Speaker 1: Well Whiskey coment, take My pain the money, Oh Whiskey,
Speaker 1: don't you Leave Me?
Speaker 2: From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet
Speaker 2: dot Com. This is the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with
Speaker 2: your bartenders Steve Hayward, John Yu and power Lines International
Speaker 2: Woman of Mystery Lucretia has Gotta giving.
Speaker 3: Let that whiskey clone when you're feeling in love, Down
Speaker 3: and Lone.
Speaker 4: Welcome everyone to the very very last edition of the
Speaker 4: Three Whiskey Happy Hour in the year twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: and I'm very excited to be here with my co
Speaker 4: hosts John You and Steve Hayward celebrating what has been,
Speaker 4: by all accounts, quite a successful year. I almost am
Speaker 4: tired of winning, but not quite. I don't know, but
Speaker 4: you guys, are you tired of winning yet?
Speaker 5: No, not at all. I'm a joint John.
Speaker 6: Well, this has just been spring training so far. We
Speaker 6: got to see how the real games, how the real
Speaker 6: game goes the next four years. What are you talking about?
Speaker 4: So, John, tell me what was in your opinion, the
Speaker 4: best thing, the best story of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: I'd have to say it was Trump defeating law Fair,
Speaker 6: which got him the primary and I think contributed heavily
Speaker 6: to his winning the election. But I think Trump defeating
Speaker 6: all the use of prosecution and then cross support by
Speaker 6: the media and everything to win. I did not think
Speaker 6: he was going to be able to do it.
Speaker 4: So you by that, you don't necessarily mean defeating all
Speaker 4: of the individual lawsuits and so forth. What you mean
Speaker 4: is that the intent of the law fair was to
Speaker 4: bring him down and he was not brought down.
Speaker 6: Is that am I? I say? Each Yeah, each individual
Speaker 6: lawsuit was a different tactic. The overall strategy was to
Speaker 6: use this sort of combined effort of prosecution, civil lawsuits,
Speaker 6: the media to bring him down and prevent him from
Speaker 6: running for president and prevent him from winning.
Speaker 4: And would you add the assassination attempts in there as well?
Speaker 6: I don't think that was part of it. Come on,
Speaker 6: although I know you're still investigating. I know you're still
Speaker 6: investigating to find the links.
Speaker 4: All right, before I get to his worst? See what's
Speaker 4: your best?
Speaker 5: Oh it's see. I think bigger than John as usual.
Speaker 5: I think it's Trump winning over everything, not just law fair.
Speaker 5: And then we put it this way as was I
Speaker 5: think readers know I was a desantist person. You know
Speaker 5: i'd met him. I think he's a very smart and
Speaker 5: promising guy, and I was for him.
Speaker 6: That's that's when the poll started going south on him,
Speaker 6: is when they.
Speaker 5: Picture of you and your favorite calamy. But here's my
Speaker 5: point is I have to say that Trump winning is
Speaker 5: more satisfying than the sand. Is there any other Republican
Speaker 5: winning this selection. The fact that it's Trump who won
Speaker 5: a majority of the popular vote, uh and and routed
Speaker 5: every attack on him so well, that is so much
Speaker 5: more satisfying than if a conventional Republican had won.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 5: That's sort of my great story of the year. I
Speaker 5: think you can't. This is why I side with you
Speaker 5: on the whole landslide question, which you know, statistically persnicketty
Speaker 5: people will pooh pooh, but I think you are metaphysically
Speaker 5: correct about that. And that's why I think Trump winning
Speaker 5: is the big story. And we'll see, yeah, and as
Speaker 5: Trump likes to say, we'll just see. I have to
Speaker 5: see what happens.
Speaker 4: Well, and you add to what John said about the
Speaker 4: law fair and the fact that all of the major
Speaker 4: institutions of of our of American society were stacked against Trump.
Speaker 4: I mean, if if you remove Twitter. From that equation,
Speaker 4: I can't. I have yet to come up with even
Speaker 4: one major institution in society that was even new towards Trump.
Speaker 4: Am I wrong about that? I mean, wait, think of
Speaker 4: what I'm asking. I'm actually that's actually a question for
Speaker 4: both of you. Can you think of a I mean,
Speaker 4: certainly not academia, certainly not anything in the media that
Speaker 4: with any sort of force. Even Fox News is not
Speaker 4: at all trustworthy when it comes to reporting on Trump.
Speaker 4: Better than most, of course, but not altogether trustworthy.
Speaker 1: And you know, the on and on and on.
Speaker 4: It's everything stacked against him, along with the law fair
Speaker 4: it should have brought down anyone else, I guess it
Speaker 4: would be my point. It's amazing that the victory over
Speaker 4: all of that is utterly amazing in my opinion. But
Speaker 4: it also goes to show that that thing that the
Speaker 4: Democrats like to refer to as our democracy trademark actually
Speaker 4: works a whole lot better than than any of us
Speaker 4: thought it might. In other words, there were it is,
Speaker 4: in fact, in our constitutional republic, still democratic rule. From
Speaker 4: the point of view that a lot of people out
Speaker 4: there were not convinced by the elites who wanted them
Speaker 4: to do a certain thing that they didn't want to do, right,
Speaker 4: am I right?
Speaker 6: I have a slow descent?
Speaker 5: Is that I don't have.
Speaker 6: I don't think the great news is Trump himself winning.
Speaker 6: It's that the system rejected this effort to radicalize it
Speaker 6: by all the institutions coming together to try to disrupt
Speaker 6: the way we've conducted elections for hundreds of years in
Speaker 6: this country. That's that's I mean. I'm glad the institutions
Speaker 6: in a way worked and that the left tried to
Speaker 6: pervert them because they thought Trump was such a severe
Speaker 6: threat to democracy they had to go to any ends
Speaker 6: to prevail. Although this is you know, their track record
Speaker 6: on things like climate change, affirmative action, abortion, or you
Speaker 6: go through all the progressive issues, and they're willing to
Speaker 6: radicalize institutions to win. And so that's why I find
Speaker 6: it the story not because of Trump, but because they failed.
Speaker 6: The left fail.
Speaker 4: I think that's what I was trying to say as well,
Speaker 4: that the reason that they failed is because Americans are
Speaker 4: a lot smarter than they gave them credit for. They're
Speaker 4: not as easily manipulated, they have a better sense of
Speaker 4: their own self interest rightly understood, and so I think
Speaker 4: you're right. Trump. Trump is a nice figurehead for all
Speaker 4: of that, and the person that he is made it
Speaker 4: possible in many ways. But it was the American people
Speaker 4: rejecting all of those things you just talked about that
Speaker 4: brought about the win. I do have really quickly, John,
Speaker 4: It's on my list, and I apologize for this, but
Speaker 4: I know you'll get a kick out of it. I
Speaker 4: won't remember their names, they're not worth remembering. But you
Speaker 4: might have seen the story about those two lawyers who
Speaker 4: are calling for for Electoral College electors to reject Trump's
Speaker 4: win and install Calm a Lah because you know, the
Speaker 4: whole insurrection thing.
Speaker 5: Or they said could do it too. They said Congress
Speaker 5: could do it. They said, not electors, but Congress could
Speaker 5: also reject you votes.
Speaker 6: That's why I think the electoral that's why I think
Speaker 6: that new electoral count that's actually unconstitutional because it allows
Speaker 6: Congress to reject electoral votes.
Speaker 5: I don't think they have that right.
Speaker 4: No, not, It doesn't seem to be under the constitution.
Speaker 4: But on Twitter, I called out Rachel Alexander and I said,
Speaker 4: I think that we need to get these two lawyers
Speaker 4: disbarred because, after all, there is precedent yep.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I said the same thing yesterday on Power Line.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, enough of that, wor well.
Speaker 5: Can I just add though, real quickly? John says that
Speaker 5: it's uh that it's right now. We're in the preseason
Speaker 5: or spring training formally again, formally true except what I'll
Speaker 5: sug justin rebuttal is but Trump is wearing out the
Speaker 5: best pitching arms of the other teams, but before the
Speaker 5: official season starts. And by that I mean the shock
Speaker 5: of his election isn't just a shock of Democrats in America.
Speaker 5: I think it's a shock to the entire world. And
Speaker 5: so one of the amusing things I'm watching the last
Speaker 5: ten days or so is Trump saying, you know, we
Speaker 5: all have the Panama Canal back, and we should buy Greenland, Greenland,
Speaker 5: And I play what's this about? And the Wall Street
Speaker 5: Journal even sniffed at editorial, Gosh, I don't remember Trump
Speaker 5: campaigning on invading Panama. And you know, by now you
Speaker 5: think people would understand Trump's negotiating style. So I pick
Speaker 5: up the paper here yesterday and it says, ah, Panama
Speaker 5: is finally going to get serious about closing the Darien gap.
Speaker 5: That's an area southern Panama that's sort of an out
Speaker 5: of control jungle where the human traffickers assemble people. And
Speaker 5: the Journal reported responsible for five hundred thousand migrants at
Speaker 5: least to our border over the.
Speaker 4: Last and what happens to them in that jungle is
Speaker 4: isis a humanitarian crisis exactly.
Speaker 5: And but suddenly Panama stepping Oh yeah, I guess we
Speaker 5: have to do some. The headline this morning is Mexico
Speaker 5: fears Trump may bomb or attack the drug cartels inside
Speaker 5: Mexico between and that in his terror threats against Mexico.
Speaker 5: Just geeve, people are suddenly saying, you know, maybe we
Speaker 5: you know, what's the old Mockavillian line, better to be
Speaker 5: feared than loved. Trump doesn't care about being loved, And
Speaker 5: this all seems rather crude and direct to me. Greenland
Speaker 5: I'm not sure about, except that I think maybe Trump
Speaker 5: did say it has military strategic significance. And you know,
Speaker 5: if the Russians turn to get frisky again, not to
Speaker 5: mention the Chinese, sooner or later, the Chinese are going
Speaker 5: to start staying their own submarines under the North Pole,
Speaker 5: suddenly using Greenland as nothing else a monitoring base for
Speaker 5: intelligence gathering looks important. I could say more about that,
Speaker 5: having visited Greenland last summer and not sure whether we
Speaker 5: really wanted or not for a bunch of reasons. But
Speaker 5: still I think this is you know, Trump has everyone
Speaker 5: back on their heels, and like so many of his
Speaker 5: business ventures, he'll say something outrageous, this is something Conrad
Speaker 5: Black picked up six seven years ago. He'll make it
Speaker 5: outrageous proposal, and then a reasonable one will come through
Speaker 5: and he's happy and everyone's better off. And the world
Speaker 5: politicians came figure this out because they're not used to
Speaker 5: someone who operates that way. So so just the first
Speaker 5: of the year, you asked that was your next question.
Speaker 4: Sorry, no, I was just gonna ask what why do
Speaker 4: we want Greenland? Explain that one to me.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, first of all, I don't get why.
Speaker 6: I just looked up the population. Can anybody guess what
Speaker 6: it is?
Speaker 5: It's like two thousand or less.
Speaker 6: No, it's so ridiculous. It's fifty six thousand people. So
Speaker 6: I don't know why we should let fifty six thousand
Speaker 6: people control the fate of that enormous piece of land.
Speaker 6: But if you look at the met Lucretie, it's the
Speaker 6: enormous strategic importance. In fact, one of the things FDR
Speaker 6: did before we ever even entered World War two was
Speaker 6: he basically stationed a huge base, you know, sent troops
Speaker 6: into Greenland to prevent the access from getting it, because
Speaker 6: it's a great base to patrol the North Atlantic front.
Speaker 6: Like if you don't have Greenland, if we don't have Greenland,
Speaker 6: we don't have the uh, we don't have the bridge
Speaker 6: to Great Britain. In World War two, we can't get
Speaker 6: our ships past summarines through there across Atlantic. Plus, as
Speaker 6: Steve said, if the Arctic is becoming an area of
Speaker 6: great power competition. You look at the map, China, Russia
Speaker 6: and the United States are a lot closer to each
Speaker 6: other if you look at the Earth from the top
Speaker 6: and Greenland again, is this huge, you know, really unoccupied space.
Speaker 6: I mean that people only live on a very small
Speaker 6: sliver of it, but it's actually of enormous strategic importance. Also,
Speaker 6: that's I think why Trump's talking about Canada being the
Speaker 6: fifty first state and Trudeau being a governor. It's like,
Speaker 6: ye know, this actually goes back to the founding. I
Speaker 6: don't even know in the Articles of Confederation there is
Speaker 6: a provision about adding the Canadian provinces to the United States,
Speaker 6: and part of what the War of eighteen twelve was
Speaker 6: provoked because we wanted to invade Canada and add it
Speaker 6: to the United States. I always said there was a
Speaker 6: great idea, except then we'd have to have nationalized.
Speaker 5: Healthcare, not that we didn't have it already.
Speaker 4: Middle Why couldn't we get rid of theirs? Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: I'm just curious. My dad always used to say that
Speaker 4: there's very little ice in Iceland and very little green
Speaker 4: in Greenland. And I was stationed there actually during the
Speaker 4: Korean War, came upon a mass grave site.
Speaker 6: Now, don't the thing is with Greenland and Canada. We
Speaker 6: don't really need to possess them and make them part
Speaker 6: of the United States, but we need to have the
Speaker 6: right to put bases there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 4: Right, So what's your worst? What's your worst thing that
Speaker 4: happened this last year?
Speaker 6: So, I mean the worst of course, everything is going
Speaker 6: to have to do with Biden. I think the fact
Speaker 6: that the White House staff, it now appears, have been
Speaker 6: concealing his mental incapacity for it seems like his whole presidency,
Speaker 6: if not before, I think, is a huge problem for
Speaker 6: our political constitutional system. I mean, our constitution centralizes power
Speaker 6: in the president. It's a single person to take advantage
Speaker 6: of speed, speed and energy in the executive and if
Speaker 6: this imperial guard surrounds him and prevents people from knowing
Speaker 6: his true condition, I think it undermines our system. So
Speaker 6: I actually, if I'm going to write a piece about this,
Speaker 6: I think actually Congress should hold hearings and investigate whether
Speaker 6: we need to change the twenty fifth Amendment to make
Speaker 6: a clearer the state of mental incapacity that would justify
Speaker 6: removing a president. And here's the delicious part. This is
Speaker 6: the part I think Lucretia would like President Trump will
Speaker 6: be able to waive executive privilege on behalf of all
Speaker 6: the Biden White House staffers who would not want to
Speaker 6: have to testify about all the ways they covered up
Speaker 6: Biden's mental decline. And when Congress subpoena is them and
Speaker 6: then holds them in contempt, it'll be the Trump Justice
Speaker 6: Department which will be allowed to prosecute people like the
Speaker 6: White House Counsel and the chief of Staff for refusing
Speaker 6: to testify about the ways they covered it up. And
Speaker 6: so I just wonder if the Steve Bannon Memorial jail
Speaker 6: cell will have extra spaces or the people who are
Speaker 6: going to be sent there when they refuse to cooperate
Speaker 6: with the congressional investigation.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep. Peter Navarro was imprisoned for Also, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: just wanted to make sure, just out of curiosity, could
Speaker 4: we maybe hold that whole thing, those the hearings in
Speaker 4: New York for a change, and then put them in
Speaker 4: Rikers Island.
Speaker 5: Oh well, Rikers Island is a city jail. I'm not
Speaker 5: a federal one.
Speaker 4: I know, I know, but I was at least going
Speaker 4: to move the venue to show I understood slightly. No,
Speaker 4: I agree, absolutely agree with you. Yes, yes, the answer
Speaker 4: is yes, John, I'll do another. I would argue that,
Speaker 4: let me start over. I would ask you whether or
Speaker 4: not there is a crime involved at this point without
Speaker 4: a new twenty fifth amendment, you know, changes to it.
Speaker 4: Is there a crime involved that anybody could actually be
Speaker 4: prosecuted for covering up the mental disability of the president.
Speaker 4: There's not, really is there.
Speaker 6: So this is actually a really great liberal versus conservative
Speaker 6: fight because liberals would have to admit that they think
Speaker 6: there would be because they have they have brought prosecutions,
Speaker 6: particularly the Special Counsel Jack Smith, where he lost unanimously
Speaker 6: at the Supreme Court. They have brought prosecutions on something
Speaker 6: they call fraud, but it's really called honest services nature fraud,
Speaker 6: where politicians have not. It's so ridiculous that that there
Speaker 6: was ever prosecutions brought on this. Politicians, even corporate figures,
Speaker 6: have not been honest in the way they did business,
Speaker 6: and so they could this was apparently a federal crime.
Speaker 6: You know, you'd have to you'd have to prosecute every
Speaker 6: member of Congress under this theory. So but liberals think, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's a crime. Conservatives at the Supreme Court have gradually
Speaker 6: narrowed this and narrowed this to try to prevent people
Speaker 6: from just being prosecuted because we think they did something corrupt. Right,
Speaker 6: This is you know, like the Supreme Court has said,
Speaker 6: you have to show there was a payoff, not just
Speaker 6: that someone was doing someone a favor. So I actually
Speaker 6: am not sure there's a crime, except the liberal theory
Speaker 6: of good government would suggest there was a crime.
Speaker 5: Ah right, Well, yeah, I mean did.
Speaker 4: You want to comment on that? See, because I was
Speaker 4: one further question.
Speaker 5: No, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker 4: So the further question is how would you how would
Speaker 4: you personally? Let's say John you is being asked as
Speaker 4: no doubt he will be to testify before Congress before
Speaker 4: hearings to talk about what the language of an amended
Speaker 4: twenty fifth Amendment might look like. What what would you
Speaker 4: suggest to make sure that it does what it's supposed
Speaker 4: to do and not be abused, which, of course is always,
Speaker 4: you know, always the issue here.
Speaker 6: So there's two different features of the twenty fifth Amendment.
Speaker 6: One is it doesn't include mental right. It doesn't include
Speaker 6: actually doesn't really decline and define disability. So want these
Speaker 6: you want to define it. The second thing that I
Speaker 6: think the harder thing is the process. Right now, the
Speaker 6: process is completely controlled by the vice president. So you
Speaker 6: cannot remove a president. Even if a president is obviously disabled,
Speaker 6: he cannot be or she cannot be removed unless the
Speaker 6: vice president agrees to it. The vice president is one
Speaker 6: who triggers the whole process. I'm not clear that the
Speaker 6: vice president is the best person to have in this system.
Speaker 4: So the way it works is the conflictive interests.
Speaker 6: Conflict of interest, Yeah, like look at Kamala Harris, right,
Speaker 6: So you have the system works as the vice president decides,
Speaker 6: and then they have to get a majority of the
Speaker 6: cabinet to agree, and then the president is temporarily removed
Speaker 6: and the vice president becomes acting president. So and then
Speaker 6: the weird thing is the president can come back almost
Speaker 6: right away and say send a letter to Congress, say no,
Speaker 6: I'm all better, I'm able, I'm not disabled, I'm abled,
Speaker 6: and then two thirds of Congress has to reject that
Speaker 6: in order to keep the president out of office. So
Speaker 6: like a demented like Joe Biden, suppose this had been
Speaker 6: used on him, I have no doubt that he and
Speaker 6: his palace guards would have immediately sent a letter to
Speaker 6: Congress saying I'm all better, and then all he would
Speaker 6: need would be right thirty four senators to agree with him,
Speaker 6: and he would have become president again, no matter how
Speaker 6: nuts he was or how demented he was. So that's anything.
Speaker 6: We got to think of a better procedure for judging.
Speaker 6: Now here's the interesting thing. I'm not saying we should
Speaker 6: adopt everything Korea does, because the Korea is going through
Speaker 6: its own interesting thing right now. The one thing in
Speaker 6: Korea that's interesting is the president gets impeached by the Congress,
Speaker 6: but then it's the Supreme the Supreme Court they call
Speaker 6: it the Constitutional court, the country that has to approve it.
Speaker 6: So I could see a system where you want you
Speaker 6: could have a system where the president's removed they're found disabled,
Speaker 6: but maybe you want to have some kind of judicial
Speaker 6: review over whether Congress is not actually abusing this to
Speaker 6: seize power and kick out a democratically elected president who's
Speaker 6: actually in fine shape.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I mean, anyway you look at it right now,
Speaker 4: you can see where all of the pitfalls might lie
Speaker 4: from any in all directions and with any institution that
Speaker 4: you involve in it, the vice presidency, the cabinet, I mean,
Speaker 4: those are people chosen by the president himself. There's a
Speaker 4: you know which in the case of Biden, those were
Speaker 4: the people who were going to protect him.
Speaker 6: And actually that no one is mentioned, ever mentioned then
Speaker 6: or now. I would subject it to a vote of
Speaker 6: the governors. Oh, why no one has thought of that? Governors?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And would you do that? Let me, I'm going to
Speaker 4: go I'm going to go there, throw down on you, John.
Speaker 4: Would you do that if the majority of governors were
Speaker 4: not Republican? Oh yeah, even if the majority of governors
Speaker 4: were Gavin Newsom, Sure, well, because that's a whole new
Speaker 4: idea for me, a good one.
Speaker 6: I'd rather have governors than Congress, because you remember, the
Speaker 6: Founders did not want the president's subject to removal by Congress. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was going to say that's the problem. I'm just
Speaker 5: going to stipulate John for later argument that Hamilton would
Speaker 5: not like your idea, but he might like the governor's idea.
Speaker 5: And I think that. Look, Newsom's interest is not purely partisan.
Speaker 5: His ambition, what's the flying ambition connected with the place.
Speaker 5: You know, I think you could see Newsom and Whitmer
Speaker 5: another Democrats saying.
Speaker 6: Keep that as long as possible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, no, get him rid of him. I think
Speaker 5: it's the other way around.
Speaker 6: You'll get rid of him faster, longer.
Speaker 5: The longer he's around, the worse it is for my prospects.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I could see it going that way.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I just think it's better at least governors who
Speaker 6: don't have parliamentary supremacy, which is the real worry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Well, like I say, when you get up there,
Speaker 4: which no doubt you will if you're not already on
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court, by then or or whim when.
Speaker 6: I testify before Congress. All I'm trying to do is
Speaker 6: stay out of jail, all right, So I'm going.
Speaker 4: To follow on with that. Oh no, sorry, Steve, I
Speaker 4: owe you, I owe you your opportunity for your worst
Speaker 4: story of the year.
Speaker 5: Well, it's the same story. It's the Biden cover up.
Speaker 5: But that story is not over, not just because he
Speaker 5: has three and a half weeks still in office. But
Speaker 5: I think this is going to unfold worse and worse
Speaker 5: as the months and years go on. And so I mean,
Speaker 5: I think you're gonn of well, yeah, respectulate the other
Speaker 5: day about how so many presidents who leave office unpopular
Speaker 5: later enjoy revisionist improvement, you know, Truman, Eyes and Hour,
Speaker 5: even Nixon, to a small extent, even George W.
Speaker 1: Bush.
Speaker 5: I think it's the other way around for Biden. I
Speaker 5: think this is going to get worse and worse and
Speaker 5: worse for him. And when the details come out, at
Speaker 5: which they inevitably will, I think his reputation is going
Speaker 5: to go down the drain, and you know that's gonna
Speaker 5: have big political consequences. I think for Democrats, I think
Speaker 5: at a minimum, all the people who work for him
Speaker 5: should never be allowed back in any government job ever again, period,
Speaker 5: full stop, Go away, ron Klain and the rest of
Speaker 5: you and never bother us again.
Speaker 4: But how do you accomplish that?
Speaker 5: I don't know that there may be some criminal violations
Speaker 5: to be found in all this.
Speaker 4: We'll see, yeah, yeah, not made up once. We don't
Speaker 4: want to go there anymore.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean on the well, so let me
Speaker 5: give a hypothetical to John. You know, I'm wondering, as
Speaker 5: well speculated in the Clinton case, Clinton's pardons twenty four
Speaker 5: years ago. Now, I wonder if there will be some
Speaker 5: tie ins between the money the Biden machine got uh
Speaker 5: from Chinese and other foreign sources and maybe some of
Speaker 5: these pardons that happened. And if that's the case, I
Speaker 5: guess you, I guess the pardon power is not qualified.
Speaker 5: But it sure seems to me that there could be
Speaker 5: some collateral criminal you know, remember alge Hiss was convicted
Speaker 5: for perjury before Congress, not espionage because the statute limitations
Speaker 5: that expired. But there ought to be some criminal exposure
Speaker 5: for perhaps Biden himself.
Speaker 6: No, Steve's right, I mean, so suppose, I mean suppose
Speaker 6: the worst, the worst could happens like some people bribed
Speaker 6: gave money to Hunter, yeah, or gave money to Biden's
Speaker 6: family and then they got a pardon. You can't undo
Speaker 6: the pardon, but you could prosecute, investigate Biden's family for corruption.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's I mean, and I'm I'm sure that that's
Speaker 6: going to be watched closely, just like what happened with
Speaker 6: you know. The thing is with Clinton. I think George W. Bush,
Speaker 6: who was of the mind not to you know, use
Speaker 6: prosecution to go look backwards, but I think he could
Speaker 6: have investigated Hillary Clinton for you know, the guaranting of
Speaker 6: pardons by Bill Clinton, or to affect a New York election.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 4: Right, Well that brings me to my next point, which
Speaker 4: is I want to ask John, who is an expert
Speaker 4: in the powers of the executive, how much of the
Speaker 4: damage that Biden is obviously very very diligently trying to
Speaker 4: do before he leaves office, how much of that damage
Speaker 4: can be undone by Trump immediately upon his ascension into office.
Speaker 4: My first example, probably really serious example, is the fact
Speaker 4: that Biden has now made it federal but through federal
Speaker 4: executive order allowing granting, authorizing however you want to put
Speaker 4: it federal work to continue to work remotely. I know
Speaker 4: that you've probably been following some of that. It's been
Speaker 4: a big, very big deal. I will tell you this, guys.
Speaker 4: You are both probably exceptions to the rule because I
Speaker 4: know both of you do not work in an office
Speaker 4: every day, but you get an incredible amount of work
Speaker 4: done all of the time. But I know this from
Speaker 4: my own professional experience, that about nine out of ten
Speaker 4: people who work remotely do a third of the work
Speaker 4: that people who come to work do. It's just, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just the way. It's not true of every one
Speaker 4: of them. Some of them are dedicated, love their job,
Speaker 4: will work just as hard no matter where they are.
Speaker 4: But some of them just you know, spend their whole
Speaker 4: day screwing around. I know that they can be in
Speaker 4: and sorry, last thing about it. They can be in
Speaker 4: a federal office building in Washington, DC or elsewhere and
Speaker 4: still be watching porn all day long. We have lots
Speaker 4: of evidence of that. But it's a little more difficult anyway.
Speaker 4: What do you think, John, will he be able to
Speaker 4: undo that at executive order by another executive order.
Speaker 6: I used to I thought the study showed people who
Speaker 6: work at home are more productive, you know, per hour
Speaker 6: than people who have to come into the office because
Speaker 6: of all the I'm saved from commuting and all those
Speaker 6: other costs. But maybe I'm wrong. But so this is
Speaker 6: the thing.
Speaker 5: Presidents.
Speaker 6: Presidents mostly can reverse anything past presidents have done. So
Speaker 6: the one the few areas that you cannot are things
Speaker 6: like pardons. The president can't do unpardon someone who's already
Speaker 6: been pardoned. But in general, presidents can reverse any executive
Speaker 6: orders issued by the previous ones. So in fact, I
Speaker 6: always thought that's one of the great presidential powers I
Speaker 6: call the power of reversal, is a presidence can just
Speaker 6: reverse what the last president's done. And so here's some exemple,
Speaker 6: like anybody bite in appoints Trump theoretically can fire any
Speaker 6: treaties that Biden makes. Trump can you know, break.
Speaker 4: Any executive agreements and.
Speaker 6: Any executive order, No, any executive order that Trump Biden issues.
Speaker 6: Trump can undo any regulation that the Biden administration issues.
Speaker 6: Trump can undo, although it takes about a year to
Speaker 6: use to do the APA. So I don't think any
Speaker 6: of these it's actually just it's sad because what it
Speaker 6: is is Biden at the end of Biden's staff, not him,
Speaker 6: Biden's staff at the end of his term in office,
Speaker 6: on his way out the door, is just engaging in
Speaker 6: purely symbolic gestures. So I wrote a piece about a
Speaker 6: thing that Biden just did in regards to energy policy.
Speaker 6: He just again one of these things he can do
Speaker 6: is represent the view of the United States government at
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court and try to urge the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: to make certain findings. And he's come out in support
Speaker 6: of these ludicrous lawsuits brought in the States, the first
Speaker 6: one hitting the Supreme Court from Hawaii of all places,
Speaker 6: that against energy companies for concealing climate change from the
Speaker 6: American public, and so they must pay billions and billions
Speaker 6: of dollars for the harm done to the city of
Speaker 6: Hawa Honolulu because of it. So this is ridiculous. But
Speaker 6: the Biden administration are at the very end is taking
Speaker 6: the position at the Supreme Court that these lawsuits are
Speaker 6: valid and should be allowed to proceed. Now, Trump.
Speaker 4: Nation cases back and forth, right and is likely Trump
Speaker 4: will take that one up again.
Speaker 6: Right. Well, one thing that he could do that would
Speaker 6: be interesting is he could come in and I think
Speaker 6: reverse the position of the government on the transgender case.
Speaker 6: That case is actually you know, they argued the case
Speaker 6: on the merits at the Supreme Court. This chance you
Speaker 6: can states prohibit transgender treatment for children. Trump should do
Speaker 6: you know, day one, he can come in and have
Speaker 6: the United States withdraw or turn about, turn its position
Speaker 6: around one hundred and eight degrees.
Speaker 4: So I know our listeners will be happy here that Steve,
Speaker 4: make sure you link to John's article special maybea article
Speaker 4: in the show notes, because it was a good article
Speaker 4: despite the unnecessary Tinner's clause reference. We won't go into
Speaker 4: that because.
Speaker 5: What he wants to move on, well, i'll I'll say
Speaker 5: is two things. One is the Hawaii suit saying the
Speaker 5: oil companies concealed from consumers climate change reminds me of
Speaker 5: the equally ludicrous claim years ago that the tobacco companies
Speaker 5: try to conceal the dangers of smoking from people like Gosh,
Speaker 5: if the government hadn't told us, you know that, I
Speaker 5: would have known that smoking was harmful without right. And
Speaker 5: then then one is lucretia. I'm not sure do we
Speaker 5: really want federal employees to be two thirds more productive
Speaker 5: by coming back to the office. I think maybe it's
Speaker 5: a bargain of the taxpayer ram to sit at home.
Speaker 4: I will tell you that that it's part of DOGE
Speaker 4: I think their general the idea that they're going to
Speaker 4: DEI and all of these people who are going to
Speaker 4: quit because Pete haig Seth is coming in. If you
Speaker 4: force a lot of federal workers back to the office,
Speaker 4: will quit, and then they just needed to let attritionian
Speaker 4: be attrician and re hire those people, and then you'd
Speaker 4: solve a whole lot of different problems in my opinion.
Speaker 4: But anyway, it really there really our studies, John, it's
Speaker 4: why you're seeing more and more people like Elon Musk
Speaker 4: and other CEOs demanding that their employees come back to work.
Speaker 4: They really don't work when they're not being supervised. You've
Speaker 4: got to be the kind of self starter person who
Speaker 4: will work on their own in order to put in
Speaker 4: a good eight ten hour day if you're at home
Speaker 4: working without any supervision. Anyway, enough of that, Steve says,
Speaker 4: I have to move on. We had a question asked
Speaker 4: to us by a good friend of all of ours,
Speaker 4: Ryan Williams, who is the president president. Yeah, the Claremont Institute.
Speaker 4: I knew I just wanted to get his title right
Speaker 4: of the Claremont Institute, and he wanted to know our opinion,
Speaker 4: which I know this will surprise everyone. Diverged somewhat about
Speaker 4: whether or not the fourteenth Amendment allows Congress or did
Speaker 4: it actually say demands of Congress. I think it said
Speaker 4: allows Congress. His question to outlaw private discrimination, A private
Speaker 4: discrimination can, I believe can be somewhat of an encompassing term.
Speaker 4: It can mean that I am being outlawed in my
Speaker 4: private feelings and actions about saying I really don't like
Speaker 4: people from South Korea because they eat pineapple on their pizzas.
Speaker 6: The listeners don't know what that's In reference to the
Speaker 6: ant natural law discussion of pizza between the three of us,
Speaker 6: and I took the view we can make where I
Speaker 6: mean human beings, we can make anything we want to
Speaker 6: be pizza, where Stephen Lucretia, of course, took some bizarre
Speaker 6: medieval view that pizza was fixed and could never be changed.
Speaker 6: It could not evolve.
Speaker 5: Us about that. But never mind.
Speaker 4: Again, I probably wouldn't go that far, just would never
Speaker 4: put pineapple on anything. Yeah, but anyway, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: But my point is is that there are are there's
Speaker 4: the idea of discriminating privately against someone, But then there's
Speaker 4: the actions that follow from private discrimination that would discriminate
Speaker 4: on the basis of some immutable characteristic of birth, like
Speaker 4: your race, your ethnicity, your sex, and so on. And
Speaker 4: the question is whether the fourteenth Amendment and the is
Speaker 4: it the fifth clause? The enforcement clause is the fifth
Speaker 4: clause of the fourteenth Amendment? John, Yeah, the fifth clause
Speaker 4: of the fourteenth Amendment, the Congressional authorization Clause. It gives
Speaker 4: Congress the power to enforce the prior four are paragraphs
Speaker 4: in the fourteenth Amendment? Is there power there for Congress
Speaker 4: to outlaw private discrimination in the fourteenth Amendment? And so, Steve,
Speaker 4: why don't you give your irrelevant answer? First?
Speaker 5: Well, no bias in that question. Look, isn't what this
Speaker 5: really comes down to as an argument about Title seven
Speaker 5: of the Civil Rights Act that banned employment discrimination. And
Speaker 5: it's amazing to me that we're now talking about this
Speaker 5: question when to even raise that question, even as recently
Speaker 5: as five years ago, would have been thought out landish.
Speaker 5: It certainly was Richard Epstein when he argued, but thirty
Speaker 5: years ago now in his book Forbidden Grounds, that we
Speaker 5: ought to repeal Title seven of the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 5: There's several things going on here. One on the level
Speaker 5: of constitutional principle is well, the First Amendment gives us
Speaker 5: freedom of associations, freedom assembly right, and the principle of
Speaker 5: freedom of association certainly would imply a right of exclusion.
Speaker 5: You know, if I want to associate with, you know,
Speaker 5: twenty to twenty five year old guys who like to
Speaker 5: play golf, that means I get to exclude people who
Speaker 5: don't like to play golf. And we've always made an
Speaker 5: exception on race because of the obvious historical can tingencies
Speaker 5: of the country. And I think we've been willing to
Speaker 5: make that exception, and now we're starting to question that
Speaker 5: because of the abuses of things like disparate impact and
Speaker 5: the application of civil rights law. I'll just say that,
Speaker 5: and John, you'll remember this, I think better than I do,
Speaker 5: because I haven't read the cases in a long time now,
Speaker 5: But the early cases in the nineteenth century, in other words,
Speaker 5: after the civil rights first Civil Rights Act of eighteen
Speaker 5: sixty eight and the Fourteenth Amendment said no, the Fourteenth
Speaker 5: Amendment only bars state action. And then they equivocated a
Speaker 5: bit when they said, you know, places like hotels and restaurants.
Speaker 5: Private properties ceases to be wholly private if it's open
Speaker 5: to public conveyance. And okay that I get the logic
Speaker 5: of that. But the fact that we are and then
Speaker 5: I'll be quiet. The fact that we're now discussing this
Speaker 5: question again, first Richard thirty years ago, then Chris Caldwell
Speaker 5: in his recent book The Age of Entitlement, suggests that
Speaker 5: we are at one of those moments when, as the
Speaker 5: cliche goes, the Overton window is moving. I'm not sure
Speaker 5: how much many listeners know the Overton window. It's the
Speaker 5: theory that Joe Overton, who I knew, by the way,
Speaker 5: Joe Overton three, of course I did. I always like
Speaker 5: to say the liberals. He was a libertarian, by the way,
Speaker 5: worked at the Macanon Institute in Michigan. Died in a
Speaker 5: plane crash in his own home built light plane. That
Speaker 5: most people don't know that about Joe. But his idea
Speaker 5: was you make these sort of out there arguments and
Speaker 5: suddenly you move what is possible to talk about and
Speaker 5: then possible to be done in policy terms. The left
Speaker 5: loves to mention the Overton window without understanding that it
Speaker 5: was a conservative who thought of the idea. But I
Speaker 5: think we're now seeing the Overton window move on civil rights,
Speaker 5: and I think there's a ways to go, But I
Speaker 5: haven't declared an answer to that. You know, it used
Speaker 5: to be that we had private clubs like the Lions Club,
Speaker 5: which is your basic do good service club. It was
Speaker 5: men only until about forty five fifty years ago, and
Speaker 5: they were threatened by the government with losing their tax
Speaker 5: exempt status if they didn't open up to women members,
Speaker 5: which they were perfectly happy to do. But there you go.
Speaker 5: We now have the full force of the law against
Speaker 5: any kind of of selectivity private association, that includes the
Speaker 5: right to exclude certain people for whatever reason, and I
Speaker 5: think it's time we do rethink all that.
Speaker 6: Well. I think that the state action requirement is an
Speaker 6: important part of limiting the Fourteenth Amendment, because if the
Speaker 6: Fourteenth Amendment were to apply to private activity, it would
Speaker 6: be almost limitless. But it just I think it's just
Speaker 6: this idea that the Fourteenth Amend reaches private conduct is
Speaker 6: just belied by the Constitutional. The Constitutional Texas the Members
Speaker 6: says no state shall and then it says, you know,
Speaker 6: deprive people of privileges and communities right deprive them that
Speaker 6: do process deprive them eco protection of law. The whole
Speaker 6: point of amendment. It actually parallels the Bill of Rights.
Speaker 6: First Amendment says Congress shall not. It's always the purpose
Speaker 6: of it, and that's why it's always a purpose of
Speaker 6: it is to get what governments do. And that's why
Speaker 6: when we're talking about it earlier, I do think that
Speaker 6: the sixty four Civil Rights Act needed to use the
Speaker 6: commerce clause because much of its right reach is it's
Speaker 6: a great effect. Its effect on private actors, not on
Speaker 6: state employers. So but there is I think an area
Speaker 6: where you can reach private conduct. And this is something
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court wrestled with after Brown versus Board of Education,
Speaker 6: which is what the Southern States did after Brown, is
Speaker 6: they basically transferred all these institutions and functions to allegedly
Speaker 6: private actors, so they wouldn't All the public swimming pools
Speaker 6: were transferred to private ownership. And so I think the
Speaker 6: Court was right there in saying that when the states
Speaker 6: are essentially trying to evade the state action requirement, or
Speaker 6: when they're basically helping private actors engage in the deprivation
Speaker 6: of rights, then I think the state actation doct might
Speaker 6: be read narrowly to allow people to get so good.
Speaker 6: A good example that I threw it, Stephen Lucretia is
Speaker 6: racial covenants.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So for a long time, in many parts of the country,
Speaker 6: there would be a covenant in your deed that said
Speaker 6: you would not be allowed to sell your house to
Speaker 6: someone who was not white. Right, So it's just a
Speaker 6: racial people are Jewish, Yeah, just people who defended these said,
Speaker 6: there's no state action here. This is just you know,
Speaker 6: private contract between people. What's how can the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 6: reach this? H and so what the court said was, yeah,
Speaker 6: but it was state contract law that made that a
Speaker 6: viable contract provision. Otherwise it should just be held. It
Speaker 6: could just be held in val So that's as far
Speaker 6: as I would go is to say that you could
Speaker 6: restart the thirteenth and fourteenth as to get at things
Speaker 6: that were still with the court is called the badge
Speaker 6: of inferiority that was still after effects of slavery.
Speaker 4: So I want to I want to criticize that from
Speaker 4: two directions, which means that I mostly actually agree with you.
Speaker 4: But on the one hand, I agree that I don't
Speaker 4: agree with the civil rights cases of eighteen eighty three
Speaker 4: and the way they came about their definition of state action.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, I do agree with you
Speaker 4: that the reach of the fourteenth Amendment should reach only
Speaker 4: so far as those things which the government, whichever governmental
Speaker 4: level we're talking about, should have the right to regulate
Speaker 4: in any way, shape or form. And when they have
Speaker 4: the right to regulate those things, then like your example
Speaker 4: of restrictive covenants, then then they cannot do so in
Speaker 4: a way that discriminates, it does not provide equal protection
Speaker 4: and so forth. Now, I also think that the abysmal
Speaker 4: court decisions over the years really screwed up our under
Speaker 4: standing not only of equal protection and do process, but
Speaker 4: obviously privileges and immunities as well. We can discuss that
Speaker 4: on another time, But I do think that if that
Speaker 4: you get around the problem Steve's talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: freedom of association, all of those things that Robert Bork
Speaker 4: was against the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 4: He said, because of you know, it was what did
Speaker 4: he call it? A profoundly ugly thing that to tell you,
Speaker 4: I can't was that the word he used some I
Speaker 4: don't remember, something like that, But anyway, is that that, yes,
Speaker 4: you cannot do anything legislatively, in my opinion, Congress or
Speaker 4: anyone else to get rid of the discriminatory intent in
Speaker 4: my heart right. And so that's the second part of
Speaker 4: my argument, John, and that is that we cannot discuss
Speaker 4: these things in a vacuum. And my belief is had
Speaker 4: the Court not jumped so quickly to restrict our understanding
Speaker 4: of the equal Protection Clause and the Privileges and Immunities
Speaker 4: Clause way back with the you know, slaughterhouse cases, said
Speaker 4: whites cases, et cetera, we might not have taken so
Speaker 4: long to change the hearts and minds of Americans to
Speaker 4: the idea that discriminating on the basis of race and
Speaker 4: then other things is just it's not it's un American.
Speaker 4: I hate to say, it's not who we are because
Speaker 4: that sounds like someone I'd never want to be caught quoting.
Speaker 4: But we Here's my argument is that if you think
Speaker 4: about what Jefferson said in What seventeen eighty about how
Speaker 4: we would never be able to get rid of the discrimination,
Speaker 4: the prejudice that whites feel toward blacks and blacks have
Speaker 4: every right to feel towards whites, it turns out that
Speaker 4: he was kind of wrong about that. It did take
Speaker 4: a very long time. But the question is how much law?
Speaker 4: How much do we give law the credit for changing
Speaker 4: those attitudes and to the point where today we don't
Speaker 4: accept people culturally in society, we don't accept people being
Speaker 4: abject racists, you know, and that's a very good thing
Speaker 4: in my opinion, unless we talk about, you know, the
Speaker 4: white white racism, you know, all those stupid critical race
Speaker 4: theory people they don't count for anything anyway. But I mean,
Speaker 4: would you be friends with someone who was just an
Speaker 4: abject racist? Just there would be someone you would have
Speaker 4: no respect for. How did we get to that point?
Speaker 4: How much of the law and the Constitution was a
Speaker 4: factor in getting us to the point where we can
Speaker 4: accept people regardless of the color of their skin or
Speaker 4: some other immutable characteristic birth. Does that make sense?
Speaker 5: Well, there's a lot there to untangle. I can quarrel parts.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be the I'm going to be out
Speaker 5: on the extreme edge of this one. Amazingly enough. You know,
Speaker 5: I think people should go back and read Berry Goldwater's
Speaker 5: speech on the Senate floor about why he was voting no,
Speaker 5: and he said, look, law can do some good, he said,
Speaker 5: what you just said, Lucretia, don't drink. You knows that
Speaker 5: me bringing up Goldwater you did. But look, he said, Look,
Speaker 5: law can do some good. It can be a moral teacher.
Speaker 5: But Section seven is the only thing I object to
Speaker 5: because I don't see how it can be enforced without
Speaker 5: a tyranny, he said. And I think he's he may
Speaker 5: have overstated that with that vocabulary, but he was for
Speaker 5: right about that, and everyone else said, oh Goldwater Republicans
Speaker 5: are against civil rights. He voted for every other Civil
Speaker 5: Rights Act and said, I can support all the rest
Speaker 5: of this Act, including you know, voting rights, public accommodations,
Speaker 5: and so forth, because I don't see how we're going
Speaker 5: to enforce this. And that's what a lot of people said.
Speaker 5: I think as a social phenomenon, leave a side law
Speaker 5: for a moment. It's actually made our problems worse. Although
Speaker 5: it's true that, by the way, I'm not sure you
Speaker 5: need the Civil Rights Act to stamp out over public
Speaker 5: racism of the kind you mentioned. Again, if I'm of
Speaker 5: a view that legislation often follows public opinion, and I
Speaker 5: did once go look at the gallop surveys on race.
Speaker 5: Going back to the late forties when they started, and
Speaker 5: by you know, nineteen sixty four, you have overwhelming public
Speaker 5: support for civil rights and the civil rights movement. And
Speaker 5: by the way, one of the things Epstein points out
Speaker 5: in his book is if you got rid of affirmative
Speaker 5: action and Title seven, how many big corporations are going
Speaker 5: to actually discriminate on the basis of race. Almost none. Instead,
Speaker 5: we have the disparate impact test, which has spun out
Speaker 5: of control, and maybe that's the next target for serious
Speaker 5: legal reform and judicial rulings. But I do remember that
Speaker 5: in the Reagan years a while ago now, they thought
Speaker 5: about rescinding the Affirmative Action Executive Order of Johnson, Like
Speaker 5: john says, presidents can do that. Reagan a huge fight
Speaker 5: inside Reagan's cabinet, and then the people who didn't want
Speaker 5: to rescind it got a whole lot of corporate CEOs
Speaker 5: to lean on Reagan. And then there was a survey
Speaker 5: taken of the fortune five hundred CEOs, eighty percent of
Speaker 5: whom said, if they get rid of affirmative action federal
Speaker 5: government does, We're going to continue our affirmative action programs
Speaker 5: at our company. Now it's a more complicated situation with
Speaker 5: the Old South. But I do like to always raise
Speaker 5: the question that was the central focus of the Plessy cases.
Speaker 5: Why do those states need to have Jim Crow laws
Speaker 5: to enforce segregation because the marketplace is against it? I mean,
Speaker 5: one of the great counterfactions we'll never know the answer
Speaker 5: to is in the nineteen sixties, as you're starting to
Speaker 5: have national change, you know McDonald's Motel six going on
Speaker 5: down the list seers Eventuley Walmart. Are they going to
Speaker 5: want to discriminate against their customers and employees? I think
Speaker 5: likely not. And the great work on this, and I'll
Speaker 5: stop here is, you know Gary Becker's work from the
Speaker 5: fifties Nobel Prize winning economists. His dissertation was the economics
Speaker 5: of discrimination. By the way, he was advised even then
Speaker 5: not to tick up that subject as his research subject
Speaker 5: for his dissertation at Chicago in the fifties. He did, anyway,
Speaker 5: And you know, he's the father of behavioral economics. And
Speaker 5: he said, look, all the economic forces are to break
Speaker 5: down discrimination because it makes no economic sense.
Speaker 2: He says, to mean, like the.
Speaker 4: Whole argument that females are paid seventy seven cents on
Speaker 4: the dollar, and why didn't all of them get hired,
Speaker 4: because if you can pay seventy seven cents on the dollar,
Speaker 4: why wouldn't you There you go.
Speaker 5: But I think that, you know, we were so steeped
Speaker 5: in the orthodoxy of civil rights ideology that no one
Speaker 5: thinks this way, and you have not until lately been
Speaker 5: allowed to even bring it up unless your real outlier
Speaker 5: like Steve Sailor, who I think has been proven right
Speaker 5: about just about everything he's ever been contending for the
Speaker 5: last twenty five years.
Speaker 6: So I have a few points to mental. I think, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: I think it's good. But I think there is a
Speaker 6: useful focal point here, which is Trump could. And I
Speaker 6: thought I read that he's been thinking. You know, there's
Speaker 6: been discussion about, you know, about Trump actually repealing some
Speaker 6: of these affirmative action executive orders issued by Kennedy and Johnson,
Speaker 6: and they do a lot Nixon, Yeah, exist because yeah, nexton,
Speaker 6: because they they forced government contractors to engage in reverse
Speaker 6: discrimination based on race. So I mean Trump could. I
Speaker 6: think Trump could do it. So you know, two points.
Speaker 6: One is there's there's a big debate going on amongst
Speaker 6: legal historians about the effects of brown versus board of education,
Speaker 6: because the story is after Brown, actually much disegregation did
Speaker 6: not occur. It was really not until the sixty four
Speaker 6: Civil Rights Act that real disegregation came to the South.
Speaker 5: And so really, people, you know what it really happened,
Speaker 5: John was under Nixon.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean the busting went too far, I think,
Speaker 6: but no, but it was it was started in the sixties,
Speaker 6: the mid sixties. And so the point that these legal
Speaker 6: historians make is that this you know, story of this
Speaker 6: kind of heroic Supreme Court forcing the unwilling country to
Speaker 6: desegree has really got it backwards. That it was really
Speaker 6: the majority of the country wanted racial equality, and we're
Speaker 6: trying to fare out a way to force the South
Speaker 6: to live up to the majority of view which had
Speaker 6: been in there since the reconstruction amendments. Uh So that's
Speaker 6: and then the other point I like about the uh
Speaker 6: why I think I agree. I think that even if
Speaker 6: the nineteen sixty four Act weren't there, businesses would not
Speaker 6: discriminate based on race, because if you assume that, you know,
Speaker 6: companies that engage in race are actually therefore hiring less
Speaker 6: qualified people because they're white, then the thing a competitive right,
Speaker 6: a competitive market should produce are companies that would hire
Speaker 6: all those people who are being discriminated against because they'll
Speaker 6: at cheaper rates, Lucretia suggesting, and then you would have
Speaker 6: a better company with lower costs. So I can are
Speaker 6: one of the Nobel Prize and economics in part because
Speaker 6: of this theory, right that that you know, an efficient
Speaker 6: market would produce, you know, companies that hired up all
Speaker 6: those people who are being being segregated against discrimination.
Speaker 4: Trouble in Paradise. John between are among Trumps, some of
Speaker 4: Trump's appointees or suggested appointees. There's a I guess it's
Speaker 4: been this huge, huge controversy on X because Vivek came
Speaker 4: out and said, it's basically Americans who were not John
Speaker 4: Hughes growing up, who have failed to become engineers, failed
Speaker 4: to I'm I'm I should let me do this properly.
Speaker 4: It's just about, yeah, we need more H one B
Speaker 4: one visas from India and other Asian countries because those,
Speaker 4: according to Vivek, those people didn't watch Saved by the
Speaker 4: Bell and a bunch of other stupid comedies back when
Speaker 4: they were growing up, and they celebrated jocks instead of
Speaker 4: celebrating math competitions, and it's just been this huge controversy,
Speaker 4: uh and back and forth, people mostly conservatives against what
Speaker 4: old Vivek had to say. By the way, but one
Speaker 4: of the points that was discussed in my household, that
Speaker 4: that I've seen discussed on X and elsewhere is this
Speaker 4: one that affirmative action disparate impact and all of those
Speaker 4: pieces of legislation that I think are aberrations of the
Speaker 4: fourteenth Amendment made possible in part because it was grounded
Speaker 4: in the Commerce Clause and not the fourteenth Amendment. But anyway,
Speaker 4: the fact that white guys graduating with engineering degrees with
Speaker 4: other kinds of STEM degrees can't get jobs, and there's
Speaker 4: lots and lots of anecdotal evidence about that. I happen
Speaker 4: to have some of my own where it's not so
Speaker 4: much that these are kids who watch Saved by the
Speaker 4: Bell and never studied and never took diff CAALC. It's
Speaker 4: because the corporations out there are still choosing to fill
Speaker 4: those roles with immigrants because that fills their their quotas,
Speaker 4: not because immigrants are better or worse, but because it
Speaker 4: fills their quotas well.
Speaker 5: Or the related argument is they can pay them less
Speaker 5: than they have. Then maybe there's some truth.
Speaker 6: I think that's Look, I mean, we have a shortage
Speaker 6: of engineers. I mean, I don't know whether you know,
Speaker 6: I don't know about your anecdotal stories about any individual person,
Speaker 6: but we have a huge engineering shortage, scientific short I
Speaker 6: think Vivek is right, or Elan or Wright, and the
Speaker 6: basic point is that we should actually bring as many
Speaker 6: farmboant and it's not just medical doctors. There's a huge shortage.
Speaker 6: Nurses is a huge shortge. We should be happy to
Speaker 6: have people who want to come to the United States
Speaker 6: to fill those jobs. If we can't fill them ourselves, well.
Speaker 5: That's just well, can I give an example of that. See,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure this.
Speaker 6: People are choosing to go to engineering to get the
Speaker 6: engineering in the United States, the numbers are not high.
Speaker 5: Well, I think I think this is a little bit
Speaker 5: tangential to the civil writes question, But maybe there's another
Speaker 5: one that's right on point that does relate to it.
Speaker 5: So take for example, your elite private colleges like Middlebury
Speaker 5: and Colby and probably Boden engineering departments. I'm going to
Speaker 5: talk about I'm going to talk about the immigrant aspect
Speaker 5: of it, which is sort of immigrant aspect to it.
Speaker 5: They'll say, oh, we have a diverse student body, and
Speaker 5: then you look closer and you'll find out that they're
Speaker 5: black students. A lot of them, sometimes majority of them
Speaker 5: are not American blacks. They're Africans, I mean actually from Africa.
Speaker 5: They're often the products of elite schools. I mean I had, okay,
Speaker 5: my anecdote, my one research assistant AEI fifteen years ago,
Speaker 5: Middlebury graduate had gone to prep school some Ghana. I
Speaker 5: had that wonderful West African accent had gone to prep
Speaker 5: school in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I figured out that the family had two cars. So
Speaker 5: this is the elite in Ghana, right. I'm not never
Speaker 5: found out what her father did, but obviously a very
Speaker 5: prosperous person. She goes to Middlebury, does very well, she
Speaker 5: was very smart, went on to get a PhD from Princeton.
Speaker 5: But the point is the elite schools say, oh, we
Speaker 5: have diversity, and are you know, are the color spectrum
Speaker 5: that we're all care about. It turns out they're using
Speaker 5: it with immigrant students. This has not been lost by
Speaker 5: the way on some of the black activists and Black
Speaker 5: Lives Matter people who have complained at Harvard and Brown
Speaker 5: and elsewhere, that these students should not be counted.
Speaker 4: Again we've left out regardless are white males.
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 4: By the way, yes, sixty percent, upwards of sixty percent
Speaker 4: of university students across the country are female.
Speaker 5: Right, right, No, The point I'm making is that this
Speaker 5: is the corruption and dishonesty of this kind of regime.
Speaker 5: That's the underlying point of this illustrates I can give
Speaker 5: some others like it, but I think it's best to
Speaker 5: keep that that tech question separate and let them fight
Speaker 5: it out.
Speaker 6: I mean no, I mean, look that we just do
Speaker 6: have enough schools with enough students to fill the demands
Speaker 6: that we have for Again, it's not just it's engineering, medicine, science.
Speaker 6: I mean, we could change. I would love to have
Speaker 6: a totally color blind emission system for our colleges. But
Speaker 6: we're just not graduating enough of them, whoever they are.
Speaker 5: That's the problem, and if we're going to keep up with.
Speaker 4: These other countries, that's my argument. I'm more I don't know,
Speaker 4: I actually don't.
Speaker 6: I don't actually don't. No, I actually don't. I mean,
Speaker 6: I don't think there are enough engineering graduates in the
Speaker 6: United States to fill all the demand we have for engineering,
Speaker 6: it could be right bud us of the racial and
Speaker 6: gender composition of the classes. Well, yeah, we'd have to
Speaker 6: do some kind of sputneck thing and double the size,
Speaker 6: and we'd have to double the size of the medical.
Speaker 4: Stas in order to do so. And we're going way long,
Speaker 4: and this is my fault for bringing it up as
Speaker 4: too much of a tangent. But what we'd have to do,
Speaker 4: of course, would be fixed K twelve education and all
Speaker 4: of that in order to push more people into STEM
Speaker 4: and stop listening to the stupid women and gender studies
Speaker 4: complaining about the fact that only men go into STEM
Speaker 4: while she's studying some stupid gender studies degree. Right, there's
Speaker 4: the microcause of it all.
Speaker 6: Anyway, that would take that would take eighteen tour, right,
Speaker 6: That would take decades for to come to fruition. So
Speaker 6: in the meantime it seems to makes sense to me.
Speaker 6: You know, if we're gonna write we're at you know,
Speaker 6: I think a terrible competition with China and Russia and
Speaker 6: who knows who else, right to maintain our high tech advantage,
Speaker 6: But we got to get the engineers and scientists from
Speaker 6: where they're coming from. Which is from other countries.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 6: I mean, maybe that's a different issue than illegal immigration
Speaker 6: across the southern border. People who are showing up right
Speaker 6: engineering and you know a talenteer which helps us right
Speaker 6: surveial enemy countries. Right, these are not people who are
Speaker 6: coming across the border illegally.
Speaker 4: But there are people, white males losing their jobs to
Speaker 4: H one B one visa holders because they can't they
Speaker 4: can be paid loose.
Speaker 6: And maybe it's the margins, but I would suspect not
Speaker 6: in large numbers. I mean, because we just have a
Speaker 6: shortage of engineers entirely.
Speaker 4: Listeners doctuive your anecdotes. But guys, I hate to tell
Speaker 4: you we have to draw this to a close without
Speaker 4: getting to your New Year's resolutions or your favorite books.
Speaker 4: Sorry Steve, no favorite book, Babylon Bee.
Speaker 6: I'm drinking.
Speaker 5: Aren't we going to do predictions? We don't have time
Speaker 5: to do that. You have to be out of here
Speaker 5: in like ten minutes or something.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, go ahead, give me your prediction for
Speaker 4: this was.
Speaker 5: I don't have one. I was going to go through
Speaker 5: our predictions from last year, which I looked at that
Speaker 5: we're mostly wrong.
Speaker 6: Well, we could do special January first episode. Okay, that's
Speaker 6: New Year's Day episode watched and I'm.
Speaker 4: Sorry if anybody wants to know why I'm I'm skipping
Speaker 4: out on the three whiskey happy Hour. It wouldn't be
Speaker 4: for just anything. Poor Nixy has to go to the vet,
Speaker 4: so she's.
Speaker 6: She's just just just release her into the wild and
Speaker 6: get a new one.
Speaker 4: Shut up, she explained. This is your to the person
Speaker 4: who just spent seven hundred dollars on the surgery that
Speaker 4: she's having a complication from. So there we go. Trump
Speaker 4: announces anyone who drinks tea instead of coffee will be
Speaker 4: arrested on suspicion of being a British spy. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure I get that one, but I figured i'd I'd
Speaker 4: give it to you guys and see what you thought
Speaker 4: about it. Is he against the British now too?
Speaker 6: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: Just Greenland.
Speaker 5: Oh sorry, green tea comes from.
Speaker 4: Resident residents of Fuvill regret defunding the police. I don't
Speaker 4: have very many. I think the people at Babylon B
Speaker 4: have been taking the holidays.
Speaker 6: Oh no, it was a good one. You missed a
Speaker 6: good one. Gavin knew some orders a deportation of all
Speaker 6: US citizens from California.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that one's on my list. So yes, now California
Speaker 4: announces mass deportation of US citizens. Yes, someone's very good.
Speaker 4: How about this one? Luig Gi Mangioni to host next
Speaker 4: week's episode of SNL. Right, yeah, all right, that's I'm done,
Speaker 4: unless you want me to end. Steve, have you done it?
Speaker 6: You come up with your with your sign off?
Speaker 5: No, I haven't. I've got a year end one, though,
Speaker 5: a customed one for this episode only.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let me say mine first, then John mine
Speaker 4: from from Biden. I want everyone to contemplate this this week.
Speaker 4: The one thing I've always believed about public service, especially
Speaker 4: the presidency, is the importance of asking yourself, have you
Speaker 4: left the country in better shape than you found it today? I,
Speaker 4: Joe Biden, can say without with every fiver of my being,
Speaker 4: with all my heart, the answer to that question is
Speaker 4: a resounding yes.
Speaker 6: Okay, always drink your whiskey, knee. Let's go Brandon for
Speaker 6: just a few more weeks, and Steve so I.
Speaker 5: Saw someone on Twitter respond to Gavin Newsom's latest demand
Speaker 5: that we all buy electric cars with the phrase which
Speaker 5: is the phrase of the year. He can osculate my
Speaker 5: fundamental orifice. That's fancy speak for he can kiss my ass.
Speaker 5: I like that, osculate my fundamental orifice. I'm gonna put
Speaker 5: that on a bumper sticker. Happy New Year, everybody.
Speaker 1: We'll try to have been new, Ye have been now gie.
Speaker 1: Let the new gie come in. Have been new, ye
Speaker 1: have been new ye Now the new gie can begin.
Speaker 3: Especial day that happens only once a year when we
Speaker 3: all get together because the new year is here and
Speaker 3: if you roll enough, you can't participate because New Year's
Speaker 3: even awesome and we need to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, Happy New Year. Let the new year
Speaker 1: come in, Happy New Year, Happy New Year. Now the
Speaker 1: new year can begin.
Speaker 3: There's gonna be some preparations and many things to do
Speaker 3: each year. It makes this holiday few brand new.
Speaker 1: There's parties in this fun times as we all.
Speaker 5: Await Ricochet join the conversation.