, saying, well,
really, he was never really a critical race theory scholar of any note.
He's that writer. People even say that, Oh yeah, they're saying that.
And it's really it's hilarious to watch this because there's all kinds of places
where you can see Kendy saying I'm you know, I'm shaped by critical race
theory and Richard Delgado and all those people. Second some of the attacks I
really liked the left or saying well, this shows when white liberals find a
black celebrity to be their front person for their own white liberal racist guilt.
I mean, it's unbelievable the explanations are coming up with. But there's been
some amazing stories that have come out of two or three brave faculty at Boston
University who dissented at the beginning and said, you know, this is really
pretty lightweight stuff to try and make anti racism and make Kendy the center of
the entire university's ethos as a mistake. And you know, administrators and some
faculty came down very hard on these people. Yet another data point in my
view that administrations are often worse than faculty at many universe and so Boston University
deserves all of disgrace they're going to get out of all this, I think,
by the way, it's one thing to say, I guess I'll will
modify what Lucretia said a little bit. To this extent, not only disagree,
but these activist centers never come to anything they're they're really pretty corrupt.
But look, there are thinkers over the years that you could at least engage
with who try to make serious arguments, like Derek Bell, who really originated
critic illegal theory, critical race theory, or Randall Kennedy or Henry Lewis Gates.
There's a couple of others who I think are they're sort of in the
past now, but they were never the rabble rousers. They didn't catch on
with the Al Sharpton's of the world. And see, that's what Kendy does
is Kendy gives an academic veneer to Al Sharpton. Is what's really going on.
So I think listeners ought to be treated to and maybe I'll drop it
at some point Glenn Lowry's famous rant on Kendy that's X rated out of that
way. And that's why, and I know you share this with me.
I take umbrage at the lionization of lightweight, empty suited, empty headed motherfuckers
like Abra Mexican who couldn't carry my book bad, who hasn't you, who
hasn't read no, no, I'm sorry, he hasn't read a fucking thing.
If you ask him what Nietzsche said he would have no idea. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry. He's an un serious, superficial, empty suited lightweight.
He's not our equal, not even close. I'm sorry. I can't
join you. You met me, I would exagin made me do it.
But you're offended by it, Well go ahead and be offended. I know
some of our listeners will, but they've got to hear it anyway. But
anyhow, that's my rant about Kendy. I do think there's a larger point
here that Lucretian I have been discussing and also arguing about in our usual friendly
way where we misunderstand each other. You know, we've talked a lot about
We've talked a lot about in previous episodes about the malpractice of Republicans on abortion.
You know, even when they saw the Dobb's decision coming, they seemed
to fall mute and not have any good arguments or strategies or tactics, and
are now paying for it politically, it appears. But likewise, I thought
for a long time that Republicans were miserable and arguing about equality, and they've
allowed people like Kendy and Left to swallow more and more ground and transform equality
into equity as we know, and they're just bad at it. And you
know, this is the party of Lincoln. Why is it so difficult for
Republicans to appropriate the understanding of equality that Lincoln had and updated and modified and
use it for our current times. It's a huge rhetorical failure, which is
in the end a huge intellectual failure. And that's what Lucretia tells me,
I'm not going far enough. Well, you're just oversimplifying it, that's all.
Well, that's my job, I know, but and it's a little
bit rough to do this on a podcast. But the point of the matter
is is that the reason equality is rejected by the left and by many many
many conservatives actually is that it's it's a limiting principle in the sense that equality
and you know, look at it as equality of all human beings in the
eyes of God, if if you want to look at it from that point
of view, that there are among the human species no natural rulers. That
what it does is it limits even social contract in democratic forms of government,
because it says you can't actually be an Imbram candy and you know, use
equality as a as a cudgel as a tool to beat people over the head
and say, just give me more money to pay for your sins. You
know, it's all these things that a proper understanding of equality means we recognize
the rights of every person. We recognize also that the lottery of life doesn't
make equality doesn't turn on quality of opportunity and equality of results, and that
gives us a certain sense of the limitations of politics and the need for prudence.
This is not fair to do in this sort of context, but that
what you see people like Ibram Kendy don't want is in fact any kind of
limitation on their corruption, any kind of limitation on them being the elites with
power and taking it away from everyone else. There's there's a whole lot of
reasons why people reject nature and reject the principle of human equality, but they
always have to do with the fact that a genuine commitment to the principle of
equality and natural rights would force people not to be the corrupt so bees that
they are. I'll leave it oversimplified like that. Well, that's actually pretty
I'll put it this way, John, If if more of our political leaders
had some instinct for arguing the way Lucretia just put it out. And there's
a lot too that we wouldn't be leaving it to just a legal question in
a legal domain. And so in other words, you know, we have
I think the Harvard case this is a huge win for the understanding of equal
protection of the law and the idea of equality in the fourteenth Amendment. But
we have, and well, we're kind of lucky that we got a court
aligned to finally get us to this point. And I think it's a mistake
to simply see it as a legal problem or see the judiciary as the primary
remedy for this problem. So I don't know, but John doesn't believe in
prudence. I'm not still not sure what it means other than cost benefit analysis.
But but actually, one last point that Lucretia made in the beginning of
her comments about Kendy, and I think gets raised by what you both just
said, is but do you think any of this is gonna can be controversy
and the scandal is going to slow down the d EI cause at all.
As Lucretia said, and as you both of you actually mentioned these, this
whole thing was funded by corporations, by wealthy people who feel guilty or who
wanted to make some donation to fix up their public images, I suppose.
And do you think this is going to cause any of these people, many
of them may be very well meaning actually, from stopping their support for this
this principle or this idea of equality that Lucrecia mentioned, which is corrupting our
institutions. You know, so we know that the BLM chick, well,
I don't. I can't be bothered to remember the name of some Cretan like
her. But the one that you know that had all the houses, Patricia
somebody or other, And I mean that has that never stopped corporate America from
dumping money for their guilty consciences over their white racism and exploitation into these really
corrupt organizations. What I think might make a difference, though, the work
that you're doing, John, the work that the Pacific Legal Foundation is doing,
the work that started with the Harvard case and seems to be continuing.
I saw that the question, you know, the big debate we had about
the service academies that you know, they're trying to push really hard that this
didn't apply to the service academies and they can get away with being racists still
based on, you know, the little footnote of Roberts in the Harvard case.
But we're seeing over and over and over again lawsuits being brought against corporations,
lawsuits being brought all over the place against people trying to get around the
impact of that decision. And I think that because of the kind of what
would you call is is in your face sort of fiance to the Supreme Court's
decision. I mean, they made a principal decision. We can argue the
finer points about, you know what, whether it should or shouldn't apply to
the service academies, but it was a principal decision, and the principle has
and you know me, I don't often praise Roberts, but this was a
principal decision he did a great job on and I think that, you know,
over time, that is going to make a difference in the same way
that the decision in the Bockey case, you know, forty five years ago,
whatever it was forty five years ago, actually made a difference in the
other direction. That brought us, yeah, brought us diversity, equity and
inclusion as its own uh Telo says, its own be all and end all
of social social justice, the ends of society. I guess you could say.
So that's what I think, John. I mean, I think that
you know America, so much of what happens in America is in fact the
function of the final legal decisions that are made, and because of that,
I think we'll see some progress. Maybe, yeah, I have. I
mean, I can see some grounds and the intermediate long term that it possibly
might force the d EI business into retreat. But one thing I'll skip overall
that takes you on to lay out. But one thing I would like to
see immediately is I'd like to see shareholder resolutions for big companies that gave money
to BLM, and the shareholder resolutions should call in the companies to do an
audit of how their money was spent by the organizations they gave money to.
JP Morgan and other big companies will oppose these resolutions and very likely defeat them,
but I still think it'd be worthwhile going to the annual meetings and standing
up and you know, reading what happened to BLM funds and embarrassing the executives
who voted for these things and wrote the checks. I think that's at least
worthwhile for theater, and you know, if you go back to it's thirty
years ago now, but you know, I remember Charled a little different,
but not entirely. Charlton Heston went to the Time Warner annual meeting, and
of course he's Charloton Heston, but he got up and read aloud the lyrics
to a rap record that one of the Time Warner labels had released, and
of course they're totally vile and foul, and Time Warners sold Interscope records a
week later, So it actually worked right, and I didn't stop rapping music
from being the cesspool that is. But still, I think it's one thing
to have lawsuits from our friends at Pacific Legal and elsewhere, but I think
some good old guerrilla theater and corporate boardrooms the Left's been doing this forever,
so why shouldn't our side do it too. That is a nice segue actually
into the law part of the show. So some things that have been happening.
One is in terms of hosts making news. I finished my expert testimony
this week in the John Eastman dispar trial that's still going on. That's one
piece of time. And then also this week we had the Supreme Court hand
down its curt grants after the summer, and the big news there is that
the Supreme Court is listening Lucresha, listening to Lucreshia, and is going to
finally, not finally, it's actually kind of early, but it's going to
start laying down some rules of the road for social media. They've taken cases
about whether the social media companies themselves are subject to the First Amendment. And
so let me just briefly describe the Eastman trial, since that was my participation
in the news cycle for this week. This is a case where, for
those who haven't been following, the State Bar of California seeks to kick John
Eastman out of the bar, effectively preventing him from making a living, on
the ground that the advice he gave President Trump only in the days leading up
to January sixth was so outside the scope of what lawyers would advise that it
was basically frivolous and violated professional standards of conduct. And now it's interesting my
participation, which went on for three days, I was on the stand for
three days both direct and I was like, what is this is? Oh
Jay trial? Am I am? I describing where the where the where the
magic bullet that killed Kennedy win. I mean three days. It took three
days. So it's interesting. There's two questions. One is what was the
legal vice John Eastman gave and where does it sit within the range of what
people think about this question? Who counts the electoral votes? Who decides when
there's a dispute over the legitimacy of electors? Is that the vice president is
that the Congress is at the Supreme Court. So that was one question,
That's what I was testifying about. And then there's a second question, which
the judge actually interesting repeatedly said is only for herself to decide, which is
whether that advice that John gave was frivolous, was so outside you know,
could someone reasonably hold his views given the facts as he knew them. So
Actually, the thing that I thought was interesting when I did the research for
the Larviewer article I wrote about this subject was that at the time Eastman gave
his advice in twenty twenty, there were several other scholars who actually had said,
maybe this is up to the vice president, not Congress, including a
couple of liberals I think become some very famous liberal professors like Bruce Ackerman at
Yale, even Larry Tribe at Harvard suggests that this is a possibility. And
the interesting thing Larry Tribe that said that, the same Larry Tribe that said
that Chump should be disqualified from office because he committed insurrection. Yes, yes,
in fact, we could talk about that talk and the connection there.
We probably don't have time to discuss today, But there is a connection there,
right, yes, Because the connection is Larry Tribe's research assistant, who
basically was working as an associate in the Tribe law firm that he operates informally,
is someone named Kenneth Cheeseboro. And Cheeseborough wrote some of the memos too
that are an issue here, and he's been indicted in Georgia for giving this
similar advice to the advice John gave. And this Cheeseboro fellow, who's,
as far as I could tell, for much of his career was a liberal
Democrat, you know, working with Larry Tribe on Larry Tribe's cases. He's
demanded and won the right to an early trial. So he's going to go
on trial in Georgia next month under George's speedy trial right. And the constitutions
speedy trial, right, and his case has been cut severed so it can
go early. So we're going to get an early preview actually of the Georgia
racketeering case against the Trump campaign and President Trump in just a few weeks because
of this, So that that is actually the link, and she's probably basically,
you know, his defense is going to be something along the lines of
what I was about to say, which is, back in Florida two thousand,
these guys were urging al Gore not to count the electoral votes from Florida
because al Gore was not just the losing candidate in two thousand, he was
a sitting vice president. And so right, these liberal theorists opened the door
to the arguments that then Trump and John Eastman made twenty years later. But
anyway, so one thing about the trial that was very interesting to me that
I right again hadn't thought of it discovered until I did the research for this
was it there were a number of scholars actually who took this view, some
very prominent years before the twenty twenty election dispute arose. And so if that's
the case to me, but I wasn't allowed to testify about the should the
court actually find this reasonable for John to believe. But how can you say
Eastman acted unreasonably or that his views or outside the beyond the pale, when
actually there were other scholars who had said long before twenty twenty that this was
in fact one of them says, this is the better view. Since one
thought I had, and then the second thought I was just I just don't
see why the bar state bars should stick their nose in to a case like
this when the criminal justice system and special counsels and Congress are all investigating it.
You know, state bars usually investigate you know, lawyers stealing money from
their clients or fullling asleep at trial. And now they the state bar is
going to get involved with high matters of state and interpretation of the Constitution,
where there are no judicial precedents, where there's no authorities. It's all really
about interpreting the original understanding of the Constitution. And they're going to say Eastman
was so outside the pale that his legal advice was actually a cover up.
I think it's just so far outside the competence of the bar. And as
I said when we first discussed this, I didn't get a chance to say
this though, because again the judge said, I'm not going to hear any
expert testimony about the professional standards. But again, I mean, I think,
does this fall beyond what I think of as the third Good Marshal rule?
Right? The NACP before Brown versus Education argued against all settled precedent,
all the decisions, all the laws in the South, to their credit,
But should the state bars have kicked third Good Marshal and all the NAACP lawyers
out of the bar? You weren't able to make that argument, John,
No, No, really, they stopped you because I assume you tried.
The judge said there was a rule I would not have been I would have
I don't know. I didn't want to risk sanctioned by this state bar judge.
But she said all questions of what she called tenability, which you know,
which means could a lawyer hold this view where for hers alone? And
so the actually Eastman's lawyer several times tried to figure out a way to get
me to say something about it, and every time the judge stopped them.
Cold. No. I mean, I'm no expert on these things, of
course, but it seems to me like that's the kind of decision of a
judge that would be a reversible error on appeal. I don't know. I
don't know either. This is all very strange because actually in California, the
State Bar is just a subsidiary of the State Supreme Court. So this will
ultimately be up to the California Supreme Court. And how awful are they right
now? While Steve, how would you I think the last appoint the so
the chief Justice who had been appointed by Governor Schorzeneger. So he was she
was the last. She was the last Republican appointed. I mean, if
you want to say, Sor Sorgener was a Republican appointing. So I think
now they're going to be all brown slash knew some appointees. Maybe there's I
think there is actually maybe one left. But it is a very liberal court.
And one of them, I mean, you know, one of those
a former colleague of mine from Berkeley. He put a Stanford professor on there
who just stepped down. But it's yeah, it's a very liberal court.
Yeah, oh boy, all right, so the new term opens, I
am I asking a question. Yeah, you know, no, I'm the
host. I'm sorry, I just I just throw that in there. But
one last, one last serious point about the Eastman trial too, is that
ultimately John will be able to appeal to the US Supreme Court and claim this
interferes with his free speech rights right that the state like California, is actually
punishing him for his point of view, not because of any real deviation professional
standards. So this is not the last we've heard. Oh no, John
Eastman, Which is the way John Eastman prefers it. Say you never hear
the last Eastman. I mean we all know that. I mean. The
other thing is it's all your guy's fault because you guys were in class with
him in seminars about constitutional interpretation. It would be thirty years ago. Why
didn't you fix this problem early on? Why am I there thirty years later
to fix your mistakes, to clean up after you guys. So let's turn
let me let's turn to this Supreme Court question, which is also a little
bit related because it doesn't evolve free speech. The Court has now decided to
take cases about social media and the First Amendment, but this time it's the
social media companies that are claiming their rights are to free speech. So this
is a case really prompted by Texas and Florida. Texas passed a law say,
and we talked about I think a little bit a few months ago.
Texas passed a law prohibiting social media companies from discriminating right taking down posts,
or blocking or de emphasizing speakers because of the content of their speech. Right.
And there's a related case that's also coming where the court is going to
have I think we'll have to hear this issue about how close can the government
and social media companies work together to take down speech? That case is really
about the COVID nineteen and for those who follow those, that's really about the
COVID nineteen speech restriction that actually Steve and I had a problem with when we
hosted Richard Epstein and try to put a video up of his questioning of the
lockdowns, and was refused by YouTube until we threatened more action. But let's
start with Lucresia. So, Lucresia, how do you think that the court's
going to think about this? How do you think the courts should decide the
social media companies are saying, we're just private actors. Private actors aren't covered
by the free speech Clause or the Bill of Rights generally we're allowed, you
know, as private actors were allowed to host whatever speech we want and host
kickoff speech we don't want. We're like, and they compare it to this,
We're like the private homeowner who says, I don't want your campaign signs
on my law, and I'm going to put up different campaign signs. You
think that's going to appeal to the justices. This is tough because so the
chairman of the FCCS trying to bring back net neutrality. Maybe we'll see them
try to bring back the fairness doctrine, but it all died from not having
that neutrality. The Internet has slowed incredibly over the last six years. Yes,
I know for those who for the listeners, that neutrality was this idea
the government was going to force the Internet companies like the Internet network companies like
Exfinity and someone to not favor some speech over others because they were favoring Netflix
and the streaming because it was demanding so much network time. So and then
the fairness doctrine, which La Crush also mentioned, was this discarded idea that
TV TV channels had to give equal time to both views on a political question.
So that was why back when we were kids. You would hear one
like a TV channel would actually have someone saying, here's our view, and
then they would invite someone else to come onto their own show and give the
opposite point of view. Sorry, Lucretian Steed, No, it's quite all
right. But so you know, I was against the fairness doctrine. I
thought it was a stupid doctrine based on the idea of that the bandwidth of
communications for television was limited, and therefore the government had to step in.
I know I'm oversimplifying bit, but the government had to step in and ensure
a certain and radios a certain amount of fairness in order to so that one
side one whatever one candidate would not dominate the finite air waves. Right as
stupid idea, Except that as stupid as that idea is, and as stupid
as the idea of the government regulating any of this, what we have is
a whole mismatch of things where a it's not that the number of Internet sites
or anything else like that is finite, but we're seeing more and more control
over more and more major aspects of the Internet, and the information and views
that are available over the Internet, controlled by Google and its algorithms controlled by
Facebook. I guess there's this thing called the Facebook out there that old people
use anyway. But so it really does get a bit confusing now the arguments.
The argument made in Missouri versus Board, Missouri versus Biden, of course,
was not that social media companies per se should be regulated, but that
in fact they had become in some ways the arm of the federal government,
and that, of course, is a clear violation. If you can prove
that, how you prove that, I'm not entirely sure. So you get
a lot of the problem with me answering your question outright, John, is
it gets pretty darn confusing. On the one hand, did we want the
government to be policing social media? Do we want antitrust laws policing social media
whatever it might be that they do, or uh, you know, do
we want people to just recognize how corrupt and malicious and all those bad adjectives
I can think of Google really is, and how biased and so forth,
and just look for alternatives. There was an article by Rachel Alexander today asking
for just that, saying it's almost She was saying, that's that's the one
that's been covering yours the Eastman trial testimony, John Rachel Alexander is saying,
Look, it's my job is so much harder than a liberal journalist because I
have to dig forever on the internet to find alternatives to the biased reporting that
comes over on the internet. But the real question is I think it's all
bad. But what's the answer. Is it more government regulation? And do
we want the Biden administration regulating it? Right? Yeah? Wellamoka refused here,
John, Is this case unrelated to the case Lucretia mentions the Missouri b
Biden, the one about the Biden administration working with social media companies to censor
reviews. Yeah, there's two different cases. So one is the Texas case.
It's a it's a statute that Texas passed saying that no social media company
can discriminate against the viewpoint of any of the people posting. So that's obviously,
oh kind of overlaps because I would think one of the primary people who
would be complaining about social media under that law are people like Ja Bodicharia or
Scott Atlas, who we now know because of Ela Musk releasing the Twitter files
as they're called, you know, Twitter deliberately either remove their posts or what
they call what they call them like, reduce their profile so that people will
bottle them, bottle them. Yes, would find find it harder to discover
their views, even though they were not specifically taken down. So that's different
than the second case that Lucretia is mostly focusing on, which is suppose the
social media companies were right, and they are private actors and they're allowed to
discriminate because they're not covered by the free speech clause. The second case,
involving Missouri versus Biden, is well, what happens if the government and private
actors are in such cohoots, right, they're cooperating so much, is there
some point at which the private actors are really just like the government. They're
just doing the government's bidding, and so they can't make the claim, oh,
we're just private actors. We don't get covered by the First Amendment,
because you wouldn't want, for example, the government to be able to escape
the free speech clause by just coercing other people to do its business and then
right get away with suppressing speech. That's really so in the second case,
it's very interesting there you've got a lot more facts because of because of this
District judge and his management of the trial. We learned that the White House
was talking to social media basically multiple times a day and identifying specific posts that
they wanted the government wanted, the Biden White House wanted removed or that,
you know, the claim was Anthony Fauci wanted removed because of spreading alleged disinformation
about COVID. So that judge and the appeals Court found actually that the government
was so involved with social media that social media basically was an arm of the
government and can't make this can't claim this defense. So they're two separate issues,
but they do overlap. To Steve, what are your thoughts? You
know, I don't I don't know. My thoughts are I've never I don't
know. I could see reasons why a private actor Twitter or somebody might not
want to be a conduit for like really vicious things like anti semitism, or
be a transmission vehicle for organizing mobs and rhymes, right, you know,
And apparently social media has been used to organize some of these flash mobs that
go and commit vandalism and so on the other hand, Hold, can I
just finish a question about that? There's a lot of bad faith going on
here. So the fairness doctrine is a bit different, but technologically it's a
similarity. But I'll skip over that. But there's a lot of bad faith
going on here by the people pushing for either net neutrality. I keep seeing
people say the fairness doctrine. We know it's revived, the fairness doctrine,
so we can throttle them disinformation from Fox News. And that's why I raised
my hand and say, you realize even the old fairness doctrine would never have
applied to Fox News. Lucretia explained why, but just to be clear,
the Supreme Court had upheld the fairness doctrine under challenge in the sixties. The
reasoning was, the public airwaves allocated by the government are scarce. But you
see cable TV, Internet, those media are not scarce. Cable TV is
not part of the spectrum allocated by the government, so that even if we
he had the old fairness doctrine, you would not affect Fox News or MSNBC
or anybody else at all. And so the ignorance behind that, what's the
impulse? They don't like Fox News, which still I find endlessly amusing.
You know, one News organization that departs from the conventional wisdom of ABC and
the Washington Post. Well that's my point, is even their kind of tame,
you know, if they've drawn on for God's sake. But the point
is if news they should have a show called Lucretia's Corner thirty minutes of thirty
minutes of Lucretia at the end of the day. Well, there we go.
Anyway, So I'm going to sit back and try and find out what's
going on. But it's I'm not question. I was just falling up on
your point, which was the just that it's just another thing that conservatives,
uh, you know, make what they want and they will wish they never
got it, just like with the end of abortion. Uh what if they
did win? And right, the states or the government, we're allowed to
regulate social media and no FIRSTS non discrimination standard on them under the first Is
this actually going to it's actually be good cricket services? I don't think so,
But you know I don't. I don't think so because I rarely think
that government interference government regulation is the answer to much of anything. So that's
a sort of bias in that direction, and I think it's worse in this
case, what I did want to ask you, this is going to be
a little bit, a little bit round about it. I guess we should
say a little twisted to get there. But when Steve said, you know
that private social media companies should be able to choose not to bring out voices
of anti Semitism, or you do drug cartels or what have you, other
terrorist activities, but of course they've done all that, what would be the
what would be the problem with a kind of liabelu no prior restraint, but
regulation of their speech after the fact, Like, for instance, if and
I know that that was a case not very long ago that we discussed having
to do with whether or not they could was it Facebook could be held liable
for a terrorist attack or something along those lines? But what if? What
if Congress would have passed a law saying that, you know, if you're
if you're responsible, say for censoring speech to that tried to get people to
vaccinate themselves in as the conspiracy theorists for a second, more and more people.
I just read an article a couple of minutes ago that said, if
you had the booster what seancologists is seeing, you know, just this massive
number of cancer cases where cancer is returning after the person has has a booster
shot for for COVID. If you could prove that there actually were dangers to
the COVID vaccine, could you hold Faceboo book accountable for listening to the government
and you know, throttling those kinds of conversations. Could you do and after
the fact thing which is, you know, in some people's minds different than
before the fact, censorship even of a private entity. You know, this
is why the companies, social media companies love this law called Section two thirty
rights. It essentially immunizes them from these libel lawsuits so long as they actually
undertake a program of removing violent, offensive, and indecent speech from their own
networks. But one I think point raised by Lucretia is if these cases go
forward and these social media companies become subject to free speech standards, that Section
two thirty deal may not be a good deal anymore for anybody, and you
might have to reopen the whole thing and refigure, rebargain out how libel law
is going to apply to these social media That might just be the next set
of cases at the court to hear. So let me move on, because
you know you would. This has to do with you guys being often hungry,
eating salami, drinking white wine. I think, if I remember correctly,
Hungry is known for its dessert wines. No, but but not,
it's according to Lucretia's hand motions, not its other wines. So no,
I'm not I'm not eating or drinking any of those things. John. Yeah,
if you hang around with Steve, you're gonna come on, I'm not
gonna hang around with that much. How if I can help it? So
I so it would give you give listeners a kind of the feeling that the
Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Oh, Steve just brought a bottle. What is
it? Is it the tokashi dessert wine from people? No, this is
this is not dessert wine. This is their dry local grape, the ferment
grape. They call it. Not like ferment, not ferment it's called and
it's a very make sweet dessert wines out of it. But I really like
it. I think it compares well to Savignon blanc. Tastes like grass.
No, not like in New Zealand Saviignon blanc. I hate New Zealand Saviigna.
We've had this discussion before, and I don't have some red wines.
I haven't opened this one yet, but that are also unique to hear.
And so I just top, well, that's not so, my boy.
Was that so far podcast has seen I think because of the weight of gravity
of it isn't hungary right now, almost seems a little detached what's going on
in DC. So I thought we would turn at the end to the things,
the topics that are burning up the podcast airwaves back here in the United
States, and that includes one the government is about to shut down tonight.
Yeah, and let me describe briefly why this is not really, at least
not yet a fight between the White House and the Republican House, which is
what you usually have shutdowns when we've had shutdowns in the past, and for
which Republicans for some reason are often blamed, going back all the way to
the gigwort shutdowns in the nineties against Bill Clinton. Here it seems to be
mostly an intra conservative fight where Speaker McCarthy has tried to get various spending bills
through and has been opposed in the last go around, where he tried to
just get a continuing resolution through to fund the government at its current levels.
Twenty Republicans joined with every Democrat to vote him down. So it seems like
this is more a fight between the Freedom Caucus the more conservative end of the
Republicans in the House, led by Matt Gates from Florida, who refused to
go along with any effort to keep the government open through these continuing resolutions through
these keep funding at the same levels. The vast majority of Republicans in the
House do want to keep funding the government, but it doesn't sound like McCarthy
can corral enough of his own Republicans to pass any spending bills. And so
the government is going to shut down. Let's see out here in about fourteen
hours, so I know I know when the creatius comment is going to be,
which is will anybody notice well what about that? What do you guys
think about this crazy government shutdown? We're going to suffer? And then second,
doesn't this always work against Republicans? I think the polling shows every time
there's been a government shutdown since gingrich On, Democratic president's polling has gone up
and Republican Congress's votings have support has gone down. Yeah, well, let
me make a comment on the substance, and a comment on the politics of
it. One is, is McCarthy not for not for the first time this
has happened recently, has plans where we're going to get back to regular order,
which is boring insider speak for saying we actually past twelve appropriation bills for
the twelve major departments of the federal government. I think the House has passed
four or five of them, so it's not even true that, and I
think they've been sent to the Senate, and so it's the Senate's problem now,
not the House's problem. And that will be a good thing if we
got back to doing budgeting a proper way. But the other thing is,
look, if the Democrats want to keep the government open, twenty of them
could vote for these or vote for the continuing resolution to keep it open for
another six weeks while they fight some more about the individual bills. Now,
the politics of this are interesting. You're right that in the past it usually
hurts Republicans. CNN has a poll out well, of course, but the
CNN has a poll out yesterday or today that shows that the largest plurality of
voters right now say they would blame Biden and the Democrats. They may have
figured out that. We'll look, the Democrats control the Senate, they control
the White House. Republicans have this tiny majority. It's not at all clear
that this works politically as it has in the past. Now, I've always
thought that one reason Republicans lose is that the president has an advantage of being
able to speak with one voice. That was true Bill Clinton and Obama,
and we're the president now who can't speak with any voice at all. Right,
I mean, I mean, I think these fights to work, you
know, Biden actually has to show up and sound forceful and coherent, and
right now he's not capable of doing that. So I don't know. I'm
not watching this closely because I'm not over there, but I have a sense
that this one might be a little different, and we'll just have to see
how this goes, because you know, all you know, if you want
to keep the government open and functioning, all Biden would have to do is
call twenty members Democratic members of the House and say, give the Republicans the
vote to get us going for another six weeks and we'd be back in business.
It's not a case of one party blocking the other party, or the
White House You're right, this internesting aspect among the Republicans is kind of interesting.
Now. Some of their demands I think are reasonable and others I'm not
so sure about. And that's where I'm sure Lucresia has lots of thoughts.
I don't care at this point what happens, because they defeated what was going
to be my favorite proposal, which was to drop the joint Chairman of the
Chief of Chief of Staff Mark Milly to a dollar, and the Diversity Equity
and Inclusion Officer to a dollar, and a whole bunch of other people.
I think that they voted on dropping Majorcus's pay to a dollar, which I
would be totally in favor of. Uh, you know, we're Steve is
always saying, well, you know, my demands are too great because things
don't work that way. Oh well, I hear, You're right. I
mean these It was a huge democratic tactic and fight back against Reagan people was
to zero out or reduce their salaries to a dollar. But Lucrecia, you're
in favor of the government shutdown or you support the Freedom Caucus in there.
Steve actually, Steve actually, you know, once the government funded and once
it opened, he just wants to make sure if it's not Democrats should be
blanked. I would if it wasn't going to be such a scam. But
everybody, every one of those scumbags, except for Matt Gatts who said he
he won't take a salary if there's a shutdown, every one of them will
get paid. Every lazy ass federal worker who's already working from home anyway,
watching porn all day long, we'll still get paid regardless. I did notice
that, just like the allah Obama, they're going to shut the national parks
down. Remember remember Obama and that crap about you know, putting up barriers
to parks that weren't even manned by park officials anyway. They'd stopped people from
going in there just to you know, put it, shove it in their
faces. And that's part of the reason why, you know, Republicans always
took a bad rap for it, and the idea that they put up with
that is anyway, I bitch enough about Republicans, so I wonder anymore,
but I don't care. I mean, we're going to give money to Ukraine.
The rest of our defense strategy is pretty lame right now, for the
most part, anyway, so I don't think it matters if we don't pay
soldiers. I did notice that because I have USAA, which is the bank
specifically for military people, that they will cover a loan an interest fry loan
for at least one paycheck for anybody who doesn't get a paycheck in the military
that banks with USAA. You know, those are the people that I feel
a little bit bad for. But I don't care if anybody at the d
o J doesn't get their paycheck. I don't care if anybody at the Food
FDA. I don't care if if Tony Fauci's eight million dollars a year security
detail has to shut down for a while. Yeah. So, I mean,
I know this sounds walky, but one last point about well, I
want you to say it's actually important to try and get back to sensible,
serious budgeting department by department, because not only can you then if you have
some guts, say let's reduce the salary my arch is to a dollar because
they're doing something, but it's where you also so when you pass these big
continuing resolutions, and I saw this with the COVID relief build that passed under
Biden, A couple of years ago. It's five or six thousand pages.
No one gets in to argue about the details. And that's where I found,
just looking at random, ten million dollars for gender studies programs in Pakistan,
three million dollar grant program from the State Department for Girls centered climate action.
And you know you won't ever get at those things in a continuing resolution.
And it's fine to say, well, we want to, you know,
do some of Ukrainate or some of the other things are trying to do
now, but a lot of work, that kind of work can only be
done if you actually get back to breaking the budget into discrete parts and having
hearings about them and going a line by line, department by department. It's
a lot of hard work, and no one's done it for years. But
otherwise you're going to keep giving the left in the government tons of money to
spend on their pet projects and their allies who support them in elections. So
that's why it's important to get back to doing this sensibly. End of brand.
Okay, Well, one more topic again which we haven't touched on yet,
which is was all the news back here was the second Republican primary debate.
I don't know how much of it you guys got to watch in Hungary.
I don't know. Maybe in Hungary it was national news being carried live
with I don't know, with the closed caption translations below. It was at
three am local time, so if they carried a lot, nobody was watching,
sort of like watching European soccer here in the United States. You know,
the Paul moves around. Nobody ever scores. It was at the end
of zero zero. But what did you guys say? You know, the
the immediate commentary was somehow if you look at the two debates, President Trump's
lead and the primaries is actually increased. By the end of the second debate
compared to the beginning of the first debate, no clear challenger has emerged,
which means that it seems everybody's going to stay in the race for longer,
and that actually the only barely did people talk about Trump or criticized Trump.
Most of the fire of the debate in the second was trained on Joe Biden.
And then the last thing, there's some who said the whole thing was
embarrassing because people talked over each other. I mean, after watching that debate,
I'm amazed at how polite Luchristian Steve are to each other. So what
I saw I didn't watch a debate either. What I saw after it was
the people making fun of the moderators, not just the twit from Univision,
Univision Division, Univision, but also Steve's little honey Danta, you know,
was horrible, absolutely horrible. Everything I read that the sort of typical want
to be pretend Republican conservative, and she was just horrendous. And she asked
stupid questions. Stupid to begin with, but even more stupid because those aren't
the kind of questions that she would have ever asked the other side. Anyway,
I do have to say that the moderator's got a much worse drubbing this
time than they did last time. With what it was. It was McCollum
and there, So there you go. Dana Prina again shows herself to be
a twit. Sorry, that's all I have to say about that. I
do want to talk about Diane Feinstein, whether it's on your list or not.
Yes, no, it was the last guy I was going to close
with was Dianne Feinstein passed away the age of ninety, being hailed by people
on both sides of the Aisle as being a moderate influential Senator and one of
the leading women to have ever served in the sense it, Lucretia, one,
are your thoughts about Diane Feinstein. I have to understand that she actually
cast a vote earlier in the day for some kind of some kind of acknowledgement
or accolade or something something for John McCain. That says an awful lot god
awful things she did before she died, you know, I mean John McCain,
I'm Feinstein. Whatever. There's not a lot of difference between the two
of them, and from the point of view of being adding to the to
the good of the nation, I'll just leave it at that. But you
can't. I don't. I won't speak ill of the dead. She you
know, she had an extraordinary life. There's no doubt about that. And
that's all I have to say. Well, I think the most important practical
aspect of this is not who the replacement might be. But is that not
important? Well, because here's why. Because I believe that without your publican
consent, they cannot replace her on the Judiciary Committee. And if Republicans hold
firm, it couldn't mean that Biden cannot confirm any more judges for the rest
of his first term in office. And you know that's a significant thing right
there. Well, we'll see. I'm sure Lucretia will expect Republicans to cave
and buckle on it. But we'll just have to see about that. But
second, didn't didn't didn't knew? Some say that he would appoint a black
woman. Black woman, yes, but he's been saying also that he wants
to point a caretaker and not pick sides and for the Democrats who are contesting
to the seat next year. So that's made Barbara Lee mad. Who's you
know Barbara Lee who is the congressman for Berkeley exactly, and so the only
person to vote against the use of force resolution after nine to eleven because I
think she thought nine to elevens are fault Yeah, probably. Yeah. She
is the only black woman running for right the seat, so shift by the
way, and the latest polling is by far and away ahead. Yeah,
that twenty percent of the vote with the chick Katie Porter right coming in a
distant second. Right, If Republicans can get their act together behind one candidate,
that person could possibly make the November ballot next year. In the jungle
primaries we have. So let's see, Well, Trump went to California to
get your act together, people and kick the liberals out. Okay, you
should say this about Feinstein. I think you know, she moved to the
left considerably, and you know, behaviors gratefully in the red Kavanaugh business and
so forth. But over the years, well, first of all, when
Barbara Boxer was the other senator, Feinstein was the moderate, and so on
particular issues like federal water policy toward Californias, she was pretty good. She
was against the MTB additive in California gasoline, which she ended up being absolutely
right about. And she was always the person you would call, not Boxer
if you had a real problem with the federal government, and she was usually
usually often on the right side of things. I could get off into some
very narrow issues like forest management, where she was on the side of,
you know, against the federal government and the environmentalists. You don't care about
any of that stuff, I actually do. And then there's a great clip
you can find of a bunch of kids coming into her office to complain about
the crimate crisis, and she well, I don't know this five or six
years ago. She beat him down pretty hard, saying, you know,
we put you in office. She said, how old are you? There's
and said sixteen, says you didn't vote for me anyway. He gave him
a really stern talking too. She wasn't having any this gretta Thunderberg nonsense.
And I actually thought that was pretty good. And I don't think it's because
she was old. Maybe she was a cranky old lady by then, sure,
but but still she's a disappearing breed amongst Democrat politicians and someone who was
relatively pro police because you know, I know, you know, she came
out became nationally prominent because somewhat, you know, a disgruntled former supervisor killed
the mayor and killed Harvey Milk supervisor. And she's, well, yeah,
I knew slightly sorry what that means. Yeah, see, this was a
defense. So this is a defense that has been raised by people who have
been prosecuted for capital murder, which is too many twinkies and had too much
sugar, and so we're acting out. I've always been skeptical that was really
that decisive factor. It's one of those urban legends is too good to check
out and debunk, but I'll just end with this. I knew Finstein's first
chief of staff slightly when she arrived in the Senate in one nineteen ninety year
whenever it was and Mike I free his last name now, but at that
time he was one of those centrist Democratic Leadership Council guys who was for markets
and you know, sensible regulation and I before he went off to work for
Einstein, I used to get along with the guy pretty well, talk to
him a lot, and so, uh, you know, I don't know,
I don't know. I saw a movie with Anette Binning playing Diane Feinstein,
who she was way more attractive than Dian Feinstein, but the guy who
played John Yu was way less attractive than John. There you go. At
least I didn't say that. The movie ended with John U and Diane Feinstein's
driving off in the sunset armor truly disgusting. I would have been perfect anyway.
Who do you think he's gonna pick? I just need to know what
I need some some predictions from you too, so that I can bring them
back and beat you over the head with him when you're wrong. Uh,
there's some speculation you might pick Karen Bass the new mayor of Los Angeles.
But I don't think she'd want to be just a placeholder. I would back
he doesn't get to decide they're a placeholder. I know that that's just it.
I see ye, that right. That's why I say if she were
appointed, I think she ended up running. So he's in a tough spot.
I feel so bad. I think I think he should appoint Barbara Lee.
I think as a sign of how strong the black political lobby is in
California, and which is behind Barbara Lee, and how vulnerable Newsom has made
himself politically, I think he'll a seat to their demands and a point bark
rely. Okay, So I think that brings us to the end of our
Hungary slash Philadelphia episode of the three Whiskey Happy Hour. I'm afraid because I
was running out with iPads at both hands too this week out of the Apple
Store. I didn't have time to find a Kamala Harris quote. But I
actually think she's been laying low this week. I haven't really seen any news
about her this week. Although we had Joe Biden out in California raising lots
of money and and I guess he stopped by Arizona two but didn't go to
the border. But I don't have a Kamala Harris. We appreciate you have
some I have some favorite headlines from the Babylon Bee. I do so first,
and we didn't even talk about this. I'm not exactly sure how it
all got going, but you know the thing about ancient Rome that, yeah,
I love this For those of you who haven't been following. Apparently men
think about the Roman Empire once a day at least, so I was like,
at least says he refuses to think about ancient Rome unless his wife is
present. Hold on, I lost it that. I got to get back
to the other one. It was you. I want to I actually want
to read from the last four Babylon Bees, after the last four or during
the last four government shutdowns, because they're funny. So the first, the
last one was in twenty two Congress warrants of government shut down if we don't
fund Ukraine by Friday. That was recently Nation in mourning as government shut down
averted. That's my favorite one from twenty twenty one report. Economic toll of
government shutdown almost as bad as economic toll of having a bloated federal government in
the first place. This one's kind of funny. Trump. Trump threatens government
shut down if Democrats don't explain the ending of Interstellar to him. Does anybody
even know what that means? Yeah? That crazy Christial one movie, he
asked you. Yeah. And there was the other one that I can't find
it. No, but it was a fine stein the Philadelphia one, the
one about just a bunch of hungry people stealing Oh yeah, you know,
starving people looking for bread, stealing iPads. And no, it's the Babylon
Bees, our newspaper record and chief profit of our time, since just about
everything they say comes true within days or weeks. And the other thing we
didn't talk about was the the Hitler guy in Canada. Oh, come on,
let's come on. Everybody knows that you greeenies are a bunch of nonsense.
Let's be honest here, Okay, An, sorry, Steve, do
you have any time? Done you ahead? John? You can send this
out on all capus off as usual. Okay, So always drink your whiskey.
Neat, let's go Brandon and Steve, God save the queen man and
drink your Hungarian wine. Chilled hu Ricochet joined the conversation