As there's more and more Palestine protest stuff happening over the course of this weekend
at various graduations across the country, including a walkout at Duke University where Jerry
Seinfeld was the commencement speaker and a bunch of Palestinian students start walking out when
he starts speaking. In spite of the fact I don't think Jerry Seinfeld has
other than being Jewish. I'm not sure that there is any possible connection between
Jerry Seinfeld and the Israel Gaza conflict. I don't feel like he's spoken about
it all that much. I think there was a Curbier Enthusiasm episode where Larry
David was conflicted between wanting to support Israel, but then he was dating an
extremely attractive Palestinian woman, and so that was his that was his gravy internal
complim But Jerry Seinfeld, though, has nothing to do with the Israel Palestine
conflict. And here in the middle of Duke's commencement exercises, as Seinfeld's getting
up to speak, all these students walk out. This led to the joke
that we found the identity of the organizer of the pro Palestine walk out at
the Duke commencement speech, and it's Kevin what's his name, Kevin Knight,
the guy who plays Newman Jerry's arch nemesis on the show. That he was,
you know, holding a Palestinian flag and leading people up. Keith Keith
Knight. Anyway, whatever, I made this comment, and the more I
think about it, the more I think it's true. Because I feel somewhat
ambivalent about the Israel Palestine conflict. I think, yes, Israel is just,
it is right and just for Israel to defend itself. I'm not sure
though, that I'm gung ho in agreement with every single thing that the Israelis
do. I think there are a lot of serious questions about conduct in the
midst of wartime. I have a lot of questions and concerns about Israeli policy.
More broadly. Of course, October seventh was horrible and unjustified and terrible
and evil, and Hamas Hamas is this completely evil and insane entity. But
I think there are real serious discussions to be had and we're having none of
them. Why Because basically, the Israel Palestine conflict has become just another American
left right fight. It's just another version of hip versus cops, some version
of hippies versus cops, which the George Floyd protests were kind of like that,
But the George Floyd the Black Lives Matters protests were able to sort of
position themselves in a way that was a little bit more universally sympathetic than the
Palestine protesters. The pro Palestinian protesters in America are just so loathsome, and
they so obviously blend into flat out anti Semitism, and they're so that they
display even if they're not anti Semitic, they just display all the most revolting
characteristics of modern day left wing you know, woke, intersectionality, whatever you
want to call it, culture down to the I was reading this thing that
Columbia, at Columbia University, which is like the epicenter of all this protest
stuff, they had a group of people going on a hunger strike, and
after ten days, their original group of hunger strikers passed the baton to another
group of hunger strikers because they were concerned about health risks to the hunger striker.
Well, of course you're concerned about health risks to hunger strikers. That's
the point of a hunger strike, you threaten that you're going to kill yourself
through food deprivation until someone does what you want. So if you just stop
the hunger strike when you don't get what you want and just pass it off
to someone else, then what's the point of hunger striking? Like they demonstrate
every loathsome entire titled historically like the historically ignorant, politically ignorant, entitled,
arrogant, every characteristic you could ever think of for why I don't want to
pay for this person's student loan, Like, every single aspect of that is
on display with these pro Palestinian protests. They're so loathsome so unsympathetic, even
to the point of like trying to you know, pretend like oh, making
like protesting illegally occupying buildings on campus and then demanding that the university facilitate what
they do. It's this unbelievable level of entitlement and arrogance, all with this
total lack of perspective about a group that they're protesting for. You know,
just the the the number of you know, queers for Palestine, LGBTQ plus
for Palestine. The Hamas would absolutely murder these people. The idea that Hamas,
these ultra fundamentalist, radical Muslims who want to impose Sharia law. They
would execute every single one of these people if they were just normal citizens living
in Gaza trying to live out their lives like this, whether for homosexuality,
for this, for that, like the the the idea that Hamas is some
sort of natural ally to their struggle or that they and Hamas are akin in
some way is completely absurd, and all of it has to do it's all
centered around For these American protesters, it's all centered around anti colonialism, which
is this huge value that has to be preserved within liberal academia anti colonialism.
Colonialism is bad. People who engage in colonialism are bad and well correction,
not colonialism, Western colonialism, Western colonialism. That and usually I think what
they're more upset about is in the form of ideology, culture, religion,
that kind of colonialism. The idea of quote, indigenous cultures being overrun by
Christianity, the idea of indigenous peoples being having their culture taking away and having
it be replaced with and essentially European or Western culture. That's what they don't
like. And so they see the existence of the state of Israel as such
attempt that there were several Palestinians in nineteen forty eight who were displaced from their
homes, and that several Muslims. Although the concept of quote Palestine doesn't really
make sense. It wasn't ever its own like separate political entity. It was
either part of the Ottoman Empire or part of Jordan or part of you know,
there was there was not one single like country in this region on the
west bank of the Jordan River or the Gaza strip that was just Palestine.
But people who lived in this region who were removed from their home nineteen forty
eight, and that is an unforgivable sin that results in the state of Israel
just should not exist and we cannot get over it because it was a Western
act of colonialism. We don't mind Eastern colonialism. We don't mind that Azerbaijan
is actively conquering Armenia, Armenian land that we don't care as much about.
And even for these young liberals, I don't think they really care about the
Russia Ukraine conflict that much like honestly, the Russia Ukraine thing, it's it's
much more of a baby boomer liberal crowd that supports that. But these aoc
age folks, that's not really revn their engines. This is what they care
about. Why because it's perceived as an indigenous, brown skinned culture, because
we have to view things through the lens of American racial politics, fighting against
a Western imperial oppressor, even though that Western imperial oppressor is in this case
Jewish. So that's what's animating them. But that's the American conflict behind this
American internal culture. And you know, again, it's descended in America into
a hippies versus cops thing, just another iteration of the same thing, a
less popular iteration of Black Lives Matter or the Women's March or whatever. It's
all just an another example of hippies versus cops. Behind that, though,
is like a real conflict where there are real serious questions going on. Should
the United States provide deadly military funding for the Israelis? I mean, I
would be okay if people said I support Israel's cause, I support Israel's military
operations. Okay, why do we have to give them tens of billions of
dollars of military funding? Ye? Are we able as a country anymore just
to say, you know what, we're glad you guys are fighting that war.
Keep it up, moral support at a baby. We can't just do
that. We have to give you tens of billions of dollars. So there's
questions about that. There's questions about now what seems to be what is the
major controversy du jour is that Congress having authorized giving billions of dollars for military
aid to Israel, the Biden administration is refusing to hand it over because Israel
wants to go into this one section of Gaza called Rafa to sort of do
a final offensive push against Hamas. So the money is being held up.
Now. I think you can raise some real questions about President Biden. And
in the next segment I think I'll draw a comparison here to what happened under
Donald Trump with military funding authorized by Congress and slowing up the delivery of it
so that there are a lot of actually really serious conflicts. But I think,
unfortunately, unfortunately it has devolved. This whole thing has just evolved into
another hippies versus cops argument, where I mean, I guess I'm grateful that
in this iteration of hippies versus cops, the hippies look bad. But at
the same time, we've got a horrible war going on with America now invested
with billions and billions of dollars in it. When we return the similarities between
Trump's first Ukraine impeachment and what Biden is doing now. Next on the John
Girardi Show, let me take you all back in time to remind you about
Donald Trump's first impeachment. Ah, it's like a first kiss. You never
forget where you were when it happened, except with the Trump first impeachment you
kind of do because it was sort of an unremarkable thing. Here's here's basically
what happened with Trump's first impeachment. The Trump administration, authorized by Congress,
presumably, was going to give military weaponry to the Ukrainians. This was I
think in twenty eighteen Biden is excuse me. Donald Trump communicates with Zelenski,
the president of Ukraine, to say, Hey, I want to give you
this military aid, but could you look into this whole thing with Hunter Biden
for me, and seems to indicate that he's going to make the delivery of
this military funding dependent on Ukraine investigating Hunter Biden. Ultimately, though he didn't
make the military funding dependent on Ukraine investigating Hunter Biden, he gives Ukraine the
military funding. A whistleblower blows the whistle on this conversation between Trump and Zelenski,
which is troubling in itself, Like, if the President of the United
States can't have a candid conversation with a foreign military leader without a fear that
it's going to get leaked to the press, that doesn't seem like a great
situation for the sake of international diplomacy and the president's interactions with other kinds of
world leaders. This gets leaked and the press explodes. The press is sure
that this is a campaign finance violation at the very and this is the first
thing they run with, which is which strikes me is bizarre. Well,
at the very least the first thing they say, so, this is wildly
inappropriate Donald Trump making the delivery of military a dependent on a personal vendetta,
a personal political vendetta against Joe Biden because he might run for president. And
so people on the left try to go through, well, what did he
do that was illegal here, and they come to realize there really wasn't anything
illegal. First they say, well, it's a campaign finance violation. That
was the first thing they ran with, and everyone was convinced that he violated
campaign finance law by asking Zelenski to investigate whether the Hunter Biden situation in spite
of the fact that Zelenski never did, and I guess an investigation of Hunter
Biden, in their twisted thinking, would count as basically an in kind campaign
donation that was not reported. Well, that's not how it works. That's
not how campaign finance violations work. Campaign finance violations work. If you pay
for a bunch of political attack ads against your opponent and you don't report it
as a campaign finance expense, right, that's a campaign finance violation activity that
only exists for the purpose of a political campaign. In fairness, one of
the things we've seen is that Hunter Biden was probably doing all kinds of dirty
stuff, sleazy stuff. There's all kinds of allegations of illegal to shady stuff
that Hunter slash Joe might have been doing, Failure to register as a foreign
agent, like all kinds of stuff that would have been maybe legitimate for the
President of the United States to ask about. But never mind that. So
they go from campaign finance violation then they say it was bribery, the Trump
was, but that doesn't work because it doesn't fall into the category of what
a bribe is under the federal bribery Statute. Then they said, well,
it was a quid pro quo, a quid pro quo Trump was gonna give
them military aid if they did something else. Well, quid pro quos are
not in and of themselves illegal. That that's not an illegal thing that happens
all. That's what most of American foreign relations are. We will do this
nice thing for you if you do this nice thing for us. We will
do this if you help us advance our interests here. So they went through
this whole mental exercise of trying to figure out, well, this seems sleazy,
but how do we blame Trump for it? And eventually they just decide
to impeach him, which, in fairness, you can impeach and convict someone
for I don't know, looking at you cross the constitution. It leaves the
constitution, leaves the power of impeachment and conviction in the political realm. It's
in the hand of the political branches of government. It's a political question,
not a legal question. You don't have to meet a certain standard of proof.
You don't have to impeach and convict someone of a high crime or misdemeanor.
Those things are suggested in the Constitution. But the structure is basically,
you're impeached when a majority of the House impeaches you. You are convicted when
two thirds of the Senate convicts you. That's it. That's the raw reality,
which is based in the structure of how the Constitution sets it up.
That's an impeachable offense. Well, it's an impeachable offense if a majority of
the House can impeach you for it. That's what's an impeachable offense. And
so the House of Representatives, the Democrat controlled House of Representatives, impeach Donald
Trump for quote abuse of power because they couldn't find an actual statute he had
violated, an actual law he had transgressed. Is Joe Biden basically doing the
same thing right now? Joe Biden is holding up the delivery of congressionally authorized
military funding for Israel. He is doing so allegedly because he does not want
the Israelis to pursue their strategy in I think it's Rafa, a certain district
of Gaza. Is he abusing his power? Why is he doing this.
Is he doing this because he's afraid of losing Michigan and Minnesota. Don't think
it's outside the realm of the possible. I think if Biden came out and
very clearly stated what authority he has over this and his reasons for slowing this
down, and said, hey, I think, hey, the United States
doesn't want this weaponry used to kill this many civilians, so I'm going to
slow this down, I'd respect him for it. But Biden doesn't have that
kind of energy and ability to express what he's doing. So here's the thing.
I mean, I don't know that I inherently disagree with the idea of
heavily conditioning the delivery of US weaponry to a foreign country. I absolutely think
we should, although frankly, maybe if Biden wanted it this heavily conditioned,
he would have put those conditions into the bill that was in front of Congress
before he signed it. But here's the thing, though, it seems as
though Biden, with a lot of this, is trying to walk this tightrope
between wanting to support Israel and look like a normal politician, but on the
other because really our Israel Palestine debate is between hippies supporting Palestine and cops supporting
Israel. He wants to seem like a cop so that the majority of Americans
support him, but he can't alienate the hippies too much. If he alienates
the hippies too much, he might lose Michigan, he might lose Minnesota,
which have large Muslim populations that are very sympathetic to Palestine, and he might
lose a bunch of college aged voters all over the country. When we return,
I'll talk about the ridiculousness of Donald Trump's trial in Manhattan, try to
give you a little legal analysis. That is next on the John Girardi Show.
I want to go through the Trump trial a little bit, just because
there have been more absurd things happening in it, and again just to reframe
it. I want to reframe it for all of you because some of you
might still have the idea that this is a hush money case. That's how
it's constantly referred to, and you might think from the testimony that the judge
is allowing in the trial that this is about hush money. Just last week,
Stormy Daniels was led into the courtroom to testify about her affair with Donald
Trump, and that might make you think that this case was about hush money,
whether Trump gave this woman hush money. I'm here to tell you that
that's not actually what's charged in the case at all, and frankly, it
wouldn't be because hush money is not illegal. Let me repeat that, hush
money is not illegal. Non disclosure agreements, for better or for worse,
are not illegal. They just are not, and it's not what Trump was
charged with. Here's what Trump was charged with. I will lay out a
little bit of the timeline. Trump allegedly has this affair with Stormy Daniels.
She wants to go public with it during the twenty sixteen campaign. Trump would
rather her not. There are possibly many different reasons why he would rather not,
maybe because the allegation in question is that they started having an affair right
after his son Baron was born, a lot of reasons why certainly would have
been embarrassing for him in the election. They agree that she will receive one
hundred and thirty thousand bucks if she signs a non disclosure agreement. Not illegal,
But isn't it a campaign finance violation if you don't report it? That's
the other argument that's made, Well, no, not really. Campaign finance
only gets involved when you're talking about expenditures for things that are clearly campaign related
and you're not reporting them. Okay, television advertisements for a campaign, mailers
for a campaign, expenditures that do not exist, but for the existence of
a campaign anyway, this is almost certainly not a campaign finance violation. And
how do I know this, Well, the Federal Elections Commission, which has
an easier time of proving elections violations because they only need to prove things through
a civil standard. They don't need to prove that you did things beyond a
reasonable doubt. They just have to prove that you did something wrong by the
preponderance of the evidence to find you civilly. They're not criminally convicting you.
They investigated this whole thing and didn't charge Trump with anything. So here we
have a non disclosure agreement, not illegal, not a campaign finance violation.
Trump agrees to it. Over the course of twenty seventeen, Trump engages in
the alleged criminal conflict, the alleged criminal conduct that is at issue in his
trial. This is actually what he's being charged with, not with agreeing to
a non disclosure agreement, not with giving this woman money, not with not
you know, having Michael Cohen be the middleman for paying this. Cohen took
out the money himself, paid Stormy Daniels himself, and then Trump reimbursed him.
None of this is illegal. The alleged criminal action was Trump listing this
in his business records, his payments to Cohen, which were actually which was
basically repayment of a loan. Right, That's what Trump's payments to Cohen were.
Coen paid Daniels on Trump's behalf, and Trump needs to reimburse him.
This is payment of a loan. Trump lists the payments to Cohen not as
repayment of a loan. He lists it as ongoing legal services. That is
the crime falsification of business records. That Trump listed this as paying for attorney's
fees, paying an attorney retainer, when actually this was repayment of a loan.
Now, the New York statute that this allegedly violates, I'm not even
sure that Trump is violating it. Let me read it for you. Section
one seventy five point zero five of New York's penal law Falsification of business records
with intent. So Uh, this is a crime. Prosecutors must prove that
the accused with intent to defraud causes a false entry to be made in the
business records of an enterprise with intent to defraud. So it's not just having
something wrong in your books, it's having something wrong in your books with the
intent to defraud. Intent to defraud. These are important words that you have
to kind of understand. So intent means that you are specifically intending that the
evil criminal outcome happened. Trump is doing these business records with a specific intent
that fraud occur. However, here's the problem. Who is being defrauded.
Fraud doesn't just mean anything that's bad. Fraud generally a good way of thinking.
When you hear fraud, think of these words. When you hear the
word fraud, the thing you should think of is lying for money. That's
basically what fraud means, lying for money. Okay, if my five year
old tells me that he brushed his teeth when he didn't, I can't scream
at him fraud. Jack Girardi, you are a fraud, sir. No,
he hasn't engaged in fraud. He just lied. He's not earning money
as a result of it. Okay. Now, if Jack Girardi represents himself
as a healthcare provider who's reimbursed, who needs reimbursement from medical for patients,
and he doesn't actually have a medical practice, and he's not actually taking care
of any patients, and he's submitting requests for reimbursements from medical and getting money
from the state, but he's lying to get money, that is fraud.
Okay. So not all falsehood is fraud. So who was being bilked out
of money as a result of Trump characterizing this as attorney's fees rather than loan
repayment. Not the government. The government actually got more tax revenue out of
this. Why, well, if you loan me fifty thousand dollars and I
pay you back within the calendar year, well my repayment of fifty thousand dollars
back for you, you're not taxed for that fifty thousand dollars. You don't
have to pay the irs like forty percent, you know, the top marginal
tax rate plus California taxes on loan repayment. Loan repayment money coming back to
you is not tax the same way that normal income is. So Cohen said
to Trump, Hey, if you're if you're giving me this money as legal
fees, you need to give me more because I have to pay tax on
this. And that's what Trump did. He gave Cohen more. So,
Actually, the taxpayers the government got off better in this deal because all this
money that Trump was giving Cohen that he if it had just been loan repayment,
the government wouldn't have gotten any of it. Trump actually wound up giving
Cohen much more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I think it was
almost double so that Cohen could pay his taxes. So who was defrauded here?
Who was lied to for money? Nobody? And that's the basics of
it. You can say all day up and down, and I'll agree with
you that Donald Trump is a sleeze ball. That Donald Trump jeets on his
wife wives. Okay, I'll concede that point. His relationship with Stormy Daniels
was sleezy, his relationship with Michael Cohen was sleezy. His relationship with the
guy who publishes the National Inquirer is sleezy. We're basically all this stuff is
sleep NDA's or sleez Slee's away. Totally agree with you all of this is
sleazy. I just don't think it's illegal. I just don't think he's committed
a criminal act for which he should be convicted. And I think it is
absurdly politicized that this whole trial is absurdly politicized. This judge has ruled against
Donald Trump on like every single issue possible. He has allowed in evidence that
has nothing to do with the central case, which is in twenty seventeen,
after the election is over. Did Trump engage in fraudulent bookkeeping practices? No,
I just don't think he did well. Or he had bookkeeping practices that
were maybe inaccurate, but they certainly weren't bilking anyone out of money. And
that's the end of it. The judge has allowed in all this testament Stormy
daniels testimony, her testimony about whether the details of her and Trump's sexual liaison
has nothing to do with what is charged, namely, did you falsify business
records in a fraudulent with fraudulent intent? That was after his relationship with Stormy
Daniels. That had nothing to do with his relationship with Stormy Daniels. It
was long after the fact. It really, it isn't even connected to the
agreement to pay her money. It was how Trump was writing down his records
for repaying Cohen, for paying her money. The judge has allowed in all
this evidence that has nothing to do with the central thing. And what is
it all about. Really? They are angry that Donald Trump won the election.
They think that somehow, if the Stormy Daniels story had come out,
that Trump would have lost the twenty sixteen election. And they're never ever going
to get over it. They're never going to get to go over the fact
that Donald Trump won an election. That's all it is. When we return,
I put the dirt on any conservative support for the Robert Kennedy Junior campaign
that's next on the John Groardy Show. I've noticed this thing of a decent
number of conservatives, not a large number, a decent number flirting with anyway
Robert Kennedy Junior saying, you know that Robert Kennedy, He's got a lot
to say. And I've just been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I've been waiting for the other crazy shoe to drop because fundamentally he's a Kennedy
and I fundamentally just don't trust him. I feel like a lot of this
is a a bit. I think he seems to genuinely care about the vaccine
issues, and so in the post COVID like anti vaccine, the era where
COVID related issues were really animating everybody, Kennedy seemed like, Oh, this
is the guy, this guy really has something to say. Well, we're
in this sort of COVID doesn't really still matter anymore quite as much. I
think we need to learn from the disastrous lessons of the COVID response. I
think, frankly, I thought it should have been more of a point during
the Republican primary that Trump actually wasn't all that great in a lot of his
COVID response stuff, and actually Ron de Santis was much better. But whatever
Republicans decided, we're sticking with Trump. Biden was obviously terrible the whole time.
So Kennedy sort of stood out for all that. Well, Kennedy came
out last week and he's been flip flopping on specifically the issue of abortion.
At one point, like six months ago, he seemed to indicate that he
would support federal legislation banning abortion after like a certain maybe the ten or fifteen
week point in pregnancy, which I was shocked. I was like, wow,
that would be amazing if if you support that, I'd have to like
actually really seriously like reconsider my like where I stand in the world as far
as here's someone who actually now seemingly is supporting a more vigorous pro life round
of policies than Donald Trump. Well, the other shoe dropped one was a
story that RFK had some kind of worm in his brain. Don't know how
that would work. And also, maybe not unrelated, he announced that he's
totally supportive of legal abortion, even up to the point of birth, a
position that was so radical that the woman who is running as his running mate
his vice presidential nominee, learned about it on a podcast and was completely taken
aback. So rest in peace to conservatives supporting the RFK Junior campaign. It
was fun while it lasted. That'll do it for John Girardi Show, See
you next time on Power Talk