Speaker 1: This is not necessarily going to be a segment about abortion,
Speaker 1: but I think it's going to be a segment about
Speaker 1: one Republican politicians never really have any never really having
Speaker 1: had any principles. Two, the malleability of people's political beliefs,
Speaker 1: particularly I guess of elected Republicans beliefs. I have a
Speaker 1: little pet theory. My pet theory is that there are
Speaker 1: almost no Republican politicians who are actually pro life.
Speaker 2: I think Trump.
Speaker 1: I think there are conservatives or pro lifers who hit
Speaker 1: Trump with that accusation that he's not sincerely pro life,
Speaker 1: and I agree, I don't think he is, But I
Speaker 1: also don't think he's very.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's unique in that regard.
Speaker 1: I think other Republican politicians are equally not pro life.
Speaker 1: They're just less tied to convention than Trump is. And Trump,
Speaker 1: I think when he sees an issue that's not doing well,
Speaker 1: he abandons ship on it right away. Other Republicans are
Speaker 1: not so nimble. But I think all of them, or
Speaker 1: at least most of them, don't really care. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I would venture to guess a lot more Republicans than
Speaker 1: we care to think of don't really care about most
Speaker 1: issues that you care about. What they ultimately seem to
Speaker 1: care about is getting elected, getting re elected.
Speaker 3: And having a job.
Speaker 1: And for most of us, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: having a job, having some kind of standing, having a
Speaker 1: source of income will lead us to do a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to really go the extra mile. I guess
Speaker 1: it shouldn't surprise us that Republican politicians, to stay relevant,
Speaker 1: to stay in their jobs, to keep winning elections, to
Speaker 1: keep making money, just keep being relevant and respected, would
Speaker 1: do some real gymnastics when it comes to what they believe.
Speaker 1: You and I, who are not necessarily as involved in politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm only involved.
Speaker 1: In politics, and so far as i have this fun
Speaker 1: hobby where I do a radio show every day, you
Speaker 1: and I, who are not directly involved in politics, we
Speaker 1: can literally afford to have consistent, durable beliefs that don't
Speaker 1: really change day in and day out, or year in
Speaker 1: and year out, or decade in and decade out. Have
Speaker 1: I changed some beliefs over time? Yeah, I think I've
Speaker 1: evolved over time, but it was not in response to
Speaker 1: sudden spur of the moment things that were obviously to
Speaker 1: my economic benefit. Nor do I think I've betrayed my
Speaker 1: fundamental principles of what I believe. Well, we now come
Speaker 1: to Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney, former congresswoman from Wyoming, obviously
Speaker 1: the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, who's largely regarded
Speaker 1: as one of the most influential Vice presidents in American history,
Speaker 1: and sort of the scion of his kind of brand
Speaker 1: of Republicanism, very aggressive when it comes to foreign policy,
Speaker 1: in America's posture in global affairs. She was also I
Speaker 1: think of all the Republicans the most horrified by January sixth,
Speaker 1: but to such an extent that it has sort of shifted.
Speaker 1: It has shown these these cracks in the facade that
Speaker 1: she presented to the country during her years as a
Speaker 1: member of the House. For years, she tried to present
Speaker 1: just as a normal Republican member of the House. She
Speaker 1: was pro life, she voted for all kinds of abortion restrictions,
Speaker 1: fairly reliable, consistent pro life vote, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: after Trump comes around, she starts shifting. Not as much
Speaker 1: as a lot of like kind of There were some
Speaker 1: like conservative commentators like Bill Crystal, Jennifer Ruben, the calumnist
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post, who all of a sudden, completely flipped,
Speaker 1: like on a dime, all of their beliefs, on all
Speaker 1: of their positions, just to purely become Biden cheerleaders. Chaney
Speaker 1: wasn't quite at that level, but after January sixth, there
Speaker 1: was obviously a real change, and she is now endorsing
Speaker 1: and on the stump for Kamala Harris to such an
Speaker 1: extent that this pro life member of the House, this
Speaker 1: person who campaigned as a pro lifer, voted like a
Speaker 1: pro lifer for years and years and years, is now
Speaker 1: saying this. Here's a story from Yahoo News. Pro life
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney even sides with Kamala Harris on abortion. One
Speaker 1: of Kamala Harris's top Republican surrogates, pro life former Representative
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney, has jumped on board with the Democratic presidential
Speaker 1: candidate's plan to expand abortion rights. I think there are
Speaker 1: many of us around the country who have been pro life,
Speaker 1: but who have watched what's going on in our states
Speaker 1: since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislators put
Speaker 1: in place laws that are resulting in women not getting
Speaker 1: the care they need, Cheney said during a moderated conversation
Speaker 1: with Harris in Malvern, Pennsylvania on Monday. This is completely bogus.
Speaker 1: If by the carry they need you mean abortion, then
Speaker 1: that's us. None of these state laws prevent people from
Speaker 1: getting treatment after a miscarriage or anything of the sort.
Speaker 1: Harrods had just finished saying that even people who were
Speaker 1: supportive of overturning Rov. Wade did not anticipate the harm
Speaker 1: that would follow, which we just assumed to be. Cheney,
Speaker 1: a longtime conservative, wanted to chime in. This is not
Speaker 1: an issue that we're seeing breakdown across party lines, the
Speaker 1: one time House Republican Conference chair said, adding that in
Speaker 1: places like Texas, where top law enforcement officials were threatening
Speaker 1: to sue to gain access to women's health records, the
Speaker 1: situation is quote not sustainable for US as a country,
Speaker 1: and it has to change. Here's Cheney's tweet about it.
Speaker 1: She says, I've always been strongly pro life. Today's oh,
Speaker 1: well that from twenty twenty two she was happy that
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Speaker 2: Wade, But now all of a sudden she's like flipped.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, I'm pro life, but not to actually
Speaker 1: enact laws to limit abortion, which is the whole point
Speaker 1: of the pro life movement as a political thing is
Speaker 1: to have our politics, to have our law respect the
Speaker 1: dignity of children growing in the womb by affording them
Speaker 1: protection from violence. That's the whole point of this as
Speaker 1: a movement. Now I could go on and on about
Speaker 1: the abortion related aspect of this, but I just want
Speaker 1: to focus on this complete one pint eighty by Liz Cheney,
Speaker 1: and I focus on it with regard to Liz Cheney
Speaker 1: because it makes me think of local elections. So many
Speaker 1: people who run for office as a Republican. For so
Speaker 1: many of them, the abortion issue is.
Speaker 2: Maybe the twentieth most.
Speaker 1: Important thing, if it makes the list of things that
Speaker 1: they care about. I'll venture to say that most elected
Speaker 1: Republicans don't even think about it at all. There are
Speaker 1: probably a few things that they care about, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, these are people who want some kind
Speaker 1: of prominence in public life. They care about certain kinds
Speaker 1: of political issues, and so they run for office and
Speaker 1: they have friends who back them. Maybe they're prominent in
Speaker 1: some way. They have powerful friends who back them, and
Speaker 1: that's how they become elected officials. They're very few elected
Speaker 1: officials who actually care about core like social conservative issues.
Speaker 1: I think someone like Jim Patterson probably cares about those
Speaker 1: things in a really sincere fashion, having talked with him
Speaker 1: about it, having known about for Jim. Jim's talked about
Speaker 1: this in public, very very often. How his three children
Speaker 1: are all adopted, and so the abortion issue and the
Speaker 1: fact that his children were able to be adopted in
Speaker 1: the first place, that's something that really directly touches him
Speaker 1: and something he genuinely cares about. But other than rare
Speaker 1: political animals like Jim Patterson, other than him and the
Speaker 1: few people like him, I think most Republicans are much
Speaker 1: more flexible, willing to be much more flexible about an
Speaker 1: issue like abortion. When they proclaim themselves I'm pro life,
Speaker 1: I firmly believe. I just don't know how firm they are.
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney voted for nationwide abortion restrictions time and time
Speaker 1: and time again during her time in the House. And
Speaker 1: now she's saying that a state voting for statewide abortion
Speaker 1: restrictions is a bad thing.
Speaker 2: What is she talking about? And she's far from the only.
Speaker 1: One, and this is far from the only issue. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Mike Johnson, who everyone kind of thought
Speaker 1: was a Ukraine skeptic becomes a Speaker of the House
Speaker 1: and he's.
Speaker 3: Like, we gotta fund Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's the most important thing, which garnered the response, Wait,
Speaker 1: weren't there a bunch of people in the House who
Speaker 1: were mad over Kevin McCarthy about Ukraine?
Speaker 2: What are we doing here when people's livelihoods.
Speaker 1: Are on the line, when they're pos when their stature
Speaker 1: as a member of the House of Representatives, a member
Speaker 1: of the state Assembly, a city councilman, the states, all
Speaker 1: these jobs that have these titles that people care about
Speaker 1: and want to retain, the proximity to power that they entail,
Speaker 1: the stature that they afford these people, these are hugely
Speaker 1: ambitious people who will do anything. Or let me correct myself,
Speaker 1: these are hugely ambitious people who have gone to extraordinary
Speaker 1: lengths to get the positions that they have. I don't
Speaker 1: know to how many of them are above changing what
Speaker 1: they fundamentally purport to believe in order to retain some
Speaker 1: kind of standing.
Speaker 2: The amount of.
Speaker 1: Work you have to do to get elected as a
Speaker 1: member of the House of Representatives, the amount of doors
Speaker 1: you gotta knock, knock on babies, you gotta get kiss
Speaker 1: rubber chicken dinners. You gotta attend hands, you gotta shake deals,
Speaker 1: you gotta cut financial backers, you gotta schmooze. It's a
Speaker 1: ton of work. It's a hugely that's a ton of
Speaker 1: work on top of whatever your normal job may have been.
Speaker 1: And then you finally actually get the gig and you're
Speaker 1: in a constant state of rerunning for re election every
Speaker 1: two years. I mean, you think of someone like David Valadeo,
Speaker 1: who's in a swing district. I mean, it's got to
Speaker 1: be exhausting. And so that's why I think when we
Speaker 1: look out.
Speaker 2: At this landscape.
Speaker 1: Of Republicans and we wonder, why do these Republicans go
Speaker 1: to Washington and not be as conservative as we think
Speaker 1: they are at home? I think that's been the constant
Speaker 1: gripe of conservative voters throughout the country. Maybe some of
Speaker 1: that is bad expectations on our part, maybe some of
Speaker 1: that is being unrealistic, but I think it's job preservation
Speaker 1: on the part of these guys. They really like having
Speaker 1: this job of being an elected official. They like the
Speaker 1: prestige atifors, they like the pay, they like the perks,
Speaker 1: they like the everyone calling them a congressman. They like
Speaker 1: everyone calling them counselor they like whatever their position is,
Speaker 1: it gives them prominence and stature. Liz Cheney had all
Speaker 1: that taken away from her because she did take one
Speaker 1: position that was in fact unpopular, one position that did
Speaker 1: in fact cost her stuff, which was she really thought
Speaker 1: Trump was terrible at January sixth, But now that she's
Speaker 1: sort of out in the cold, and now was her
Speaker 1: position on January sixth? Was that something that was easy
Speaker 1: for her to do or not easy for her to do?
Speaker 1: On the one hand, not easy because it clearly cost
Speaker 1: her her congressional seat. On the other hand, she got
Speaker 1: tons of praise heaped on her by The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the New York Times, every major media outlet, heralded as
Speaker 1: this great hero of American politics. And now she's campaigning
Speaker 1: right alongside the Vice President of the United States, a
Speaker 1: possible future president. Harris has said something about giving a
Speaker 1: cabinet position to a Republican doesn't strike me as crazy
Speaker 1: to think that Liz Cheney could be that Republican who
Speaker 1: gets that cabinet position. What deal was hatched between Harris
Speaker 1: and Cheney for Cheney to be this like top surrogate,
Speaker 1: who's you know, barnstorming the country right alongside Kamala. Was
Speaker 1: some deal hatched? I don't know, And what were the
Speaker 1: terms of that deal? Well, you can ride alongside me
Speaker 1: and maybe I'll give you a cabinet post, but you
Speaker 1: got to support everything I do.
Speaker 2: Ay, I captain. Whatever you say, those are my principles.
Speaker 1: And if you don't like them, I have others the
Speaker 1: famous scroucho Marx line.
Speaker 2: But I do think this is what is underlying a
Speaker 2: lot of this is I want money. I want my
Speaker 2: position of power.
Speaker 1: I want prominence in American public life, and to do that,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to change what I believe. I think this
Speaker 1: is true of Republican politicians. I think it's true of
Speaker 1: Democrat politicians who Democrat politicians are willing to absolutely jump
Speaker 1: the absolute opposite way and say that, you know, we've
Speaker 1: always been at war with Eurasia. I mean, they're just
Speaker 1: a snap of a finger. Kamala Harris has gone from
Speaker 1: oh I oppose fracking, Oh, of course I support frakting.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: What? Just the stuff I said as a senator and
Speaker 1: candidate for president in twenty nineteen. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: those are just youthful indiscretions. No, No, I've evolved over
Speaker 1: the years. I recognize that I have to win Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: So therefore fracking is I mean that fracking is okay.
Speaker 1: Illegal immigration is a crime. I never did I say
Speaker 1: illegal immigration wasn't a crime of Oh, I'm tough on immigration,
Speaker 1: Kamil of the cop. If someone's willing to do all
Speaker 1: the conniving, manipulating handshakes, deal backroom deals, et cetera, the
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris obviously had to do over the course of
Speaker 1: her life and some of the other things she had
Speaker 1: to do where I'm not going to go into it,
Speaker 1: Willie Brown, this is a family program. Then obviously these people,
Speaker 1: these elected officials in your life who disappoint you, they're
Speaker 1: willing to change what they believe.
Speaker 3: If it means holding onto power.
Speaker 2: When we return.
Speaker 1: How all this relates to the idea of term limits
Speaker 1: and why I think term limits don't actually do anything
Speaker 1: useful next on the John Girardi Show. So this has
Speaker 1: been a pet peeve of mine relating to this theme
Speaker 1: of why do politicians change their minds so readily? And
Speaker 1: my contention is that they are motivated by a lot
Speaker 1: of financial but also self preservations slash how to phrase it,
Speaker 1: retaining their standing as prominent and significant people. They are
Speaker 1: motivated by all of these things. They want to be significant,
Speaker 1: they want to be admired, they want to be appreciated.
Speaker 1: And this results in Republican politicians Allah Liz Cheney stumping
Speaker 1: for Kamala and all of a sudden pitching overboard Oliver
Speaker 1: pro Life believes, et cetera. It results in basically this
Speaker 1: highly motivated reasoning to all of a sudden, do these
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics to say, oh, I actually don't believe in
Speaker 1: all these things I used to believe in.
Speaker 2: And I think it's in.
Speaker 1: Part because these people have very few things deep in
Speaker 1: their core as far as things they believe in that
Speaker 1: they're actually willing to sacrifice when it becomes financially difficult.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of this has to do
Speaker 1: with you know, people want jobs. They want their job,
Speaker 1: They want some kind of job that gives them prominence
Speaker 1: in society, and they'll do a lot of things to
Speaker 1: retain it, especially those jobs, these powerful jobs, jobs that
Speaker 1: are touch power in some way allow you to shape policy.
Speaker 1: And you can see this sort of in the life
Speaker 1: cycle of these people, you know, they go from being
Speaker 1: a congressman to some other kind of cushy landing spot.
Speaker 1: And this is why I sort of think term limits
Speaker 1: don't actually help allow me to explain the California legislature
Speaker 1: has term limits. We have term limits in California. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know that the California legislature has
Speaker 1: term limits. We adopted it about decade two decades ago.
Speaker 1: The term limit rules within California is twelve years. You're
Speaker 1: allowed to serve in the state legislature for twelve years.
Speaker 1: You can divide that time however you want, between the
Speaker 1: State Assembly and the State Senate, so you can serve
Speaker 1: four years in the State Senate and eight years in
Speaker 1: the State Assembly and you're done. That's your twelve years.
Speaker 3: Or you can do.
Speaker 1: Twelve exclusively in the state Senate, or twelve years exclusively
Speaker 1: in the State Assembly, or eight and four, you know,
Speaker 1: six and six, however you want to do it, but
Speaker 1: you're term limited out after twelve years. This has resulted
Speaker 1: in politicians who are just as bad as the pre
Speaker 1: term limits politicians. It has resulted in no discernible improvements
Speaker 1: whatsoever in California state government. In fact, I would argue
Speaker 1: it's created a bunch of new, worse, more perverse incentives
Speaker 1: for legislator's behavior. Why well, because here's the life cycle
Speaker 1: of a California legislator. Now you get the job, and
Speaker 1: for a lot of these people, it's like the best
Speaker 1: job they've ever had. All Right, some of these people
Speaker 1: that it's not like they have this great resume of,
Speaker 1: you know, being titans of industry. Necessarily they get this job,
Speaker 1: they serve for twelve years, and then what do they do.
Speaker 1: They become a lobbyist because they know the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of Sacramento. They've made so many great connections, and
Speaker 1: Sacramento is this perfect. I mean, obviously, California is the
Speaker 1: largest state, so of all states in the Union where
Speaker 1: lobbyists can make their Hey, Sacramento would make sense just
Speaker 1: in that sense. But it's not just because California is
Speaker 1: the biggest state. California is an enormous state with a
Speaker 1: relatively very small number of state legislators. We only have
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty state legislators, eighty in the Assembly,
Speaker 1: forty in the state Senate. It's a small number of
Speaker 1: people to have a huge impact on policy. California has
Speaker 1: this trend setting tendency, especially for all the Blue states.
Speaker 1: They copy stuff California does so, and the California State legislature,
Speaker 1: on top of that, has a year round session. Most
Speaker 1: state legislators only meet for like a month or two
Speaker 1: months every year. I think Virginia meets for like forty
Speaker 1: days more or less. Some state legislators only have a
Speaker 1: one month session every other year. It's a part time
Speaker 1: job in most states, but in California they're there all
Speaker 1: year round. So you can be a lobbyist all year round.
Speaker 1: You can lobby in Sacramento all year round and make
Speaker 1: rate money, more money than you make as a legislator.
Speaker 1: And being a legislator really ably prepares you to be
Speaker 1: a lobbyist. So you've got legislators highly motivated to do
Speaker 1: stuff appealing to the industries that they could lobby for,
Speaker 1: that they could work for. Oh you're you know, a
Speaker 1: member of and then the chair of you know, the
Speaker 1: the Agriculture Committee or the higher the you know, the
Speaker 1: Energy Committee. Oh why don't you do something helps out
Speaker 1: PG and E and then oh me, hey, after you're
Speaker 1: done with your twelve years in the Assembly, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, hey you want to be a lobbyist for
Speaker 1: PG and E. That's what we call regulatory capture, where
Speaker 1: your regulation of an industry is tempered by the fact
Speaker 1: that you would like to work for that industry. So
Speaker 1: term limits have done nothing to solve any of our problems.
Speaker 1: Politicians are just as willing to bend their beliefs and
Speaker 1: shift their beliefs for the sake of their own self preservation, gratification,
Speaker 1: and their own financial interest, just as much as they
Speaker 1: were before term.
Speaker 3: Limits existed in California.
Speaker 1: So for anyone who says term limits are a silver
Speaker 1: bullet for anything in American politics, get your head examined.
Speaker 1: They don't actually do anything that useful. They just create
Speaker 1: new perverse incentives rather than getting rid of them. When
Speaker 1: we return, my little field trip to Notre Dame and
Speaker 1: my discussion with a state election lawyer next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. This past weekend, I went on a
Speaker 1: little trip. I went on a trip to the University
Speaker 1: of Notre Dame and I attended a really awesome conference
Speaker 1: that was thrown by Americans United for Life AUL, which
Speaker 1: is this great organization that does a lot of work analyzing.
Speaker 2: Abortion related legislation.
Speaker 1: Both at the federal level and at the state's level,
Speaker 1: and it was a really great conference talking about sort
Speaker 1: of legal fundamental.
Speaker 2: Principles of what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Great discussion with pro life leaders from all over the
Speaker 1: country about what kinds of stuff they were doing, and golly,
Speaker 1: it's given me enough fodder for about two years worth
Speaker 1: of Right to Life radio shows.
Speaker 3: I'm actually going.
Speaker 1: To be talking with a doctor I met from that conference,
Speaker 1: doctor Donna Harrison, from the American Academy of Pro Life
Speaker 1: OPG y NS, on Saturday on Right to Life Radio,
Speaker 1: So you'll have to give that a listen at nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: I want to talk though about election stuff and my suspicions,
Speaker 1: my suspicions about shenanigans. One of the people I met
Speaker 1: at this conference one of the attendees, and I felt
Speaker 1: like it was one of these events where like every
Speaker 1: single attendee had really interesting background of life experience, professional experience,
Speaker 1: could have talked about something interesting. I won't give up
Speaker 1: too much about I don't want to put her on
Speaker 1: blast too much, so I'll just say that she's a
Speaker 1: lawyer from a swing state and one of the things
Speaker 1: she's been doing is working with her local county elections board,
Speaker 1: and it's a very large county in a swing state,
Speaker 1: and the county's local elections. I think it's like an
Speaker 1: elections board that she's on. I'm not sure exactly how
Speaker 1: her state runs things as far as the direct management
Speaker 1: of this stuff at the local level, but she is
Speaker 1: basically the voice of reason to try to advocate for
Speaker 1: fair procedures with regards to elections in this county in
Speaker 1: this swing state, and the kinds of little things that
Speaker 1: she points out that Democrats try to do just in
Speaker 1: her one county in her one swing state. And I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think, I believe every single one of the
Speaker 1: main swing states like Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: all have Democrat governors and so there's sort of oversight.
Speaker 3: By Democrats in all these states, which.
Speaker 1: By the way, that should make you a little worried
Speaker 1: the fact that the governors in all of the swing
Speaker 1: states that Trump kind of needs to win all of
Speaker 1: them are Democrats. I guess Georgia is Georgia has a
Speaker 1: Republican governor, but that's it.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Pennsylvan, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: all of them have Democrat governors. Now, she was just
Speaker 1: telling us. When we were discussing this with her, We're like, oh,
Speaker 1: what do you do. Oh, I'm in North Carolina, I'm
Speaker 1: working right now, I'm in this state or that state.
Speaker 1: I'm from here, I'm from there. And we talked to
Speaker 1: this woman. She says, yes, I'm from state X, work
Speaker 1: in their elections board, and I'm dealing with this right now.
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with this right now. Oh, we're extending timeline
Speaker 1: to vote for this county because of X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: And the elections board said, no, we needed we just
Speaker 1: need a unanimous vote rather than we need a unanimous
Speaker 1: vote rather than a majority vote.
Speaker 2: Oh, we're wanting to shorten certain.
Speaker 1: Kinds of voting times whatever in this part of the
Speaker 1: county that's more Republican leaning because of all because of
Speaker 1: this arbitrary reason, all Republican election monitors aren't being allowed
Speaker 1: to come in over here because of this. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I filed a brief and I said, you we have
Speaker 1: to let them come in orright, I did this, that
Speaker 1: or the other. She's putting out all these fires where
Speaker 1: Democrats are doing little sneaky things to try to get
Speaker 1: an advantage. And it's like little thing, little thing, little thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting here and I'm like, this woman is
Speaker 1: like single handedly saving the Republic. I mean, good lord,
Speaker 1: the whole election could come down to her state, and
Speaker 1: here she is making sure the Democrats don't pull a
Speaker 1: fast one and doing stuff sort of quasi legally under
Speaker 1: cover of law but sort of violating the law, but
Speaker 1: having their sort of little violations of the law ratified
Speaker 1: by state elections officials making decisions that they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to make or shouldn't be making. And it's not stuff
Speaker 1: where it's like and that's the thing. She's not dealing
Speaker 1: with stuff that's flat out fraud necessarily, Okay, it's not
Speaker 1: like Democrats just dropped a whole stack of obviously computer
Speaker 1: filled in ballots signed by nobody. Okay, No, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: although in some cases she's like, okay, you know, like
Speaker 1: she's dealing in her stay with all of these absentee
Speaker 1: ballots and people are sending them in. They're supposed to
Speaker 1: be either notarized or signed by like I think in
Speaker 1: her state was like signed by two witnesses. And she's like,
Speaker 1: we have no idea who these two witnesses are. How
Speaker 1: can we authenticate it? It could be signed by Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse and Donald Duck. All these things where she's fighting
Speaker 1: in a swing state, a state where Democrats don't completely
Speaker 1: control everything, a highly contested battleground state, where she's like
Speaker 1: fighting tooth and nail against these little things, these little things,
Speaker 1: these little advantages Democrats are trying to take care little
Speaker 1: advantages Democrats are trying to take their little ways that
Speaker 1: they're trying to game the system in their favor. And
Speaker 1: she's like putting out fires left and right the whole conference.
Speaker 1: She's like on her phone, trying her best, and she
Speaker 1: feels a sense of obligation. She's like, you know, I've
Speaker 1: been doing election law stuff like this in my state
Speaker 1: for X number of years. I didn't want this job
Speaker 1: to go over to some newbie who's never done it before.
Speaker 1: I feel this responsibility in my county to do this,
Speaker 1: and that just makes me think. I'm not saying California
Speaker 1: is a red state.
Speaker 2: Far from it.
Speaker 1: I am not one of these lunatics who in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty saw like there was a Trump rally with like
Speaker 1: a bunch of cars parading through somewhere in Orange County,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of cars because Orange County
Speaker 1: just has a lot of people, and there were like
Speaker 1: Trump sick of people on Twitter are like, look at
Speaker 1: all these people.
Speaker 2: The Trump train is coming to California. We're going to
Speaker 2: turn California red. Trump's gonna win Califori.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you don't even believe this. You don't
Speaker 1: believe it. I don't believe it. Nobody believes this. And
Speaker 1: of course it's not true. Trump loses California, you know,
Speaker 1: two to one or whatever the breakdown is, it is
Speaker 1: sixty forty or something like that. So I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: saying Republicans are secretly the majority in California. What I
Speaker 1: am saying, though, is that if this woman in this.
Speaker 2: Swing state, this lawyer I met.
Speaker 1: If she's catching all these little things that Democrats are doing,
Speaker 1: these sneaky little things that they're trying to do to
Speaker 1: manipulate things this way, that way, and the other way,
Speaker 1: how much stuff do you think we miss that Democrats
Speaker 1: are doing in California, given that they completely run the
Speaker 1: show in so many La County. La County has its
Speaker 1: own you know, county clerk that's running the elections. Every
Speaker 1: elected official for La County is a Democrat, all right,
Speaker 1: pretty much every single one the county Board of Supervisors
Speaker 1: is Democrat, or the county election officials, I'm sure as
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly Democrats. How much shady stuff do you think is happening?
Speaker 1: How much ability? What ability to do the La County
Speaker 1: Republican Party does the La County Republican Party have to
Speaker 1: really carefully monitor election results and check things and follow
Speaker 1: us none. I'm sure Democrats are getting away with so
Speaker 1: many shady, sly things under cover of law, undercover of
Speaker 1: Oh this was a decision by.
Speaker 2: This group, Bubba.
Speaker 1: I bet there's stuff going on in La County that
Speaker 1: would just make our absolute frickin'head spin. So this isn't
Speaker 1: to say that I agree with all like the stop
Speaker 1: the steel stuff. Listen, you've got to prove it in court.
Speaker 1: And if you can't prove it in court, then there's
Speaker 1: nothing else to do. If you can't get the evidence,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what to do. You know,
Speaker 1: doing a January sixth is not exactly a helpful thing.
Speaker 2: So I guess I'm just.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not in this sort of stop the
Speaker 1: steel mode necessarily, and but I also think, boy, there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot more stuff that happens where you can't
Speaker 1: necessarily contest it, because it's not like it's flat out fraud.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's flat out having Mickey Mouse and
Speaker 1: Donald Duck sign ballots and have those ballots be counted.
Speaker 1: I don't that's not what's happening. But it is stuff
Speaker 1: that I think happens under kind of cover of law,
Speaker 1: cover of kind of quasi legal legal but ratified shady
Speaker 1: interpretations of state law. I think a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff is happening. A lot of that stuff it's happening,
Speaker 1: and it might be things that you can't necessarily vindicate.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if Georgia, for example, in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: would flip the other way on the basis of could
Speaker 1: have flipped the other way, possibly on the basis of
Speaker 1: some of that kind of stuff, stuff that's like almost
Speaker 1: impossible to review after the fact in illegal proceeding. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm afraid of, and it makes me afraid that
Speaker 1: Republicans have entrusted a lot of their ground game in
Speaker 1: some of these states. They've entrusted it to guys like
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk, which like, as much as I've appreciated Charlie
Speaker 1: Kirk having some influence on Donald Trump of a pro
Speaker 1: life sort, I mean, there have been reports that the
Speaker 1: only reason Trump is opposing amendment for in Georgia, the
Speaker 1: horrible I believe it's Amendment for in Georgia, the horrible
Speaker 1: state abortion amendment that's on the ballot in Florida. The
Speaker 1: only reason Trump clearly opposed it was because Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: in a panic, called Donald Trump and basically convinced him, Hey,
Speaker 1: conservatives are going to jump ship if you do if
Speaker 1: you don't oppose this, which God bless Charlie Kirk for that.
Speaker 1: But there have been all these reports of his organization
Speaker 1: doing to get out the vote efforts on the part
Speaker 1: of Republicans and a lot of swing states getting a
Speaker 1: lot of Elon Musk money that's being frittered away because
Speaker 1: he's not actually that experienced in get out the vote efforts.
Speaker 1: I worry that Democrats have a better ground game. I
Speaker 1: worry that Kamala has way more money than Trump. She does,
Speaker 1: that's just a fact. She's got way more money for lawyers.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid maybe She's got whole teams of lawyers in
Speaker 1: ways that Trump just does not.
Speaker 2: So that's my fear. That's my fear.
Speaker 1: Are these little shenanigans, these little shenanigans that you know,
Speaker 1: this elections could come down just the last two presidential
Speaker 1: elections have come down to about fifty thousand votes across
Speaker 1: you know, two or three states. Fifty thousand votes across
Speaker 1: two or three states, so the other way, and someone
Speaker 1: else wins two or three you know, fifty thousand votes
Speaker 1: go a different way across two or three states, and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton wins twenty sixteen or Donald Trump wins twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: And that's what worries me, is that maybe we're in
Speaker 1: another election like that now. Could be that Trump wins
Speaker 1: in a blowout. I think that's a possibility, but I
Speaker 1: think in all likelihood, it's a very narrowly divided country
Speaker 1: and it's going to come down to a lot of
Speaker 1: little things. And I gotta say, I'm really glad that
Speaker 1: lawyers like the one I met are doing their work.
Speaker 1: It could be lawyers like her who are saving the
Speaker 1: country from President Kamala Harris. When we return a little
Speaker 1: love letter to Notre Dame next on the John Gerardy Show,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, I got to visit my old
Speaker 1: stomping grounds at the good old University of Notre Dame
Speaker 1: this past weekend. And I've talked a bit on the
Speaker 1: show a couple of times. My buddy Jonathan Keller keeps
Speaker 1: coming back to it. I had a show where I
Speaker 1: talked about college football as sort of giving us a
Speaker 1: sense of Aristotelian political belonging.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of.
Speaker 1: Words Aristotle in his Politics, the great Greek Athenian philosopher
Speaker 1: from the fourth century BC, wrote in his Politics it
Speaker 1: was one of the most influential works in the history
Speaker 1: of politics in the West, that a natural political community
Speaker 1: is bound together by bonds of commonality, love, and affection.
Speaker 1: And I made the point that I think that's really
Speaker 1: kind of how colleges function for a lot of Americans today.
Speaker 1: Having gone to the same college, the same university, gives
Speaker 1: you a shared sense of belonging, a commonality in my case,
Speaker 1: commonalities of religion, of place of experience, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: have an instant when I talked to someone who went
Speaker 1: to Notre Dame, and it was wonderful to get to
Speaker 1: see that, to see so many friends at Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: To get to walk around the campus, show my buddy
Speaker 1: Jonathan Keller all the sights and places where.
Speaker 3: I remember, you know, doing this or doing that.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful to be at my other home. This
Speaker 1: is my home, but Notre Dame is my other home.
Speaker 1: That'll do it, John Jarlady show, see you next time
Speaker 1: on Power Talk