Speaker 1: And at one point I go, oh, this is so dumb,
Speaker 1: and the guy next to me turns to me goes,
Speaker 1: are you Lucretia whiskey?
Speaker 2: Come and take my pain, the money, my bray. Don't
Speaker 2: why think alone when you can drink it all In
Speaker 2: with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders, Steve Heyward,
Speaker 2: John You, and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia. Where
Speaker 2: this lapstop it? David? Ain't you easy on the should task?
Speaker 2: Gotta give me that whiskey?
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody to a new episode of the Three Whiskey
Speaker 3: Happy Hour. We hope you're listening on the Three Whiskey
Speaker 3: Happy Hour approved telephone technology app Signal, But if you
Speaker 3: are not, If you are listening to us on our
Speaker 3: normal distribution change, don't worry. We will explain Signal and
Speaker 3: all sclory how you can use it to reveal our
Speaker 3: secrets to the Russians and Chinese. I am joined today
Speaker 3: by my co host Steve Hayward, who has been on
Speaker 3: a worldwide tour of the land of cheese, grits and gravy.
Speaker 3: Have you been doing, Steve, where have you been What
Speaker 3: have you been eating?
Speaker 2: Well? First of all, can I just add to your
Speaker 2: intro that there's no podcast that gets the signal to
Speaker 2: noise ratio greater than the three Whiskey Happy Hour. No
Speaker 2: I just spent it. I want to give a shout
Speaker 2: out to these guys. I just spent two wonderful days
Speaker 2: in Oxford, Mississippi, and it really does live up to
Speaker 2: the name, you know, the home of Oldness. And there
Speaker 2: is there one of these civic education centers that's been
Speaker 2: quietly growing for quite a while now. And this is
Speaker 2: kind of funny. It's the Declaration of Independence Center. And
Speaker 2: I said, you know, kind of ironic to have a
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independent Center in the Deep South, right, And
Speaker 2: I made a point of wearing my Abraham Lincoln socks
Speaker 2: just to live dangerously. But no, it's really great people
Speaker 2: they have there, and they've got this wonderful program, and
Speaker 2: they had me down to give a lecture and do
Speaker 2: a student seminar. And two things about it. One is
Speaker 2: I did meet two faculty members who said the regular
Speaker 2: listeners of this podcast, including one from the economics department,
Speaker 2: who says he agrees most with you, John.
Speaker 3: Of course, the economists agree.
Speaker 2: With me, unlike most of our listeners who you know,
Speaker 2: side with lucre.
Speaker 1: Have real educations.
Speaker 3: You don't know how many lurking economists there are listening in.
Speaker 2: But now the other thing, John is I mean, as
Speaker 2: many listeners will know. If you come from California or
Speaker 2: New York or anywhere from the South and you say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we do I barbecue a lot, they will, you know,
Speaker 2: deport you because barbecue that is a serious subject in
Speaker 2: the South, as we know, and it's part barbecue. So
Speaker 2: it was with some hesitation I asked, so what do
Speaker 2: people think about the McK rib And I was told, oh,
Speaker 2: people love it? Is it really? And the person that
Speaker 2: told me this says, personally, I think it's disgusting, but
Speaker 2: I know most people love it, and it's a very
Speaker 2: popular item down here in Mississippi. So it is past
Speaker 2: the sort of you know barbecue, you know, smoked pork
Speaker 2: bar at least in that part of Mississippi, which I
Speaker 2: was not expecting.
Speaker 3: Mississippians are just admitting the truth when most other people lie. Lucretia,
Speaker 3: what have you been up to? Where are you? Do
Speaker 3: you have a nice scotch?
Speaker 2: Open?
Speaker 4: What have you been up to?
Speaker 1: I have a nice scotch? Here you go and I
Speaker 1: have had I didn't even want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: My work is so awful. I'm just going to leave
Speaker 1: it at that. But I did attend a nice, a
Speaker 1: nice conference where we talked about revolution, and everybody was
Speaker 1: afraid actually to talk about revolution because it was a
Speaker 1: bunch of conservatives and the whole idea. At least half
Speaker 1: of them said at one point or another that even
Speaker 1: talking about the notion of revolution made them very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: This is the Philadelphia Siety last week, John, Yeah, you can.
Speaker 2: You can tell people the name of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have listeners who were there, so.
Speaker 1: I know, and I forgot the name of it.
Speaker 3: Sorry about the people in the United States afraid of
Speaker 3: talk about revolution are illegal aliens from Syria right now?
Speaker 2: Well? You know. Leo Strauss liked to point out that
Speaker 2: he felt at home in America because one of the
Speaker 2: most reactionary organizations was the Daughters of the American Revolution,
Speaker 2: and he thought that was great, you know, a perfect paradox.
Speaker 3: Okay, Lucretia, we interrupted your story about the Philadelphia Society.
Speaker 1: No, I just I was. I was. Steve has to
Speaker 1: be honest and say that when we ever compared notes
Speaker 1: on these things he tended to agree with me, the
Speaker 1: most revolution to two revolutionary panels, panels that actually sort
Speaker 1: of addressed the idea of revolution and didn't clutch their
Speaker 1: pearls over it, as my new saying lately. The one
Speaker 1: that Steve moderate, which was with with our good friend
Speaker 1: now my very good friend because I love her to death,
Speaker 1: Edith Jones, and Johnny's.
Speaker 3: A judge of the US Court Appeals in the Fifth
Speaker 3: Circuit text right right.
Speaker 1: And then there was another guy who did Steve seemed
Speaker 1: to know. I didn't know, but he was, he was okay,
Speaker 1: he was fine. Oh he was a former assistant DA
Speaker 1: assistant Attorney General.
Speaker 2: He'd been a Zach it was Zach Smith from the
Speaker 2: Me Center to Heritage Foundation, and he'd been a federal prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Uh no, I don't know him, but I mean the
Speaker 2: ME Center I know, and our you know, our friend
Speaker 2: John Malcolm is the grand Pooba there. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was fine. But of course the real fireworks was John,
Speaker 2: of course, and Judge Jones, and.
Speaker 1: A judge Jones was more radical than John was. John
Speaker 1: was a little it's all about me again, But.
Speaker 3: You mean you mean John Eastman?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, well, I was. The
Speaker 2: Bar Association came up about, you know, the problems with them,
Speaker 2: and a little bit about the Trump taking on big law,
Speaker 2: and I did get a little carried away saying, I
Speaker 2: want Joe McCarthy scorchedter taxic on the American Bar Association,
Speaker 2: and you know, I want Jade Vance to give a
Speaker 2: Spiro agnewtype speeches attacking law schools. That got some applause. Actually, but.
Speaker 1: Brian Williams was great. He was really, really great. He
Speaker 1: talked about basically what he said was we need a
Speaker 1: revolution against the uh, the destruction of our constitution in
Speaker 1: the deep state and so on. It was good. It
Speaker 1: was very good.
Speaker 3: So I want to get to that law firm story
Speaker 3: in a second. But I thought maybe what we talked
Speaker 3: about first would be, I think the story of the
Speaker 3: week the use by the basically the leaders of the
Speaker 3: National Security Cabinet to use signal a non secure app
Speaker 3: to discuss the attack on the whutis a Yemen?
Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean by non secure in the
Speaker 1: sense that it has not.
Speaker 3: Done it's not government it's not government secured for classified information, sorry, not.
Speaker 1: For classified, but it is government approved for use for
Speaker 1: communications that are not classified. So that's the important part.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sorry, So you know, as I'm sure the listeners know,
Speaker 3: by mistake, the it appears that Mike Watson, National Secure Advisor,
Speaker 3: not only included Marco Rubio and the Secretary of Defense
Speaker 3: and the head of the CIA and Tulsa Gabbed, but
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, And so that's
Speaker 3: how it all came to light. And then after some
Speaker 3: debate about what was actually in the text, Goldberg released
Speaker 3: them and they had you know, I would think information
Speaker 3: that ought normally be classified, like what time different weapon
Speaker 3: systems were going to be used, what time the attacks
Speaker 3: are supposed to land, what kind of targets were being sought.
Speaker 3: So it seems to me like a debacle. I mean,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, Trump has responded by not firing anybody,
Speaker 3: by saying this is a story by failing media outlet,
Speaker 3: and that was a distraction. So, Lucritia, why did you
Speaker 3: give us your thoughts? You are in the industry as
Speaker 3: it were.
Speaker 1: Yes, here's a really really simple point. No, there was
Speaker 1: not classified information in anything that went back and forth.
Speaker 1: Number one, and if there was, Jeffrey Goldberg should be
Speaker 1: tried for treason, tried for violating the laws regarding classified information,
Speaker 1: because you are not excused from the prohibition on releasing
Speaker 1: or publicizing classified information just because you came about it
Speaker 1: unwillingly or involuntarily. He can actually if, if, if anything
Speaker 1: that was in those texts, and he tries to claim
Speaker 1: that there's still some stuff he hasn't released that might
Speaker 1: be deemed classified. If if he releases anything that actually
Speaker 1: would fall under classification authority, which again is only Trump,
Speaker 1: he could be tried and convicted for a very serious time,
Speaker 1: spend decades in jail in federal prison. That's thing one.
Speaker 1: Thing two. Does anybody really believe that this was a mistake? Seriously,
Speaker 1: does anybody really believe that there isn't some kind of
Speaker 1: a think back to the whole first impeachment effort and
Speaker 1: that scumbag Vinman, the little fat, little chubby Ukrainian piece
Speaker 1: of you know what, remember he listened in and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he the whole point of which was to
Speaker 1: undo Trump. You don't you think that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden all of those people are gone from the State Department,
Speaker 1: the CIA, the Da Da da da da. Of course
Speaker 1: they're not. So someday They're going to figure out that
Speaker 1: somebody on Walls's staff was responsible for this nonsense, and
Speaker 1: Wallas is probably trying to protect whatever till he knows
Speaker 1: who it is. And the idea that we would fire
Speaker 1: anybody over something that had no adverse consequences whatsoever, none,
Speaker 1: as Trump pointed out, an absolutely successful operation. And we
Speaker 1: didn't fire anybody after Afghanistan or the thirteen soldiers and
Speaker 1: marines and that were killed after Afghanistan, or or or
Speaker 1: or who got fired ever in the Biden administration? Did
Speaker 1: Eric Holder get fired after Fast and Furious? I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, I'm okay, I get it, Steve. If there
Speaker 1: weren't double standard students, there wouldn't be any standards at all.
Speaker 1: But at some point logic has to enter into some
Speaker 1: of these discussions. I'm so sick of that whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is all the Democrats have, and our stupid ass
Speaker 1: Republicans are so dumb they won't look at it and
Speaker 1: say shut up.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Oh. It was a terrible blunder on Trump's part, but
Speaker 1: maybe he can recover from it. And then you have
Speaker 1: seven stupid Rhino senators. Establishment senators too cowardly to come
Speaker 1: out and say what they really think with their name attached.
Speaker 1: So they go to what the Jewish whatever the heck
Speaker 1: it was, and say how awful it was. The things
Speaker 1: that Vance is accused of saying on the Earth actually
Speaker 1: recorded saying on the signal chat because they the only
Speaker 1: thing they want is to make sure that we continue
Speaker 1: to be in every war there is ever on the
Speaker 1: planet so that they can keep lining their pockets with
Speaker 1: defense contractor money. Sorry, okay, I'm done anything else.
Speaker 2: Eve, Yeah, So four quick thoughts. My My first reaction
Speaker 2: when I heard this was when did Christopher Buckley take
Speaker 2: over the script for the second Trump administration? Right? This
Speaker 2: is right of one of his comic novels, like The
Speaker 2: DC Mess. I think you may maybe already be working
Speaker 2: on a new one called Thank You for Texting Stopping.
Speaker 2: But I actually do think there's something to lucretious theory
Speaker 2: that there's something fishy about this. How did Jeffrey Goldberg's
Speaker 2: number or signal thing get on the list for this call? Now,
Speaker 2: maybe it's just a weird blunder. And you know what,
Speaker 2: once Marts, what's what's the NASH security advisor's name? Marts
Speaker 2: or Waltz Walls. I keep getting more confused other people welts.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe he knows. I don't think so. He
Speaker 2: was a congressman from Florida. Goldberg doesn't slum it with
Speaker 2: members of the House.
Speaker 1: I just think we exchanged a brief conversation atos function.
Speaker 2: Who knows. But the the other thing is, I do
Speaker 2: think this, Lucretia, is the prosecution of Goldberg. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: merits may be solid, but I think that ship sailed
Speaker 2: the Pentagon papers case fifty years ago. Now. But finally,
Speaker 2: and here I think you will agree with me, is
Speaker 2: the important thing about the outcome of this is Trump
Speaker 2: and the White House saying, no, you know what, We're
Speaker 2: not going to bend to the conventional wisdom and the
Speaker 2: braying hounds of the media and the weak need Republicans
Speaker 2: that someone has to be fired because exactly that reason.
Speaker 2: Where was that? Here's what Lucretia is right, Where was
Speaker 2: that chorus of accountability and the day after day media
Speaker 2: pounding for any of the instances that she mentions. Now,
Speaker 2: it's only when Republicans do it, and that you know,
Speaker 2: Republican presidents have a history mostly for the last fifty years,
Speaker 2: of giving into that. And that's one of Trump's strength
Speaker 2: is that he doesn't. So I kind of like to
Speaker 2: think that this is deliberate setup, although that's working to
Speaker 2: eight or ten dimensional chests, and so I don't think
Speaker 2: that's true.
Speaker 3: But I'll say, what's wrong with this A simple explanation
Speaker 3: that you had all these people all around the world
Speaker 3: who were trying to discuss this. They couldn't use, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the government classification, the classification approved systems for
Speaker 3: discussion because they are large and unwieldy, they don't travel well,
Speaker 3: and so they use signal to talk about it, and
Speaker 3: by mistake they added somebody who shouldn't have been on it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Isn't that like just like to me, people are constantly
Speaker 3: like sending you emails and texts where they put people
Speaker 3: on by mistake. Why why not just say we made
Speaker 3: a mistake, no harm came of it, leave it at that.
Speaker 1: I think they're actually they are saying mostly that. But
Speaker 1: I do think that the the the level of coincidence
Speaker 1: that had to have happened for Jeffrey Goldberg of all
Speaker 1: the lying, duplicitous you know, he has been behind every
Speaker 1: single faux story against Trump that's been out there. You know,
Speaker 1: the losers and on and on it. I mean, the
Speaker 1: guys just foul in every possible way. And his boss,
Speaker 1: you know, the widow of Steve Jobes is equally awful.
Speaker 1: The odds of Jeffrey Goldberg, of all people, being the
Speaker 1: person that somebody put the wrong number in for are
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, They're astronomical. There's just no I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Mean, if they had added Laura Ingram by mistake, you
Speaker 3: think this was true?
Speaker 1: Joe Blow from Indiana?
Speaker 3: That that right?
Speaker 1: I know, I know, but that that would make no
Speaker 1: more sense.
Speaker 2: Well, it does kind of remind me of the press
Speaker 2: conference that was held at the Four Seasons Garden supply
Speaker 2: store there in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: But you know, what, do you do you think this
Speaker 3: story has but Lucretia, do you think this story has
Speaker 3: any more legs? Do you think that this is uh?
Speaker 3: You know, obviously Democrats are trying to turn it into
Speaker 3: a scandal. Even Hillary Clinton made an appearance, I believe,
Speaker 3: writing an open saying they accused me of this and
Speaker 3: this is much worse what they're doing. Do you think
Speaker 3: the story is going to die out? Is it? Or
Speaker 3: is it something that's more symptomatic of a bigger problem.
Speaker 1: It's not tragic any problem on the Trump team. What
Speaker 1: what is symptomatic of is there There is not a
Speaker 1: word that I can think of in the English language
Speaker 1: that describes the level of hypocrisy, delusion, lack of self
Speaker 1: awareness that it would take for the Democrats in general,
Speaker 1: but someone like Hillary Clinton especially to actually say that
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with what happened there. I mean so,
Speaker 1: And you know, again, Republicans as usual are are probably
Speaker 1: as much to blame as Democrats are because they're cowards
Speaker 1: and they're all those other things that instead of just saying,
Speaker 1: shut up, look at what your side did, they have
Speaker 1: to Oh, it was terrible, kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: January sixth was a horrible insurrection. But you know, I
Speaker 1: hate it. I hate Republicans. I especially hate those kind
Speaker 1: of Republicans, you know, the kind of Republicans I like JD. Vance.
Speaker 1: I do have to say, when it comes to mistakes,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I'm assuming Steve
Speaker 1: is actually texting his wife and it's never anything you know,
Speaker 1: lovey dovey or anything that he's texting. But he'll text
Speaker 1: me do you want to stop at da da da Dad?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking uh no, because I'm two thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: But then he'll write back wrong person. And he does
Speaker 1: that all the time, don't you, Steve. And it's probably
Speaker 1: because it comes whatever comes up first. You don't pay
Speaker 1: attention for some reason.
Speaker 3: I just keep getting Steve's mobile takeout order from McDonald's.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Well, lucky guy yet mcgrib lover.
Speaker 2: I can let listeners know John that on that point
Speaker 2: thecreat just made. I accidentally texted the zoom link for
Speaker 2: this show tonight to John Eastman. He may show up yet,
Speaker 2: who knows.
Speaker 3: Don't get John in a zoom conference.
Speaker 1: I know that that part of your argument makes sense,
Speaker 1: not that that that random person ended up being Jeffrey Goldberg,
Speaker 1: because I actually am among Steve's contacts and John Eastman
Speaker 1: is actually among Steve's contacts.
Speaker 3: Well, the interesting story I saw about this was that
Speaker 3: there are many people in the White House who are
Speaker 3: assuming Waltz did it and are wondering why is Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Goldberg and Waltz his contacts? Yeah, Steve, any closing thoughts
Speaker 3: on controversy.
Speaker 2: It's over. It's the'll be something new next week.
Speaker 1: So okay, Well, I do have I did have to
Speaker 1: pull It's not a babbel and best I have to
Speaker 1: put it in. Now this guy is becoming my favorite
Speaker 1: Congressman Tim Burchett, Yeah, gets pull this, you know. Soy
Speaker 1: boy reporter comes up to a mos iPhone. Do you
Speaker 1: trust Trump's national security team to keep our war plans
Speaker 1: top secret? And brgant answers? Do you trust your mother
Speaker 1: every night to fix your hot pockets and make sure
Speaker 1: your game boy is turned on? I gotta laugh, bun
Speaker 1: you guys, So.
Speaker 3: I'm going to use that. Okay? Well, I thought maybe
Speaker 3: the second story we talked about also just came up today,
Speaker 3: but you guys mentioned it earlier when you were reviewing
Speaker 3: the Philadelphia Society is uh, I think unprecedented attack by
Speaker 3: President Trump on some of the leading liberal law firms
Speaker 3: in the country. Uh. The news out today is that
Speaker 3: Paul Clement, my former co clerk for Larry Soccer, who
Speaker 3: was the Solicitor General, that's the guy who argues all
Speaker 3: the United States' side in the Supreme Court, has agreed
Speaker 3: to represent one of these firms and to sue the
Speaker 3: Trump administration on the ground that the Trump administration sanctions
Speaker 3: on these firms violates their right to free speech, violates
Speaker 3: the right of counsel of their clients, and punishes these
Speaker 3: firms without due process. Some of the firms like Paul
Speaker 3: Weiss in New York and now we just learned also
Speaker 3: today SCAT and Arps. I think the largest of the
Speaker 3: top corporate law firms have made deals with President Trump
Speaker 3: saying that they will end their dei hiring practices, that
Speaker 3: they will do probota work for the President's causes. But
Speaker 3: the excuse me, but other firms like Wilmer Hale, which
Speaker 3: is the firm that employed Robert Muller, or the firms
Speaker 3: that employed some of the prosecutors like Covington and Berlin,
Speaker 3: the Special Council prosecutor under Jack Smith, or employed some
Speaker 3: people worked in the New York prosecutions, these firms are
Speaker 3: instead suing. So, Steve, what.
Speaker 2: Do you think.
Speaker 3: Is the president making a mistake? Does this go too far?
Speaker 3: Is this a fair game after all the lawfare of
Speaker 3: the last four years.
Speaker 2: Well, well, first of all, you used an interesting word,
Speaker 2: you said, this is unprecedented, and if by that you
Speaker 2: mean no president has ever taken as aggressively after law
Speaker 2: firms as Trump is, that's probably accurate. But if you
Speaker 2: mean that more broadly, I mean, I can think of
Speaker 2: lots of parallel examples. Let's take just one, and you
Speaker 2: may not think it really applies, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: Truman seizing the steel industry in nineteen fifty two, or
Speaker 2: you know, I could go through a long list of
Speaker 2: Franklin Roosevelt intimidating companies, threatening to jail executives. In other words,
Speaker 2: this is heartball politics, and this fits with a broader
Speaker 2: pattern of Trump. Trump is using the powers that have
Speaker 2: leached out in various ways to the executive branch over
Speaker 2: the years. You can say this about the tariffs too,
Speaker 2: against the left, and you know, I kind of like it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do understand that this is.
Speaker 3: Mean.
Speaker 2: I'm going to understand some reasonable criticisms of it, but
Speaker 2: I think these a lot of these law firms richly
Speaker 2: deserve it. And by the way, I think also, and
Speaker 2: here's a question John for you, I think that the
Speaker 2: actual step being taken is stripping them of their security
Speaker 2: clearances and access to classified documents, which is important for
Speaker 2: a lot of their clients. It would be defense contractors,
Speaker 2: and you know lots of other people clients that may
Speaker 2: be individuals. They may be representing. Seems to me that's
Speaker 2: entirely within the president's legitimate powers. And then the settlement
Speaker 2: talks is where Trump is running a heart bargain saying,
Speaker 2: you know, you refuse to I mean, I do think
Speaker 2: these law firms that refuse to a higher Republicans or
Speaker 2: any alumni the Trump administration. You know, Bill Crystal Nuthers
Speaker 2: had operations to blackball lawyers who'd served in the Trump
Speaker 2: White House and a Trump administration and Trump won. Uh.
Speaker 2: They deserve to be punished for that, you know, and
Speaker 2: so they won't ever do it again. And I think
Speaker 2: it's also costless in this sense. Uh again the sort
Speaker 2: of the moral equivalent. People say, well, when you get
Speaker 2: a Democratic president, they'll do that to Republican big law firms,
Speaker 2: and I say, name me one.
Speaker 3: There's only one.
Speaker 2: Well I don't which is who would that be? I
Speaker 2: mean Jones Day? Okay, we all right, maybe it'll be
Speaker 2: tough on Jones Day, but you know our friends at
Speaker 2: Constaboya McCarthy, you're not big enough for them to go
Speaker 2: after and and they're not doing anything that that would
Speaker 2: have you know, a security clearance would effect anyway, right,
Speaker 2: So I'm all for it. And uh, I expect you
Speaker 2: may disagree and think this is worrisome, but that's because
Speaker 2: you're too conventional.
Speaker 3: Agrecia, what do you think about this?
Speaker 1: I you know, I gave my views last week. I'll quickly,
Speaker 1: and it really is that you start from the premise
Speaker 1: that no law firm has a right to claim some
Speaker 1: sort of largest from the federal government, from the executive branch,
Speaker 1: and it can be pulled for any reason by the
Speaker 1: executive branch. I'm sorry, it's just that simple. And you know,
Speaker 1: I say that knowing that Steve could come back and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's only if they do it to Republicans. There's
Speaker 1: only one law firm. I don't care. I first of all,
Speaker 1: I don't think that we should be that the federal
Speaker 1: government should have its tendrils quite so far out. But
Speaker 1: I certainly don't have a problem with pulling them back
Speaker 1: when those very same grants and the grants of security
Speaker 1: clearance and all those other things are being used against
Speaker 1: the executive I mean, what world would you live in
Speaker 1: where that wouldn't happen. I'm serious. I mean, to me,
Speaker 1: it just seems so obvious.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer like you, are John, and I
Speaker 1: imagine this hits a little closer to home for you
Speaker 1: than it does for me. But I, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that that everything that Doge and Trump are doing
Speaker 1: is absolutely legitimate under their executive power, absolutely legitimate. And
Speaker 1: I haven't seen one instance yet. Maybe either you or
Speaker 1: Steve brought it up last time, the sending the MS
Speaker 1: and trend diagua gang bangers to El Salvador without some
Speaker 1: sort of due process to prove that, as Boseberg said,
Speaker 1: somebody saying oh they're not they should be able to
Speaker 1: prove they're not really gang bangers. Yeah. Right. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: an argument to be made that that went a little
Speaker 1: too far against individual rights, but I no, I don't
Speaker 1: see it. I don't see anything wrong with it. And
Speaker 1: if democratic presidents want to retaliate next time around, if
Speaker 1: they ever get in power again, which is a big if.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that too, will but they're okay.
Speaker 1: Maybe not in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: Well hopefully.
Speaker 3: Well let me ask you. Let's go back to Steve then,
Speaker 3: because he said there are examples, other examples in history,
Speaker 3: would you be comfortable if the Democrats were in charge
Speaker 3: using these same powers to say I don't like the
Speaker 3: president of Chrysler and their view. Oh it's not even
Speaker 3: called Chrysler, sorry, Stilantis Ford. I don't like that Ford's views.
Speaker 3: So the US government will no longer buy Ford cars
Speaker 3: and trucks for the government, and we will no longer
Speaker 3: and we will investigate anybody in the government who contracts
Speaker 3: with for This is what the executive order basically does
Speaker 3: with regard to law firms. It only singles out specific
Speaker 3: firms that had lawyers that probably you know, went after
Speaker 3: the visiting president. But yeah, still it's not all law firms,
Speaker 3: which would be easier, right if you said you extu
Speaker 3: an executive order, any law firm that has a DEI
Speaker 3: program is going to get its government tracks cut off
Speaker 3: or it's classification cut off if they represent China, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, that would be I think Lucas should
Speaker 3: be completely right.
Speaker 4: There's no problem.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's a problem with that. The problem
Speaker 3: is what was singling out individual companies and firms because
Speaker 3: they harmed the president in the past personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but by the way, you picked bad examples, John,
Speaker 2: because if the President said I don't want to buy
Speaker 2: cars st the Lances, I would probably approve of that.
Speaker 2: But well it's not that you know, that's a longer story.
Speaker 2: It goes all the way back to the Chrysler bailout.
Speaker 3: For you, they still owe the government money.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, they all take quickly. And actually, well
Speaker 2: that's a better point that two thousand and eight bailout
Speaker 2: is different. But that I don't know about. But although
Speaker 2: you know, actually I don't want to go off on
Speaker 2: a tangent here, but some of the stuff the Obama
Speaker 2: people did was absolutely outrageous. I mean, they canceled bond
Speaker 2: holders with legitimate claims and threatened them if they if
Speaker 2: people who had genuine legal recourse said they might actually
Speaker 2: try to vindicate their financial rights to debt instruments and
Speaker 2: things of that kind. I mean, it was talk about
Speaker 2: lawless and I think they're parallel cases. I do. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have some sympathy with your argument that when it
Speaker 2: comes to legal representation that's maybe a little different than
Speaker 2: straight up commerce like selling cars or debt instruments for
Speaker 2: general motors and things like that. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: they're not going to change unless they're have their nose blooded.
Speaker 2: So that's at the end of the day, I come
Speaker 2: down on that side of the matter.
Speaker 1: Again, we're not also in a We're not in a
Speaker 1: what would you call it, We're not in a zero
Speaker 1: sum game environment. The most of the lawfair conducted by
Speaker 1: law firms in DC are conducted against Republicans, and especially
Speaker 1: against Trump. And it wasn't just Trump that couldn't find representation.
Speaker 1: It was also all the January sixth people and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. So if we ever had a
Speaker 1: level playing field, we might be able to look at
Speaker 1: this again and say, yeah, there's something kind of not
Speaker 1: right about the president using his awful power as a
Speaker 1: chief executive to ruin an industry or ruin a law
Speaker 1: firm or whatever it might be. But we're not in
Speaker 1: a level playing field. And I kinda I know this
Speaker 1: isn't a constitutional argument, but I tend to agree with
Speaker 1: Steve on that if you don't punish them somehow, and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe look at it as the Morrison versus
Speaker 1: Olsen scenario, where what did it take to finally get
Speaker 1: it wasn't the Court fixed who fixed the situation with
Speaker 1: the Independent Council. It was Democrats who saw what happened
Speaker 1: when it was turned against them. Now, the Court was
Speaker 1: terribly wrong in their decision on that one. But it
Speaker 1: turned out to be more or less a mood issue,
Speaker 1: because hey, this is a really stupid idea, because look
Speaker 1: what they're doing with it. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: might apply here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Democrats thought the Independent Council was only meant
Speaker 2: to be applied against Republicans, And when I was applied
Speaker 2: against I often sometimes wondered if ken Starr dragged that
Speaker 2: thing out with the intent of killing it off. He
Speaker 2: succeeded exactly, and so for that maybe I'll think more
Speaker 2: kindly of him.
Speaker 3: But okay, okay, maybe one more topic before we go
Speaker 3: to our deep think part of the podcast, and that
Speaker 3: is a lot of action on the Court's front involving
Speaker 3: the future of the administrative state. So on one level,
Speaker 3: this week, the administration suffered a defeat in the DC Circuit,
Speaker 3: where the DC Circuit is the appeals court sitting in Washington, DC,
Speaker 3: which upheld Judge Boseburg's temporary restraining order on the Trump
Speaker 3: administration from continuing to deport anyone under the Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 3: So chalk that up as a loss in raising questions
Speaker 3: about how far can which we talked about last week,
Speaker 3: How far can federal judges go in second guessing the
Speaker 3: decisions of the political branches on how to protect our
Speaker 3: national security. But just today the d C Circuit, same
Speaker 3: three judges that decided that case handed a big win
Speaker 3: to the Trump administration by upholding the firing of a
Speaker 3: member of the National Labor Relations Board and basically saying
Speaker 3: Humphrey's Executor, which still allows these independent commissions to remain
Speaker 3: free of presidential control, was headed for the dustbin. Even
Speaker 3: though the Supreme Court has yet to overall Humphrey's Executor,
Speaker 3: that d C Circuit basically said its time is over
Speaker 3: based on what's been going on in the last twenty
Speaker 3: five years. This would be a cardinal win for the
Speaker 3: Trump administration to establish their principle that there are no
Speaker 3: independent regulatory agencies. They're all under presidential control.
Speaker 2: What was the vote, John was a three zero or two.
Speaker 3: To one, two to one. So if you want to
Speaker 3: get into the judges in the depinion on Judge Boseburg,
Speaker 3: there was a judge appointed by George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 3: Karen Henderson, who voted to uphold the ban on the
Speaker 3: Venezuelan flights, but she also voted to strike down the
Speaker 3: constitutionality of the independent regulatory agency. She's the she would
Speaker 3: be the person in the middle. She'd be the Anthony
Speaker 3: Kennedy of YEA. Then the balancer Judge Judge Walker. I
Speaker 3: started coughing and laughing because people can't see Lucretia doing
Speaker 3: her imitation of the karate kid right now, so chopping up.
Speaker 3: I don't know what. But Judge Walker, Justin Walker, who
Speaker 3: was appointed by Trump, voted to overturn Judge Boseburg and
Speaker 3: so he was in dissent, but he wrote the main
Speaker 3: opinion in the case about the nl RB. And Judge
Speaker 3: Patricia Millett, who is I believe it. Yeah, she's an
Speaker 3: Obama appointee. She voted uphold Judge Bosberg but also uphold
Speaker 3: these independent agencies. So it's really Judge Henderson, the Bush
Speaker 3: appoint to, who you know went between the two the
Speaker 3: conservative legal sides typical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Steve, what's.
Speaker 3: Your thought on the latest goings on the latest efforts
Speaker 3: by Trump to expand presidential power and how he's faring
Speaker 3: in the courts. What do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I can't really say about the
Speaker 2: immigration case. I don't sort of know enough about how
Speaker 2: that law works and what the grounding of that might
Speaker 2: be on the firing part. Though. My question now is
Speaker 2: that's why I asked what the vote was. If it
Speaker 2: was three zero, I could see the Supreme Court declining
Speaker 2: to hear an appeal and say, you know what, we're
Speaker 2: gonna let the DC Circuit do the dirty work on
Speaker 2: this so we don't have to do it. But if
Speaker 2: it's two to one, I don't know, or maybe somebody
Speaker 2: will create a circuit split somewhere else and they'll have
Speaker 2: to take it up. But pretty bold. I think I
Speaker 2: haven't read that opinion, but you tell me it's pretty bold.
Speaker 2: A DC circuit to say, as you characterize it, Humphreys
Speaker 2: is a dead letter. Uh, And you're just going to
Speaker 2: say the we're going to save the Supreme Court the
Speaker 2: trouble of having to do it, and so that could
Speaker 2: be potentially huge.
Speaker 3: I think the Descent says that the Descent says you're
Speaker 3: not allowed to overturn Humphreys. Only the Supreme Court can
Speaker 3: overturn humph.
Speaker 2: So you have to uphold it.
Speaker 3: Who do you think you are?
Speaker 2: Right? Okay?
Speaker 3: Right? So no, No, they're very aware of what they're
Speaker 3: doing Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Imagine that it's such a wild wild West out there
Speaker 1: right now, in the whole land of the judiciary, that
Speaker 1: I think people think they can do whatever the hell
Speaker 1: they want to. If you want to know my opinion
Speaker 1: about it, Let's see how far we can go before
Speaker 1: it all comes crashing down. There's my deep, deep theory
Speaker 1: about it. I mean to get my point, John, seriously,
Speaker 1: the whole idea again that these these judges like Boseburg,
Speaker 1: whose daughter, by the way, is employed by directly by
Speaker 1: a legal legal aid fund that gets money from USAID
Speaker 1: and guess who they represent Ms thirteen and trendi Agua
Speaker 1: his daughter. Why on earth did that guy not recuse himself?
Speaker 1: I told you he was corrupt as hell. You didn't
Speaker 1: believe me, John, But anyway, my point really is bigger
Speaker 1: than that, and that's that right now people are judges
Speaker 1: are acting in ways that nobody ever thought they ever
Speaker 1: could conceivably do, and they're getting away with it. So
Speaker 1: hell why not? Anyway?
Speaker 2: Sorry, I don't I think the story arc here, John,
Speaker 2: If I you know, an optimistic predition is this again,
Speaker 2: if there's a parallel with the new deal, and here
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a historical analogy just to annoy
Speaker 2: Lucretia before we get to our main subject, which will
Speaker 2: annoy her analogy.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, the story arc of the
Speaker 2: New Deal was is the Supreme Court had a mixed
Speaker 2: record in Roosevelt's first term. They upheld some New Deal things,
Speaker 2: they thumped hard on some others, but then in the
Speaker 2: second that completely surrendered. And I think if Trump is persistent,
Speaker 2: and he's nothing if not persistent, I think his odds
Speaker 2: improve of either forcing the Court to back him up
Speaker 2: with well considered and so many of their moves are.
Speaker 2: It seems to me much more prepared and grounded in
Speaker 2: the law than the first term. And or Congress is
Speaker 2: going to start saying, you know, we can't have instability
Speaker 2: and terror policy. Maybe we need to revise the delegation
Speaker 2: of tariff setting the presidents that we've had in place
Speaker 2: for forty fifty years, which in my mind would not
Speaker 2: necessarily be a bad thing anyway. So that's what I think.
Speaker 2: I think Trump's going to win most of these battles
Speaker 2: at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that's remarkable is
Speaker 3: how much success Trump is having, and he's reflected in
Speaker 3: the opinion polls, which we talked about a little bit
Speaker 3: in the last week. Brings to the forefront the last
Speaker 3: issue for our podcast, a topic we rarely talk about,
Speaker 3: which is on this podcast. Although I can't wait to
Speaker 3: hear what Lucretia has to say, what's wrong with the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party?
Speaker 2: Well, how much time should.
Speaker 3: We got about you know, good balance left on the show?
Speaker 3: What should the Democratic Party be doing? And part of
Speaker 3: this is raised by we can't help the shadow freud.
Speaker 3: We enjoy reading all these stories in the press about
Speaker 3: how the Democratic parties in disarray, confused, doesn't know what
Speaker 3: to do. There are several bell weather elections on Tuesday
Speaker 3: for two Republican House seats that have been vacated and
Speaker 3: a election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will probably,
Speaker 3: depending on that will have a big say on whether
Speaker 3: Democrats in the Wisconsin Legislature engage in severe partisan cherrymandering
Speaker 3: that could flip the House. At the same time, you
Speaker 3: have Democrats winning some minor last week, some minor state
Speaker 3: races here and there, one in my home state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: I actually can't believe that the county where this election
Speaker 3: happened to actually voted for a Democrat. But they did, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: By like seven hundred votes. I mean it was very close.
Speaker 3: And this is Trump country. I mean I've been this
Speaker 3: is Trump. This is like basically Amish country.
Speaker 2: This is ly I know. But look, I mean this
Speaker 2: is very typical off your elections. After a new president
Speaker 2: comes in of another party, the minority party often picks
Speaker 2: off seats that they otherwise wouldn't win just because they're
Speaker 2: more motivated and they turn out people. It's easier for
Speaker 2: them to turn out people, and Republicans if they're in
Speaker 2: power or Democrat that they stay home in larger numbers. So, look,
Speaker 2: the turnout is half in those elections, John and what
Speaker 2: it was some time. Yeah, I think this is in
Speaker 2: this case, it was half of what it was just
Speaker 2: four months ago in November. So I think it's I mean, look,
Speaker 2: you don't like to lose. A win is better than losing.
Speaker 2: And I think the Florida I think Republicans will hang
Speaker 2: on in Florida, but it'll be a lot closer, and
Speaker 2: Democrats will say, look how close it is. And Trump
Speaker 2: was unpopular, and so I think that's a you know,
Speaker 2: I think that's all ephemera myself. I think more interesting
Speaker 2: is the clash between This is why I'm so interested
Speaker 2: in the abundance agenda that's suddenly getting all this publicity
Speaker 2: right now. The celebrities and the Democratic Party and the
Speaker 2: base is excited about this tour of Bernie and AOC,
Speaker 2: And what it looks like to me is Bernie has
Speaker 2: already said he's not going to run again because he's
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty years old, and I think he
Speaker 2: is passing the torch to Alexandria Okazia Cortes, and I
Speaker 2: think she's going to run. I think what for president.
Speaker 3: In the next election.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think is old enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is. She will be. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I mean, the clue of this will be if she
Speaker 2: decides not to run against Chuck Schumer for the Senate
Speaker 2: in New York, which he's terrified about and there's been
Speaker 2: talking of for a long time, and that will have
Speaker 2: to be decided within a few months, I suspect. And
Speaker 2: so that's going to mean she's gonna run for president probably.
Speaker 2: So the progressives are, the grassroots are very excited. But
Speaker 2: meanwhile you have the thinkers of the Democratic Party. You know,
Speaker 2: both of them might like to say, it's not that small,
Speaker 2: but you know some that you and I know John,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if you've met Ruy to
Speaker 2: share at Ai, who's you know, an old social democrat,
Speaker 2: small pe, not insane progressive who had to go to
Speaker 2: AEI because the Center for American Progress essentially kicked him out.
Speaker 2: And he's been saying, for instance, democrats are nuts to
Speaker 2: go along with the climate change crazy people. And then
Speaker 2: lately he's been saying, look, if Democrats want to get
Speaker 2: back in the game and restore their fortunes, somewhere where
Speaker 2: Democrats run a city badly, they should fix it and
Speaker 2: show that they can govern competently where a lot of
Speaker 2: people live. And good luck with that. By the way,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've heard the news Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: the city of Lost Aigle Angels is a billion dollars
Speaker 2: in the red. They're not even bothering asking Washington for
Speaker 2: a bailout. They're asking Gavin Newsom for a bailout, which
Speaker 2: I think he can write out of his own check
Speaker 2: book myself. But okay, but look the abundance. Guys are
Speaker 2: all saying, golly, we over regulate things. This is really
Speaker 2: bad and it's been funny to watch Ezra Kline, who's
Speaker 2: you know, a real piece of work, do the media
Speaker 2: blitz here in the last week about the new book
Speaker 2: he's written with Derek Thompson from the Economists, and they go,
Speaker 2: they're saying things that people like me have been saying
Speaker 2: for forty years about why the regulatory process is perverse.
Speaker 2: And by the way, if you're an egalitarian, it disproportionately hurts.
Speaker 2: The further down you get on the income scale, the
Speaker 2: more it hurts people. Right, It's why we can't have
Speaker 2: you affordable housing in California. Do you know, by the way, John,
Speaker 2: that the Civitas people are all over this. The greater
Speaker 2: metropolitan area of Houston in the last seven eight years
Speaker 2: has built more year than the entire state of California
Speaker 2: every year. So just one city in Texas builds more
Speaker 2: housing than all of California. There's something obviously wrong there.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows what it is, and Ezra client has done
Speaker 2: got the receipts. And it does annoy me that these
Speaker 2: guys act like they're discovering this problem for the first
Speaker 2: time because part of their they don't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 2: The Conservatives are right. I also think a big defect
Speaker 2: here is and I've only read, by the way, it's
Speaker 2: not the only book. This other one I just got
Speaker 2: today is Why Nothing Works by some guy named Mark
Speaker 2: Dunkelman at Brown University. You know, who killed progress and
Speaker 2: how to bring it back? And I've dipped in it
Speaker 2: a little bit, and it's there's no acknowledgement. The conservatives
Speaker 2: have been saying this for forty to fifty years, and
Speaker 2: they act like they're discovering this problem of over regulation
Speaker 2: for the first time. But they go into great detail
Speaker 2: about you know, what are the reasons why Obama, sorry Biden,
Speaker 2: appropriated forty two million dollars for rural broadband access and
Speaker 2: as of today, and that was four years ago, as
Speaker 2: of today, zero houses anywhere in the country have been
Speaker 2: connected to broadband, And then go through all the steps
Speaker 2: involved why it can't happen, and it's oh, this guy
Speaker 2: does tell the story of what's his name, you know,
Speaker 2: the mayor of New York in the eighties. The guy
Speaker 2: used to say, how am I doing? Cotch? How they
Speaker 2: spent fourteen million dollars to try and fix the skating
Speaker 2: rink and central a skating rink in Central Park and
Speaker 2: there was a big flop and then to tear it up.
Speaker 2: And finally Trump comes in and says, I'll do it
Speaker 2: for seven million, and by the way, if I can
Speaker 2: come in cheaper, I get to keep the savings. And
Speaker 2: he did. He came in, you know, very quickly in
Speaker 2: a few months and built the thing back. And that's
Speaker 2: part of the Trump legend, right And you know, then
Speaker 2: I'll tell you something right there. The last thing I'll
Speaker 2: say about.
Speaker 1: This is, I bet they never said that about Trump
Speaker 1: in the book.
Speaker 2: Oh this book they do. I mean this, this book
Speaker 2: actually tells the story in some detail of Trump coming
Speaker 2: in and doing.
Speaker 1: It, but not the Abundance Book.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've got very far in it. Thereafter
Speaker 2: some there's a different lineup. I think that there. It
Speaker 2: reminds me a little bit of the ferment among conservatives
Speaker 2: in the late seventies early eighties, like, well, there's a
Speaker 2: real parallel here, because Klein said we need supply side
Speaker 2: progressivism a couple of years ago, and I had a
Speaker 2: joke about that because I heard him say it, and
Speaker 2: I raised my hand and said, do you have a napkin?
Speaker 2: Do you have a curve? If you don't have a
Speaker 2: napkin at a curve. It's not really supply side anything.
Speaker 2: It's just sparkling neoliberalism. And everybody laughed except him. He's
Speaker 2: a real humorless twit.
Speaker 3: Anyway, he'd probablyn't understand what you were referring to us.
Speaker 3: What he probably didn't understand you were referring.
Speaker 4: To, like the laugh of curve.
Speaker 2: Well, well you might be right, he might. It might
Speaker 2: have totally gone over his head. It wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is the guy twenty years ago, in
Speaker 2: his bush hating face who said one of the TV
Speaker 2: shows got our constitution. Nough, it's over one hundred years old.
Speaker 2: It's really obsolete. It was just ludicrous how ignorant the
Speaker 2: guy is, but pretty typical. My point is is, I
Speaker 2: think it's it's interesting. I've actually been close to some
Speaker 2: of the people who have been pushing this direction for
Speaker 2: a long time, like Rui to Shia and my pals
Speaker 2: at the Breakthrough Institute really incubated a lot of this
Speaker 2: thought among smarter left of centered people. They're going to
Speaker 2: get nowhere with the Democratic Party grassroots, and you know,
Speaker 2: one of the important things about you know, the supply
Speaker 2: side revolution was you had Jack Kemp and ultimately Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 2: who said, you know what, you guys have a great idea,
Speaker 2: and we're going to make it part of a campaign.
Speaker 2: I can't think of a single Democrat who will grab
Speaker 2: these ideas and say, you know what, we need a
Speaker 2: serious reform of all this stuff that our team has
Speaker 2: been building up for the last fifty sixty years. And
Speaker 2: last point, sorry I went on too long. Lucretia Blin
Speaker 2: was on Gavin Newsom's podcast just two or three days ago,
Speaker 2: and Klein went through some of this stuff and he
Speaker 2: brought California and Newsom. Instead of capitulating like he did
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk on DEI and other stuff, Newsom said, well,
Speaker 2: you got to understand the circumstances here are really responsible.
Speaker 2: In other words, he weasel out of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's anybody who want to grab this, except he can't
Speaker 2: because he's been running California into the ground. And by
Speaker 2: the way, here we are saying we're going to lift
Speaker 2: all the regulatory requirements to rebuild the fire zones. There
Speaker 2: have only been four building permits issued so far to
Speaker 2: rebuild houses in all the places that have burned down
Speaker 2: down in the LA Area four and you know, in
Speaker 2: three months, so he'd had to put up or shut up.
Speaker 2: And I think he knows he can't. But I think
Speaker 2: there's nobody of the charisma and seriousness of say that
Speaker 2: you saw in Jack Camp in seventy nine and eighty
Speaker 2: who's going to take up this cause? And so I
Speaker 2: think it's going to hit the wall. But it's fun
Speaker 2: to watch and interesting, and you know, as all the
Speaker 2: I mean every other page, I'm saying that's right, And
Speaker 2: I heard three things you guys are wrong about and
Speaker 2: but still I kind of like to see this. Sorry,
Speaker 2: And the lucretia.
Speaker 3: Lucretia is this abundance idea that intellectual life preserver the
Speaker 3: Democratic part should be reaching for or if not? And
Speaker 3: I saw you taking your head many times while Steve
Speaker 3: was talking if not, what should the Democratic Party do
Speaker 3: to win an election someday for the press.
Speaker 1: I do believe that you asked me that question before
Speaker 1: the election. And what would I do if I was
Speaker 1: advising the Democratic Party? I don't even remember what I said.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem I see with the column the
Speaker 1: center left, more thoughtful Democrats trying to convince their party
Speaker 1: not to be radical nut jobs. The problem is the
Speaker 1: inherent contradictions between what the party claims to claims in
Speaker 1: a public way to stand for and what they really believe.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you an example that actually comes from
Speaker 1: one of the articles Steve sent us. Forgive me, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a little bit of it. But you know,
Speaker 1: in how in this house we believe signs it make
Speaker 1: you just want to go, bring the doorbell, punch the
Speaker 1: person in the face when they answer. But you know
Speaker 1: they're all over These people get a set by the
Speaker 1: waymen I say those things, John, we get negative comments
Speaker 1: when I talk about people in the face. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but on.
Speaker 3: This side, I thought our listenership went up every time
Speaker 3: you wanted to physicize, because.
Speaker 1: More people like it than don't. But some people do
Speaker 1: get upset. Those people are probably very similar to the
Speaker 1: ones I'm going to describe here. In a moment it
Speaker 1: says that that you know this in this house, we
Speaker 1: believe it. Basically, I just the crippling problem, he says,
Speaker 1: of the abundance agendas agenda's viability on the left liberalisms.
Speaker 1: Forgive me for this liberalism's mutation into an elaborate status
Speaker 1: game for affluent climbers, whose putative beliefs are almost entirely
Speaker 1: a matter of blaring fashionable catchphrases which signal their moral
Speaker 1: superiority while leaving unchanged the material conditions of those supposedly
Speaker 1: in need. That is what Trump honed in on in
Speaker 1: a way nobody ever thought was possible. He went to
Speaker 1: places we talked about this before, like Brooklyn, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to hand you anything. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: set the conditions that mean that if you try, you
Speaker 1: can be successful. Democrats don't care about the poor. They
Speaker 1: don't care about people struggling. They don't care about the
Speaker 1: middle class. They just want to look like they care
Speaker 1: about the middle class. My favorite silly anecdote about this
Speaker 1: is from Al Gore who's sitting with his family when
Speaker 1: he is still married to Tipper and you know, their kids,
Speaker 1: and they're sitting at an outdoor restaurant in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And some homeless guy comes up and asks for food
Speaker 1: or money. I forget this has been a long time, obviously,
Speaker 1: and one of the kids says to dad, Daddy, can
Speaker 1: we give this guy some money? And he says no, no, no,
Speaker 1: much better that we support government policies that help homelessness.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's your liberal, that's your Democrat. They don't give
Speaker 1: a damn about anybody suffering. What you guys can take
Speaker 1: a picture quick, Steve. All right, So, in case you're
Speaker 1: wonder why we're all laughing our ghost of a podcast,
Speaker 1: what do you call the usurper's changed his screen zoom
Speaker 1: screen name to Jeffrey Goldber for The Atlantic. Sorry and
Speaker 1: completely you know, derailed my my dietrap. But that's okay,
Speaker 1: you guys. You guys know how I feel about this,
Speaker 1: and so talking about how you might address these many
Speaker 1: problems homelessness, lack of housing. We're not building green energy,
Speaker 1: you know, takes how many years to uh let's see
Speaker 1: the the light rail system or whatever the hell it's
Speaker 1: called in California is supposed to be done speedil speed
Speaker 1: rail in twenty It was supposed to be done in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and they only recently what laid the first
Speaker 1: piece of track.
Speaker 2: It's gonna well, if they're lucky, yeah, I mean they're
Speaker 2: now saying, is that another seven billion dollars to lay
Speaker 2: half the track by the year twenty thirty. So it's
Speaker 2: ridiculous why.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the abundant. Why can't we do this?
Speaker 1: Why it is nothing working? But you know how I
Speaker 1: would love to know how much they spent on environmental
Speaker 1: impact studies.
Speaker 2: Only just that Oh my god, Oh it's oh, I know,
Speaker 2: I know a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I would actually relate it. My last thing I'll
Speaker 1: say about this, John, is I would relate it to
Speaker 1: the whole thing going on with Tesla's where you have
Speaker 1: these lefties who claim that all they care about is
Speaker 1: the planet and and ending fossil fuels and we all
Speaker 1: have to drive electric cars. And I think that stupid
Speaker 1: Mayor Karen Bass Bass whatever name is, said that she's
Speaker 1: gonna give preference to building permits that claim to build
Speaker 1: houses that are all electric. You know, they never end
Speaker 1: with the nonsense, but you know they're out there destroying Tesla's,
Speaker 1: destroying Tesla dealership, destroying people who probably bought Teslas. Not me,
Speaker 1: not me, let me just make that absolutely there, but
Speaker 1: people who probably bought Teslas because they hear about the
Speaker 1: environment and they want to drive an electric car. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's the typical. The leftists are dumb, Their
Speaker 1: ideology is stupid, and they can't think. So you got
Speaker 1: all those things together, you try to come in and
Speaker 1: sort of convince them that this would be the way
Speaker 1: perhaps to achieve the goals you have. They're not their goals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not their goals. That's the problem.
Speaker 2: See, I think John, to answer your opening question and
Speaker 2: then we maybe close out as I think there's a
Speaker 2: huge opening for some clever Democrat office seeker or holder
Speaker 2: to say, let's make liberalism great again, and by that
Speaker 2: I mean they to bring up how or to their
Speaker 2: own party that liberals used to build stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: the California that Lucretian I grew up in when we
Speaker 2: were very small kids. But it was Pat Brown's governor,
Speaker 2: Jerry's dad, old fashioned new deal builder. So what was
Speaker 2: going on in the you know, fifties and we're born
Speaker 2: in sixties, is we were building a big water project.
Speaker 2: We were building dams, we were building lots of highways
Speaker 2: we both lost.
Speaker 1: State highways, which we were wonderful.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and and school lots of schools, and boy, you
Speaker 2: could build housing like crazy in the state. And really
Speaker 2: it's it was up until the time the no growth
Speaker 2: movement started, which really did start here in California in
Speaker 2: the seventies. You know, home prices in San Francisco. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you know this, John, home prizes in
Speaker 2: San Francisco were about the same as the median price
Speaker 2: for the country as a whole. It was actually a
Speaker 2: reasonable place to live. And it all started when the
Speaker 2: you know, the environmental movement going, this is the big
Speaker 2: thing they would have to turn on to be serious
Speaker 2: about this, They'd have to turn on the environmental movement.
Speaker 2: And I think they're too terrified of that because it's
Speaker 2: they're too powerful. They give too much money to Democrats,
Speaker 2: and so that's why they're not going to do it.
Speaker 3: So my my little read on it, not having read
Speaker 3: these books, but read some of the articles and commentary,
Speaker 3: is that this is just another species of Democrats wishing
Speaker 3: they had Obama back, because what they describe is Obama's
Speaker 3: pitch right, Oa, no drama, Obama. You know, he would
Speaker 3: make the government work work. They just want the government
Speaker 3: to work more efficiently. They don't want to change their values.
Speaker 3: So that's what Obama said he was going to do, right,
Speaker 3: he was going to be you know, their you know,
Speaker 3: their version of let.
Speaker 1: Me remind you of the rollout of Obamacare.
Speaker 3: John, Yeah, no, I'm not saying actually he was that
Speaker 3: good at it, but that was what they thought he was.
Speaker 1: And remember how much he pressed pressed the idea that
Speaker 1: it was the government and not individual uh, innovation, hard work,
Speaker 1: initiative and all of that that that. You know, Remember
Speaker 1: you didn't build it. I think Obama build it.
Speaker 3: Aama's promise to the way Democrats. So Obama was that
Speaker 3: he would make government more effective, but at the same
Speaker 3: time he would still push all their values of diversity
Speaker 3: and you know, climate change. Isn't this basically just a
Speaker 3: Isn't there another Obama out there who can make this
Speaker 3: same pitch? Anyway, that's my small read on it. We
Speaker 3: are coming towards the end of the show, so Lucretia,
Speaker 3: do you have our Babylon be headlines?
Speaker 1: I do, And remember I said something really dumb last time,
Speaker 1: which was that the Babylon Bee wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: funny anymore because there was really nothing. But man, did
Speaker 1: they hit it out of the park. So we didn't
Speaker 1: talk about Pete Haigsa's tattoo, but which turns out to say,
Speaker 1: underneath his Christian tattoo, there's a tattoo that in Arabic
Speaker 1: that called what that says infidel And of course everybody's
Speaker 1: upset about this, and this is just a terrible because
Speaker 1: it's going to make the Muslim world think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we were enemies of them. Of course we're enemies of
Speaker 1: the Muslim world. Islam is the greatest source of evil
Speaker 1: in the world today and every thinking person knows it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that being said, concerns raised as hag Seth Unveil's new
Speaker 1: kill all Kamis forehead tattoo, okay, British and then then
Speaker 1: of course you know that Starmer is going to abolish
Speaker 1: all make illegal the ownership of all ninja swords by summer.
Speaker 3: When I saw that, I thought that was actually the
Speaker 3: baton behavo. That's actually true.
Speaker 1: Real, actually true. So British Prime Minister announced this prosecution
Speaker 1: of King Arthur for pulling dangerous sword from Stone.
Speaker 2: Well. I also liked the picture they did of the
Speaker 2: ninja protest in London. It's just the blank.
Speaker 3: Test, Okay.
Speaker 1: Back to the beginning conversation about Signal hag Seth kicking
Speaker 1: him self. We're not just getting thirteen soldiers killed and
Speaker 1: giving eighty billion dollars in weapons to terrorists. Not funny.
Speaker 1: Political neutrality. We didn't talk about the PBS hearings either,
Speaker 1: but not that much to say.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, sorry that we only had an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, political neutrality of PBS questioned after new footage of
Speaker 1: Elmo keying cybertruck.
Speaker 2: Well there was the other one too, where it was
Speaker 2: an NPR or maybe it was. PBS presents full range
Speaker 2: of view, from partially comedy to fully commy.
Speaker 1: So true. Jasmine Crockett says she was just criticizing GOP
Speaker 1: policies when she called Governor Abbott honky boy in the
Speaker 1: wheelchair whose legs don't work. Sometimes I think we have
Speaker 1: to do an entire.
Speaker 2: Well do we have to?
Speaker 1: Journalist? Just happy to be included in group text for once?
Speaker 1: That was pretty funny. Last one I get. This one
Speaker 1: isn't the funniest one. I shouldn't have saved it for last,
Speaker 1: but I'll say it anyway. Another security breach hunter, Biden
Speaker 1: discovered to still be living in White House tool shed.
Speaker 1: So they're back. They're back. Oh wait, there was one
Speaker 1: for you, Steve, hold on you. State allows I get
Speaker 1: two more. Sorry, State allows open alcohol containers in cars
Speaker 1: for parents teaching teenagers how to drive.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Inside. It's yeah, I know, federal judge rules. God overstepped
Speaker 1: his authority. Adam and Eve can return.
Speaker 4: To Eden that one, okay, Steve, Well, it's my turn.
Speaker 4: They always drink your whiskey, Neat and Steve.
Speaker 2: So, in light of what the Christy was saying about
Speaker 2: the Aldhore liberal hypocrisy, I'm instead of doing a custom ending,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go straight to music landing and it's
Speaker 2: going to be phil oaks. Love me. I'm a liberal.
Speaker 1: I died when I shot John Lennon.
Speaker 2: That tears ran.
Speaker 5: Down by Fie and I cried when I saw Chay
Speaker 5: as though I lost the father of mine.
Speaker 2: Now come out and I see he had it come
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 1: God what the time?
Speaker 3: Sound though? Love me, Love me.
Speaker 5: I'm a go to pro choice Sally recycle my hands
Speaker 5: and job you love the dead, A funny gunstaff down
Speaker 5: st talk from my bird of the Shine. Let's go
Speaker 5: hang a little bit too far?
Speaker 2: So love me, love I give.
Speaker 3: I cheer.
Speaker 5: When Clinton was chosen my faith, I don't do anything
Speaker 5: to say I stood.
Speaker 2: My cats don't say too much more.
Speaker 1: And I love blacks and Latin noise as.
Speaker 5: Fun as the trouble of the song don't Love Me,
Speaker 5: Love Me.
Speaker 1: I'm a Giver.
Speaker 2: Ricochet joined the conversation. Ye