Speaker 1: This was a fascinating story, and I didn't get time
Speaker 1: to address it last week. But it has to do
Speaker 1: with Kamala Harris as the borders are, and I think
Speaker 1: that the commentariat around it is kind of getting it wrong,
Speaker 1: both on the left and the right. A little bit
Speaker 1: on the right is getting it a little bit inaccurate.
Speaker 1: The commentariat on the left is to basically try to
Speaker 1: disappear the reality of Harris's involvement in the border and
Speaker 1: make it appear as if the relative stability at the border,
Speaker 1: as compared with the first three and a half years
Speaker 1: of the Biden ministry or the first three years of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, all the border's fine. See, Biden got
Speaker 1: it all under control after making it out of control
Speaker 1: as soon as he came into office. So Harris, no,
Speaker 1: Harris was doing fine. She was never the borders are.
Speaker 1: And we had this silly fight last week for about
Speaker 1: three or four days where everyone was peeing their pants
Speaker 1: over the notion of whether or not Kamala Harris was
Speaker 1: the borders Zar, which is such as she was never
Speaker 1: the borders Zar, and you had these outlets trianngrily insisting
Speaker 1: that she was never the borders are in spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that they had written articles calling her the
Speaker 1: border Zar. And it's such a silly thing to argue
Speaker 1: about because clearly President Biden designated that he was going
Speaker 1: to put her in charge of a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: relating to the immigration problem that was emerging in the
Speaker 1: first year of his presidency. And czar is not within
Speaker 1: American government some formal title. It is an informal moniker
Speaker 1: that the press puts on a person when they've been
Speaker 1: designated in some way to be the point person, usually
Speaker 1: for a presidential administration to tackle problem X, Y or Z.
Speaker 1: So was she formally appointed the czar? No, there's no
Speaker 1: formal appointment process for someone to be quote the borders are.
Speaker 1: But President Biden designated that he was going to make
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris ort of this point person for this and
Speaker 1: it's that designation that I want to talk about. I
Speaker 1: read this fascinating piece from National Review. You can read
Speaker 1: it at my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresno
Speaker 1: Johnny at Fresno Johnny. It's written by Noah Rothman. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting the ways in which Biden clearly did not
Speaker 1: like Harris. And it's been my thesis all along. Biden
Speaker 1: never wanted to pick Kamala Harris as his vice president.
Speaker 1: He was forced to do so because Democrats felt pressure
Speaker 1: to have their ticket include someone who wasn't an old
Speaker 1: white guy, and because the donors liked Harris. Harris comes
Speaker 1: out of California, she comes out of northern California. She
Speaker 1: comes out of the Willie Brown magic circle of donors.
Speaker 1: She was connected with Silicon Valley people. Donors loved Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: and they clearly foisted her upon Joe Biden. Biden had
Speaker 1: no reason to like Harris. They had never worked together
Speaker 1: their time in government, never overlapped. Biden leaves the vice
Speaker 1: presidency when she starts in the US Senate, so they
Speaker 1: have no history of working together in the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: in the Senate, anywhere. And in fact, Harris tried in
Speaker 1: a ham fisted way to call Joe Biden a racist
Speaker 1: to his face during the debate, which apparently is something
Speaker 1: that Jill Biden seems like a woman who holds a grudge,
Speaker 1: never forgot, and never liked Harris. So what seems to
Speaker 1: have happened is that Biden gets saddled with Harris drags
Speaker 1: her across the finish line to win the election, and
Speaker 1: then he proceeds to give her sort of ownership and
Speaker 1: responsibility for problems he knows are not solvable, including the
Speaker 1: border that basically Biden so little regarded her and so
Speaker 1: disdained her, so disdained her ability or lack of ability
Speaker 1: as a politician and as an executive, that he just
Speaker 1: sort of dumped several of his problems into her portfolio
Speaker 1: of stuff she worked on, and basically things that he
Speaker 1: knew were not really solvable, he would sort of assign
Speaker 1: to her so that she would take the blame and
Speaker 1: look like an idiot. So here's the piece. Harris's record
Speaker 1: is a story both of incompetence and of how little
Speaker 1: faith her own allies have in her political acumen and
Speaker 1: capabilities as an executive. Since Joe Biden announced his intention
Speaker 1: to withdraw from American public life at the end of
Speaker 1: his term, the Trump campaign and its Republican allies have
Speaker 1: focused on their new opponents subpar performance handling border security.
Speaker 1: The GOP strategy makes sense for all the media's efforts
Speaker 1: to revise or even erase history. Harris was in function,
Speaker 1: if not title, although even that, like title, no one
Speaker 1: gets formally designated with this title in function, if not title,
Speaker 1: was the Biden administration's Borders Zar. And yet the Republican
Speaker 1: Party's approach to this messaging campaign has so far been
Speaker 1: to frame Harris as a fully empowered functionary who nevertheless
Speaker 1: bungled her charge. In reality, the Biden administration set Harris
Speaker 1: up to fail as a way of providing the president
Speaker 1: cover for his own dismal mishandling of the border. It
Speaker 1: was only two months after Biden's inauguration, with all Trump's
Speaker 1: COVID era restrictions still in place, that encounters between migrants
Speaker 1: and patrol agents exploded at the US Mexico border, soon
Speaker 1: to eclipse even pre pandemic highs. That same month, the
Speaker 1: President tapped his vice president not to bring the crisis
Speaker 1: under control, but to take the blame for it. So
Speaker 1: here's the critical part. Harris was not empowered to oversee
Speaker 1: the administration's policing efforts on the border. So these are
Speaker 1: all the things that Biden didn't actually task Harris with.
Speaker 1: She wasn't allowed to oversee policing efforts. She wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to spearhead negotiations on Capitol Hill for Congress to pass
Speaker 1: new laws regulating asylum. She wasn't allowed to negotiate deportation
Speaker 1: with countries beyond Mexico's borders from which most of the
Speaker 1: migrants were coming. So again a lot of this at
Speaker 1: that time, it was not Mexican migration. It was coming
Speaker 1: from Central American countries south of Mexico. She was charged.
Speaker 1: Here's the actual tasks she was given. She was charged with, quote,
Speaker 1: talking to the leaders of Mexico and the nations that
Speaker 1: make up Central America's northern triangle to address quote the
Speaker 1: root causes of migration, gang violence, and trafficking and cartels,
Speaker 1: as the president said at the time, but also natural
Speaker 1: disasters hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Rothman, in his piece writes,
Speaker 1: if the vice president had the power to mitigate phenomena
Speaker 1: like that, she'd be overqualified to merely preside over the Senate.
Speaker 1: In fact, as he writes, Harris wasn't granted any power
Speaker 1: at all, and she treated the role with which she'd
Speaker 1: been saddled like the burden that it was. Within weeks,
Speaker 1: her conspicuous failure to even visit the border she'd been
Speaker 1: tasked overseas became a political liability, won her lack of
Speaker 1: political talent only made worse. But within a few months
Speaker 1: of her accession to the role, Harris started producing the
Speaker 1: only results she could. She got a commitment from twelve
Speaker 1: private companies to quote invest in Central America. She was
Speaker 1: able to deploy us A USA disaster team to provide
Speaker 1: food assistance and poverty reduction, and she got three hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in humanitarian assistance. All this supposedly to mitigate
Speaker 1: the push factors driving migrants north. Its effects were obviously negligible.
Speaker 1: The initiative's failure came at no surprise to Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: or her staff, so by twenty twenty one, Harris herself
Speaker 1: was leaking to reporters about what a BS situation she
Speaker 1: had been set up for. Harris's aids is Rothman writing here,
Speaker 1: Harris's aids were telling reporters that they had begun to
Speaker 1: panic over the torment to which Biden had consigned them.
Speaker 1: As CNN reported at the time, her assignment was being
Speaker 1: mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked
Speaker 1: to the border, as indeed is happening right now, indeed
Speaker 1: potential potentially opening her up to criticism for the handling
Speaker 1: of the seemingly intractable problem was why Harris was tapped
Speaker 1: to be the face of the administration's failures on the
Speaker 1: border in the first place. So Biden was deliberately just
Speaker 1: dumping his problems into Harris's lap so that she could
Speaker 1: be the fall gal, not the fall guy. The fall
Speaker 1: gal the President's staff, Rothman continues, never missed an opportunity
Speaker 1: to undermine Harris's conduct in her new role, promulgating the
Speaker 1: subtle implication that the horrors at the border were an
Speaker 1: outgrowth outgrowth of her mismanagement of the crisis. The exercise
Speaker 1: in misdirection was so effective for the Biden administration that
Speaker 1: it went back to the same well on several subsequent occasions.
Speaker 1: Harris was soon given the task of combating state level
Speaker 1: Republican efforts to reform voting systems, over which she had
Speaker 1: zero authority. The White House dispatched her to Europe to
Speaker 1: stop Russia from invading Ukraine, three days before Russian forces
Speaker 1: cascaded over the Ukrainian border, all the while White House
Speaker 1: staff scoffed at her failures in on background conversations with
Speaker 1: the press. Her portfolio is trash. Harris ally Bakari sellers
Speaker 1: complain in October of twenty twenty one, those sentiments were
Speaker 1: likely reflective of Harris's own consternation. Maybe I don't say
Speaker 1: no enough, she half joked in an interview with b
Speaker 1: Et that year. But the reported tensions between Harris's office
Speaker 1: in Biden's staff, and the lingering hostility toward Harris nursed
Speaker 1: by Jill Biden, who was said to have not forgiven
Speaker 1: the Vice president for sandbagging her husband in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party's twenty nineteen primary debates, are indicative of why she
Speaker 1: was treated like a receptacle into which the most thankless
Speaker 1: and insurmountable tasks were dumped. And beyond that, there was
Speaker 1: also constant leaking from the Biden camp that Harris was unelectable.
Speaker 1: The president's staffers routinely retailed the notion that Harris was
Speaker 1: unelectable to the presidency, in part because of how poorly
Speaker 1: she managed the roles with which they had burdened her.
Speaker 1: Engineering This self fulfilling prophecy served President Biden's purpose at
Speaker 1: the time, which was to neutralize his most viable Democratic rival.
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing that Biden just viewed Harris as his
Speaker 1: chief rival the chief person he had to be afraid
Speaker 1: of unseating him for twenty twenty four, and so he
Speaker 1: was actively undermining her the whole time politically, and his
Speaker 1: staff was actively undermining her the whole time politically and
Speaker 1: dumping all of his problem, all of his failures, just
Speaker 1: getting dumped into her lap. So it is a thing
Speaker 1: of like I think in general, Harris Harris has to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for the failures of the Biden administration. If
Speaker 1: she thought the Biden administration were such a sinking ship,
Speaker 1: then she either needed to make her objection to things
Speaker 1: known or resign so by which she never did. So
Speaker 1: I think any vice president has to take some of
Speaker 1: the crap for the failures of the administration she serves it.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's really interesting how, in fact,
Speaker 1: she wasn't really very empowered when it came to the border,
Speaker 1: and that was by design. It was Biden deliberately trying
Speaker 1: to set her up to look terrible, to take the
Speaker 1: fall for him, and to damage her politically, because Biden
Speaker 1: knew that once twenty twenty four came around and he
Speaker 1: was eighty one years old, people would be people would
Speaker 1: have the knives out for him. So obviously his effort
Speaker 1: to do that it didn't quite work. When we return
Speaker 1: the silliness in some ways of blaming Harris for Biden's problems,
Speaker 1: at least from a governmental perspective. That's next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. I thought this at the time when
Speaker 1: Republicans were pushing for the impeachment of Alexandro Majorcis, and
Speaker 1: I think this has to relate to Harris's failures at
Speaker 1: the border. And we're talking about this really interesting piece
Speaker 1: from National Review by Noah Rothman where he's detailing how, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like Harris covered herself in glory with the border,
Speaker 1: but it's actually kind of a more rather than just
Speaker 1: a story of Harris being incompetent, it's really actually this
Speaker 1: story of Biden deliberately dumping all of his problems, his
Speaker 1: administration's most intractable failures, dumping them into Harris's lap, like
Speaker 1: sort of publicly saying that she's going to be the
Speaker 1: point person for X, Y or Z, but not actually
Speaker 1: giving her the authority to do anything about it and so,
Speaker 1: and thus putting these unsolvable problems into her purviews so
Speaker 1: that she takes the fall for it, and she looks bad.
Speaker 1: Why Because Biden hated Harris's guts and he saw her
Speaker 1: as a threat to himself politically, which it turned out
Speaker 1: she was, and so he would dump all of his
Speaker 1: problems on her, including the border. And I sort of
Speaker 1: thought this at the time with my orkus, like why
Speaker 1: are the Republicans bothering and peaching Mayorcis? Is only one
Speaker 1: person in the executive branch has ultimately executive authority, the President.
Speaker 1: The executive power of the United States law enforcement power
Speaker 1: in the United States government is vested in Article two
Speaker 1: of the Constitution in one person, the President. All of
Speaker 1: the inferior officers of the United States, all the inferior
Speaker 1: officials who exercise some level of executive power, they are
Speaker 1: exercising the President's delegated power, and thus they have to
Speaker 1: do what they do in accordance with how the President
Speaker 1: wants it done. And that's why I always thought impeaching
Speaker 1: Maorcus was silly, Like Majorcus wasn't doing anything. The Republicans
Speaker 1: wanted to impeach ma Orcis for the policies Maorcus was
Speaker 1: adopting for how to regulate immigration, for how to regulate
Speaker 1: the border. It wasn't for something like my orcus was
Speaker 1: accepting bribes. It was stuff where my orcus was obviously
Speaker 1: clearly carrying out the president's wishes. So if all my
Speaker 1: orcus is doing is carrying out the president's wishes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I get being upset with my Orcus. I get maybe
Speaker 1: the argument that my orcus is doing things that are
Speaker 1: contrary to law, or that they are lawless, or that
Speaker 1: he's violating his oath of office. But ultimately the bigger
Speaker 1: fish here is Biden. Why not impeach Biden over it?
Speaker 1: If you're gonna impeach anybody at all, which maybe is
Speaker 1: just a fool's Errand in general, impeach Biden, not my Orcus,
Speaker 1: or my Orcus is just doing his job. He's just
Speaker 1: doing what he's told. He is carrying out the executive
Speaker 1: authority of the United States' wishes. And that executive authority
Speaker 1: was Joe Biden. So it is a thing of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Harris is a failure in this regard, in that regard,
Speaker 1: in this regard, in that regard, but all the authority
Speaker 1: that Harris had was delegated. She would have no authority
Speaker 1: unless it came to her from above to if I
Speaker 1: may rip off the words of Christ to paunch the pilot.
Speaker 1: All of the vice president's authority other than breaking ties
Speaker 1: in the Senate, comes to her from the president, like
Speaker 1: she only has jobs within the executive branch insofar as
Speaker 1: the president wants to give her a job. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the interesting slash weird thing about the vice
Speaker 1: presidency is that, frankly, it's kind of useless for governance.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can get a vice president who is
Speaker 1: super competent and you want to have help you with
Speaker 1: all kinds of things and manage all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: Or you can pick, you know, a total lummocks or
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can pick a total doorknob who
Speaker 1: just sits around and does nothing and helps you win
Speaker 1: a swing state. And honestly, I think getting a dufist
Speaker 1: who just helps you win a swing state at the
Speaker 1: end of the day might be more useful because you
Speaker 1: can just have other advisors advise you. You can have other
Speaker 1: delegated people do the kinds of delegated things you would
Speaker 1: have the vice president do. The vice president has no
Speaker 1: authority on his or her own. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the fascinating thing about Harris is that most of the
Speaker 1: things that I mean, Look, you're the vice president. You
Speaker 1: deserve to take crap for the failures of the administration
Speaker 1: you serve under. And Harris should take some blame for
Speaker 1: the crisis at the border, for this, for that the
Speaker 1: other thing. If Harris was truly thought that the Biden
Speaker 1: administration was doing stuff wrong and was not empowering her appropriately,
Speaker 1: then she should have piped up about it. But she
Speaker 1: never did so. I think she hasked to take the
Speaker 1: crap for the failures of the Biden administration. But it
Speaker 1: is interesting how Biden was really deliberately setting her up
Speaker 1: to fail because of how much he seemingly loathed and
Speaker 1: disdained her. When we return the bogus Supreme Court quote
Speaker 1: reform rules that Biden is pushing now and Harris is
Speaker 1: also embracing now. That is next on the John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: I've been talking the last several years about the ridiculous
Speaker 1: and I'm hardly some uniquely insightful commentator or observer of
Speaker 1: these things. By the way, a lot of smart lawyer
Speaker 1: commentators have been seeing this same thing happening and predicting
Speaker 1: what's coming down the pike. The constant barrage to create
Speaker 1: a sort of fog of news, the constant barrage of
Speaker 1: stories around individual members of the Supreme Court, and all
Speaker 1: concerned all the conservatives, none of the liberals have ever
Speaker 1: done anything that scans in spite of let's bring up
Speaker 1: lots of examples of liberal justices doing all these same things.
Speaker 1: Story after story after story after story over the last
Speaker 1: three years have detailed ways allegedly in which conservative justices
Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court engaged in alleged ethical improprieties. Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas was friends with this billionaire and took a bunch
Speaker 1: of flights on his private jet. Chief Justice Roberts's wife
Speaker 1: is a high powered attorney. She's kind of like an
Speaker 1: attorney headhunter who helps big time law firms recruit kind
Speaker 1: of partner level attorneys to move laterally to to new firms,
Speaker 1: and she gets compensated very handsomely for that. Not exactly
Speaker 1: a surprising thing that a Supreme Court justice is married
Speaker 1: to a lawyer. That's happened many times before. Ruth Bader
Speaker 1: Ginsberg's husband was a very high powered tax attorney in DC.
Speaker 1: Amy Cony Barrett's husband was I think a former federal prosecutor,
Speaker 1: and I think now he's got a practice in d C.
Speaker 1: So John Roberts's wife is a very successful attorney as well,
Speaker 1: but both this raises questions about propriet she trading in
Speaker 1: on her husband's name inappropriately. Forever all the BS stories
Speaker 1: about sam Alito, which, by the way, like the story
Speaker 1: all we've discussed sam Alito's wife was flying an upside
Speaker 1: down American. We know all about all the different flags
Speaker 1: that the Alito family has flown outside their home, but
Speaker 1: we only just learned a week or two ago that
Speaker 1: the Biden administration hasn't had a cabinet meeting since before
Speaker 1: the Israel war started in October of last year. By
Speaker 1: the way, have you noticed no stories anymore, no leaks,
Speaker 1: no stories anything about Biden being seen Isle anymore. After
Speaker 1: two solid weeks of the press dumping all their notebooks out,
Speaker 1: every story they had collected over the last three years
Speaker 1: about how obviously senile Biden was book the vault, now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're silent. Anyway, So their story
Speaker 1: after story after story about the Supreme Court justice, and
Speaker 1: it's always the conservative justices being in some way corrupt,
Speaker 1: violating ethics rules, not reporting gifts they received and everything
Speaker 1: the Court was doing was in accordance with sort of
Speaker 1: the ethical standards that the Court sort of sets for themselves.
Speaker 1: And why does the Court set ethical standards for itself. Well,
Speaker 1: lower courts abide by different kinds of ethics rules set
Speaker 1: for them, but the Supreme Court is a kind of
Speaker 1: coequal branch of government to the executive branch and the
Speaker 1: legislative branch. And basically, excuse me, Basically, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: has sort of taken the posture of no, we can't
Speaker 1: have the legislative branch mandating our terms of conduct for
Speaker 1: us anymore so than we should be able to mandate
Speaker 1: the terms of conduct for the executive branch or for
Speaker 1: the legislative branch for how they do their jobs. We're
Speaker 1: a co equal branch of government, so we'll have a
Speaker 1: body of ethics rules, but it's our own body of
Speaker 1: rules that we set for ourselves as a co equals
Speaker 1: branch of government. And that's just the way it'll be,
Speaker 1: much like Congress sets up Congress has rules and procedures
Speaker 1: for kicking someone out of Congress for misconduct. That's how
Speaker 1: we're going to run this. That Congress doesn't tell us
Speaker 1: what to do. So now beyond that, beyond this ethics
Speaker 1: thing where basically they've taken a bunch of non stories
Speaker 1: and they've been able to gin up enough non stories
Speaker 1: over the course of the last year that it creates
Speaker 1: what I call the fog of news, where it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that the twenty stories or whatever it is, that
Speaker 1: all twenty of them have been ludicrously you know, ludicrous
Speaker 1: reaches to try to somehow say that conservative justices are
Speaker 1: corrupt when really they aren't. There's nothing there. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that none of the twenty stories work, the fact
Speaker 1: that there have been so many story stories of alleged
Speaker 1: corruption by conservative justices on the court and noticed that oh,
Speaker 1: no liberal justice has ever done this, and a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of the stuff they're criticizing people for
Speaker 1: it's stuff that the liberal justices did too. Oh, Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas accepted free flights when he was asked to go
Speaker 1: speak at you know, such and such. Yeah, Ruth Bader
Speaker 1: Ginsberg received free flights when she went and spoke over here.
Speaker 1: Sonya sodomy Are received free this when she went to
Speaker 1: speak over there. Elena Kagan, like, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: it is stuff that the liberal justices have also done,
Speaker 1: but it's not an ethical issue when Justice Bryer did it,
Speaker 1: or when Justice Ginsburg did it, or when Justice sodomy
Speaker 1: or does it. They even tried to make a story
Speaker 1: out of Neil Gorsich, like he had a home in
Speaker 1: Colorado and he was selling it and somehow this was
Speaker 1: an ethics file. Almos another lawyer in Colorado, but some
Speaker 1: Democrat lawyer in Colorado and courses was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: sold my house. I don't know how that can be
Speaker 1: an I made money off the sale of my house. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not an ethics violation to sell your house. Now,
Speaker 1: because they have this fog of news, as we call it,
Speaker 1: they deliberately build up these phony, baloney stories in order
Speaker 1: to justify proposals to in some way alter the makeup
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court and thereby get more liberal results,
Speaker 1: because that's what they want. You have to understand how
Speaker 1: fundamentally liberals think that the universe is not right, that
Speaker 1: the universe is in fundamental disorder because the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is not controlled by liberals. They have controlled the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court fundamentally. They have controlled the Supreme Court since nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. It's been their court, and any political issue
Speaker 1: that they really cared about they could always count on
Speaker 1: the Court to bail them out. I mean, they managed
Speaker 1: to make abortion legal nationwide without us, without like a
Speaker 1: single Democratic vote on the subject, just a snap of
Speaker 1: our fingers. In nineteen seventy three, we went from a
Speaker 1: country where most of the country outlawed abortion to every
Speaker 1: single state in the Union had legal abortion for all
Speaker 1: forty weeks of pregnancy for any reason. Snap of the fingers.
Speaker 1: Gay marriage becomes the law of the land. With a
Speaker 1: snap of the fingers. This that the other liberals have
Speaker 1: fundamentally controlled the Supreme Court for all They fundamentally controlled
Speaker 1: it for almost ninety years, for over eighty years, and
Speaker 1: Ginsburg dying in September of twenty twenty and being replaced
Speaker 1: by Amy Cony Barrett, they think is the greatest disaster,
Speaker 1: the greater disaster than the Titanic, thinking it fundamentally puts
Speaker 1: the universe in disarray, and particularly rov Wade being overturned,
Speaker 1: that they cannot tolerate it. So conservatives who tolerated this
Speaker 1: for almost ninety years and say, well, I guess we
Speaker 1: got to do the hard work of electing presidents and
Speaker 1: electing senators who believe in the more limited role for
Speaker 1: the courts and who will start the federalist society and
Speaker 1: will the hard work of working within the system. So
Speaker 1: Conservatives like schmucks for eighty plus years kept their noses
Speaker 1: to the grindstone until eventually winning enough elections, getting enough
Speaker 1: presidents who are convinced of more limited role for the courts,
Speaker 1: and got enough senators elected that they could both nominate
Speaker 1: and confirm less liberal justices to the Supreme Court. And
Speaker 1: now there is a six justice Republican majority, Republican appointee majority,
Speaker 1: and Liberals having been out of power on the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court for all of five minutes. Liberals are absolutely apoplectic
Speaker 1: about it. And so Biden and Harris are proposing one
Speaker 1: the idea of term limits for Supreme Court justices and
Speaker 1: an ethics code. Now, the ethics code is problematic. It
Speaker 1: would be problematic for Congress to pass a law imposing
Speaker 1: an ethics code on the members of the Court again
Speaker 1: for these sort of separation of powers arguments. But the
Speaker 1: real thing, the thing that they really care about, the
Speaker 1: ethics thing is a side issue. They don't actually care
Speaker 1: about this ethics thing. They've made a big deal about
Speaker 1: alleged ethical violations in order to rationalize the thing they
Speaker 1: really want, which is term limits. And they want term limits. Now.
Speaker 1: They never gave a crap about term limits for the
Speaker 1: last again, almost ninety years. Why well, because they owned
Speaker 1: the court for the last ninety years. They didn't want
Speaker 1: term limits. They wanted those old geezers, those old liberal
Speaker 1: geezers like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hanging on for dear life
Speaker 1: to the bitter end. But now that they've got you know,
Speaker 1: they're staring down the barrel of Amy Cony. Barrett's going
Speaker 1: to be on the Supreme Court for another thirty years. Now,
Speaker 1: they're playing a different tune. So here's the problem. Now,
Speaker 1: when we return, I'm going to talk about the constitutional problem.
Speaker 1: The constitutional problem is that Article thread of the Constitution
Speaker 1: guarantees lifetime appointments. When we return, we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: absurd way that they're going to try to say, oh, well, well,
Speaker 1: term limits for Supreme Court justices. You don't need to
Speaker 1: amend the Constitution to do it. That is next on
Speaker 1: the John Gerardi Show. President Biden and Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: have introduced some proposals for quote reforming the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: one of which is an ethics code for Supreme Court justice,
Speaker 1: a mandatory ethics code, as opposed to the Court imposed
Speaker 1: the Court imposed ethics code, which the Court has a
Speaker 1: self imposed ethics code for various kinds of separation of
Speaker 1: powers reasons. But that's really a side show. The thing
Speaker 1: that actually the liberals care about because they cannot stand
Speaker 1: the disorder in the universe of Republican appointees being in
Speaker 1: control of the Supreme Court for the first time, and
Speaker 1: well more conservative leaning justices anyway, being in control of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court for the first time in eighty plus years.
Speaker 1: The thing they really care about is term limits. Now,
Speaker 1: at first, in that you might recall in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty campaign you had liberals saying we should we should
Speaker 1: pack the court, we should increase the number of justices
Speaker 1: so that Biden can appoint all the replacements. And I
Speaker 1: think Democrats realize that's a very unpopular proposal. No one
Speaker 1: was going to buy that, so they decided, well, what
Speaker 1: sounds a lot more moderate than that, term limits. Term limits.
Speaker 1: There you go. Here's the problem with term limits. Article
Speaker 1: three of the Constitution says that the justices of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court or of any inferior courts established by Congress,
Speaker 1: shall serve in good behavior. In good behavior is a
Speaker 1: term of art, and it basically means for life. It's
Speaker 1: not limited by a term of office. You're just allowed
Speaker 1: to serve as long as you want. It's a lifetime appointment.
Speaker 1: That's how just judge ships, including being on the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court have been understood. Now. The idea that Biden cooked up,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like it was Joe Biden called his
Speaker 1: old buddy Larry Tribe. Lawrence Tribe was a retired law
Speaker 1: professor at Harvard. Lawrence Tribe was kind of like the
Speaker 1: peat best of liberal Supreme Court. Justice Pete Best was
Speaker 1: the fifth Beadle, you know, the guy who almost made
Speaker 1: it as a member of the Beatles but didn't quite so.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Tribe was the would have could have should a
Speaker 1: Liberal candidate for the Court. Everyone sort of thought that
Speaker 1: maybe Bill Clinton would nominate him to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or maybe Barack Obama would nominate him to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and it just never quite worked out, never quite between. Well,
Speaker 1: Clinton needed to appoint a woman this time, and Obama
Speaker 1: was appointing this person just didn't didn't work out for
Speaker 1: Larry Tribe. So he's a law professor at Harvard and he's,
Speaker 1: you know, in his old age. He calls up, Biden
Speaker 1: calls him up, a couple old geezers yacting on the phone,
Speaker 1: and Tribe and Biden sort of cook up this idea. Well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Constitution says in good behavior, so that's like a
Speaker 1: lifetime appointment. So you know, we can't kind of you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to change the Constitution, obviously you can't
Speaker 1: do that with just a normal law passed by Congress.
Speaker 1: So maybe what we should do then is say, well, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: They still get a lifetime appointment, but basically they can
Speaker 1: only serve on the Supreme Court for this many years
Speaker 1: and then when they're done with that term, they get
Speaker 1: to be the rest of their life appointment on one
Speaker 1: of the lower courts. So maybe maybe you get kicked
Speaker 1: down to, you know, whatever circuit you happen to live in.
Speaker 1: So if you're from California, you're a point nominated the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, you serve there for all these years, when
Speaker 1: you're done with your Supreme Court term, to go be
Speaker 1: a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court. Of appeals, which
Speaker 1: is bs that doesn't work. It's clearly the judgeship that's
Speaker 1: protected for good behavior by the Constitution is that judgeship.
Speaker 1: It's not the idea of you can just sort of
Speaker 1: swap people around from this judge ship to an inferior
Speaker 1: judge ship. And that is a thing that the Constitution
Speaker 1: is very conscious of, is people getting jobs and getting
Speaker 1: compensated for jobs, and the law is very conscious of
Speaker 1: if you get a job taken from you, that can
Speaker 1: create a cause of action for you to sue if
Speaker 1: that compensation, if that work is taken if that office
Speaker 1: was taken from you wrongly, or was taken from you unlawfully,
Speaker 1: Like people being appointed to things and then having that
Speaker 1: appointment taken away from them. That's a big act. So
Speaker 1: the idea that, to me, it just seems preposterous to
Speaker 1: me that the framers of the Constitution would say, oh,
Speaker 1: judges can keep their judge ship either on the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court or on one of the inferior courts in good behavior,
Speaker 1: but can have a higher judge ship taken from them
Speaker 1: based on an arbitrary deadline made up by Congress, some
Speaker 1: arbitrary term made up by Congress and given a worse job,
Speaker 1: a lower status job, which is what the circuit. It's undeniable.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court is supreme. Okay, It's a more important
Speaker 1: job than being on the ninth Circuit or the DC
Speaker 1: Circuit or the eighth Circuit, of the first Circuit, whatever.
Speaker 1: It's undeniably a more important job. It's the court you
Speaker 1: appeal up to. So these proposals from Biden and Harris,
Speaker 1: I think are meant to excite the ultraliberals in the party,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they could actually work. I think
Speaker 1: they would face real constitutional problems because you'd have to
Speaker 1: amend the Constitution. You can't amend the Constitution with a
Speaker 1: simple bill. That'll do it for the John Girody Show.
Speaker 1: See you next time on Power Talk.