Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a serious thing or
Speaker 1: if this is a senator just trying to kind of
Speaker 1: make a name for himself by throwing spaghetti against a wall,
Speaker 1: knowing that probably most of it's not going to stick.
Speaker 1: But I think it needs to be hung around the
Speaker 1: necks of every single Democrat like an absolute anchor. This
Speaker 1: is in reference to a bill, a bill that has
Speaker 1: been put forward in the United States Senate by Senator
Speaker 1: Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon. And let's be clear, the
Speaker 1: person who's created the environment for something like this to
Speaker 1: be proposed is Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden
Speaker 1: both sort of announced their support for a court packing
Speaker 1: plan of Biden's devising in the weeks when Biden, right
Speaker 1: after the debate, Biden was flailing. He was trying to
Speaker 1: do something to shore up his extreme left wing of support,
Speaker 1: and he threw out this proposal for quote, reforming the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. This proposal basically to have eighteen year term
Speaker 1: limits for Supreme Court justices and every two years for
Speaker 1: a president to be able to appoint someone to the court.
Speaker 1: So nine justices each with eighteen year term limits. Every
Speaker 1: two years, someone would roll off the court. The big
Speaker 1: question that Biden was dodging, answering that Harris is dodging answering.
Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing how much stuff Harris doesn't have
Speaker 1: to answer for. Is what to do about the justices
Speaker 1: on the court right now who have already been on
Speaker 1: the court for more than eighteen years, or the existing justices,
Speaker 1: how their time on the court is going to work,
Speaker 1: particularly given the three justices who've been serving for more
Speaker 1: than three years are Sam Alito, who I believe was
Speaker 1: appointed in two thousand and five, two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: something like that, John Roberts who was a little bit
Speaker 1: before him, and then Clarence Thomas was appointed I believe
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one, in the early nineties. So three
Speaker 1: Republican appointees are over the eighteen year limit. What do
Speaker 1: we do with them? Presumably they'd be retroactively kicked off
Speaker 1: the court. I think that's part of what Harris and
Speaker 1: Biden want. They realize adding more seats maybe that's too extreme.
Speaker 1: So here's a system to get hurry these conservative justices
Speaker 1: off the court. And they're doing it out of some
Speaker 1: purported as, Oh, we need to perform the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, it's s troubled by ethical scandals from Justice
Speaker 1: as Thomas. There's no ethical scandals. These are blowney ethical
Speaker 1: scandals where, yeah, Clarence Thomas is hanging out with a
Speaker 1: rich guy and flying on his private jet, a rich
Speaker 1: guy who has no business before the court, who has
Speaker 1: not had any business before the court. You're allowed to
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know, I mean, it just seems
Speaker 1: to me bizarre that we're making this huge ordeal over
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas hanging out with rich people, as if Ruth
Speaker 1: Bader Ginsburg didn't, as if all these other liberal Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justices didn't do the exact same thing, which most
Speaker 1: of them did. But we breathlessly report on stuff like this,
Speaker 1: which isn't really necessarily an ethical violation at all, but
Speaker 1: only when conservative justices do it anyway. So Harris has
Speaker 1: one supported this idea of screwing around with membership of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court in order to attain a more ideologically
Speaker 1: favorable position for liberals. She wants to do something to
Speaker 1: shove the conservative justices off the Supreme Court. And we
Speaker 1: all know for a fact, if liberals had a majority
Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court, right now. Harris would not be
Speaker 1: promoting these policies. It's not like she cares about some
Speaker 1: value neutral concept of the Supreme Court. Oh, we really
Speaker 1: do need term limits for Supreme Court justice. Liberals were
Speaker 1: totally fine with lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices when
Speaker 1: they fundamentally controlled it for the last seventy years. So
Speaker 1: Harris has created this environment with her own proposal for
Speaker 1: sort of messing around with the Supreme Court a very
Speaker 1: questionable const constitutionality, as well as her openness to breaking
Speaker 1: the filibuster. So the only way a proposal like that's
Speaker 1: going to work is if you can abolish the filibuster
Speaker 1: rule in the Senate. The philibuster rule in the Senate
Speaker 1: is basically debate in the Senate can theoretically go on forever.
Speaker 1: One can filibuster a bill to death, so effectively to
Speaker 1: advance a lot of most kinds of legislation in the Senate,
Speaker 1: you actually need sixty out of one hundred votes rather
Speaker 1: than fifty one out of one hundred votes. Harris has
Speaker 1: announced she is in favor of using the filibuster at
Speaker 1: least for certain things. So here's the bill that Ron
Speaker 1: Wyden has proposed for the Supreme Court, and I think
Speaker 1: we need to ask every single Democrat running in a
Speaker 1: competitive race what they think about it. His proposal includes
Speaker 1: increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court by six,
Speaker 1: mandating yearly irs audits for each Supreme Court justice, requiring
Speaker 1: a ruling by two thirds of the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: the Circuit Courts of Appeals to overturn a law passed
Speaker 1: by Congress rather than a simple court majority. To expand
Speaker 1: the number of federal judicial circuits in the United States
Speaker 1: from thirteen they're thirteen judicial circuits currently to fifteen, also
Speaker 1: adding more than one hundred district court judges and more
Speaker 1: than sixty appellate level judges. Weaken the Senate's power of
Speaker 1: advice and consent by requiring Supreme Court nominees to be
Speaker 1: automatically scheduled for a vote if their nominations stall in committee.
Speaker 1: So that this is wild. This is a wild proposal.
Speaker 1: Harris's existing proposal is already wild. Harris's proposal for term
Speaker 1: limits on Supreme Court justices that's wild in the sense
Speaker 1: that it's probably unconstitutional. The Constitution itself says in Article
Speaker 1: three that justices of the Supreme Court and the judges
Speaker 1: appointed to any inferior courts that Congress may create in
Speaker 1: the future enjoy that can exercise their office quote in
Speaker 1: good behavior. And what that means, what that has always meant,
Speaker 1: That has always been interpreted to mean. That effectively means
Speaker 1: lifetime tenure. Okay, you keep your office as long as
Speaker 1: you're as long as you're in good behavior. The only
Speaker 1: way to remove a Supreme Court justice or any other
Speaker 1: Article three federal judge. So that the different kinds of
Speaker 1: federal judges. You've got Supreme Court justices at the tippy top,
Speaker 1: the nine Supreme Court justices. You've got the judges for
Speaker 1: the thirteen different federal circuit courts, so the first Circuit,
Speaker 1: second Circuit, third Circuit, fourth or blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: the DC Circuit, and then you have the federal district courts.
Speaker 1: Those are the trial level judges in the federal system.
Speaker 1: So those are sort of the three levels. All of
Speaker 1: those judges enjoy lifetime tenure, and that's baked into the
Speaker 1: Constitution itself. So the current Harris Biden proposal to limit
Speaker 1: the terms of office for Supreme Court justices to only
Speaker 1: eighteen years, but then after you're done with eighteen years,
Speaker 1: you get to go be a circuit court judge. Well,
Speaker 1: that's infringing on the constitution. Okay, the Constitution says you
Speaker 1: get to exercise this office for good behavior. The only
Speaker 1: way you can remove a federal district court judge, a
Speaker 1: circuit court judge, or Supreme Court justice from their office
Speaker 1: is through the impeachment and removal process, like the same
Speaker 1: process for you know, impeaching and removing a president. A
Speaker 1: majority of the House of Representatives has to impeach you,
Speaker 1: and then a two thirds vote of the United States
Speaker 1: Senate has to remove you from office. The only time
Speaker 1: that's ever happened to federal judges has been with federal
Speaker 1: judges who've been found to have been accepting bribes or
Speaker 1: committing some other kind of crime. Outside of impeachment and removal,
Speaker 1: which is provided for in the Constitution, federal judges enjoy
Speaker 1: lifetime tenure, and they enjoy lifetime tenure in that office.
Speaker 1: By the way, So for Congress to try to pass
Speaker 1: a law, which is what Harris and Biden are proposing,
Speaker 1: just to eighteen years and you're done. No, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That infringes on you know, one of the things the
Speaker 1: Constitution's really big on is if someone's got a job
Speaker 1: legally granted to them and you take away that job,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. That's like a legal problem that can
Speaker 1: be vindicated by law. So the idea of a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court saying that, oh, this doesn't violate the Constitution in
Speaker 1: lifetime tenure, because yes, the Supreme Court justice only can
Speaker 1: serve eighteen years and then they have to leave that job,
Speaker 1: but they still enjoy lifetime tenure because they're still a
Speaker 1: Circuit Court judge. Well, no, you have lifetime tenure for
Speaker 1: that job. Being on the Supreme Court's a bigger deal. Now.
Speaker 1: The Ron Widen's bill, the Senator from Oregon is far
Speaker 1: more extreme even than what Harris and Biden have initially proposed. Again,
Speaker 1: just flat out adding six more justices, not futzing around
Speaker 1: futs futz, not anything worse, FCC, it's all right, futson
Speaker 1: around with you know, term limits or age restrictions or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Now six more justices yearly, So six
Speaker 1: more justices. That is one thing Congress could actually do
Speaker 1: by statute. The number of justices on the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is not actually set by the Constitution. Congress can simply
Speaker 1: pass a law to increase the number of justices on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court if they want to. Now, we've held
Speaker 1: ever since FDR tried to do this in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: and his own party said, no, this is tyrannical, this
Speaker 1: is way too extreme, this is you interfering in the
Speaker 1: judicial branch. We should never do something like this again.
Speaker 1: And everyone accepted that conventional wisdom until five minutes ago.
Speaker 1: That is actually something Congress could do. It's a terrible idea,
Speaker 1: but it is something Congress could do. Harass the justice
Speaker 1: with mandatory yearly irs audits. I don't know that that
Speaker 1: might be like one branch of government unduly interfering in another.
Speaker 1: I think that could raise some problems with the independence
Speaker 1: of the judiciary. Require a ruling by two thirds of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of Appeals to
Speaker 1: overturn a law passed by Congress. This is another provision
Speaker 1: of Senator Ron Wyden's bill for packing the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: but also saying that two thirds of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and the circuit courts of Appeals would be required to
Speaker 1: overturn any law passed by Congress. I mean this undercuts
Speaker 1: the entire system of judicial review. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this is possible. I guess I'm not sure to say
Speaker 1: it's unconstitutional zone. I mean, it's almost like leading us
Speaker 1: into completely different constitutional waters. The idea of being the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court would no longer be actually the final court
Speaker 1: of appeals. It would be the Supreme Court plus the
Speaker 1: circuit courts in conjunction. I think it's kind of fundamentally
Speaker 1: reshaping the whole structure of Article three of our federal
Speaker 1: court system as a whole. It's reshaping the whole nature
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court. I don't know that that's really
Speaker 1: feasible under the Constitution without doing this as a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1: Expanding the number of federal judicial circuits from thirteen to fifteen, Okay,
Speaker 1: Congress could do that by a statute, but again, this
Speaker 1: is court packing. You're gonna the only reason they want
Speaker 1: to increase the number of circuits is so that here's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of new judge ships that President Harris
Speaker 1: gets to a point, adding more than one hundred district
Speaker 1: court judges and more than sixty appellate level judges. So
Speaker 1: Democrats can stack the federal bench with unfit radical with
Speaker 1: more unfit radicals. Yeah. I mean, that's the point of
Speaker 1: this is. This is beyond packing the Supreme Court. They
Speaker 1: want to pack all the circuit courts and the district
Speaker 1: courts as well. They want to create new seats and
Speaker 1: just fill them all with Democrats. And then lastly, I
Speaker 1: think this is another unconstitutional provision. We can the Senate's
Speaker 1: power of advice and consent by requiring Supreme Court nominees
Speaker 1: to be automatically scheduled for a vote if their nominations
Speaker 1: stolen committee. So the Constitution says, the President nominates judges
Speaker 1: federal judges, the Senate has its process of advice and consent.
Speaker 1: The Senate's process of advice and consent. The way that
Speaker 1: the Senate has has devised this is the Senate Judiciary
Speaker 1: Committee reviews nominees for federal judge ships. That's where they
Speaker 1: have their hearings, where they talk with the judge individually.
Speaker 1: That's where they have open hearings. They have a vote
Speaker 1: in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and then they have a
Speaker 1: vote on the floor of the Senate. So I guess
Speaker 1: this probably wouldn't actually be unconstitutional. It would be Congress itself,
Speaker 1: limiting the nature of the Senate's power of advice and consent.
Speaker 1: But it seems as though this is the Merrick Garland provision.
Speaker 1: This is the We're mad that Merrick Garland didn't get
Speaker 1: a vote in committee. It didn't get a hearing in
Speaker 1: the Senate Judiciary Committee when President Obama nominated him after
Speaker 1: after Justice Scalia died in February of twenty sixteen. So
Speaker 1: we're going to put this provision in because it would
Speaker 1: have required that Merrick Garland get you know, an up
Speaker 1: and down vote from the floor of the Senate, even
Speaker 1: if his you know, even though his committee hearing didn't happen.
Speaker 1: This is an insane proposal, Okay, I mean as insane
Speaker 1: as the Biden Harris proposal. It's already on the books
Speaker 1: that like, this is their proposal, This is what Biden
Speaker 1: Harris support. This bill by Senator Widen is far crazier,
Speaker 1: far more disastrous, far more meddlesome to our constitutional order,
Speaker 1: equally as unconstitutional, I'd say, And I think it's this.
Speaker 1: I think it's a gift. I think every Senator in
Speaker 1: a battleground state, every Democrat senator candidate in a battleground state,
Speaker 1: needs to be asked whether they support it or not.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris needs to be asked she supports it. Tim
Speaker 1: Walls needs to be asked if he supports it. When
Speaker 1: we return, we will dig into this and how disruptive
Speaker 1: to the constitutional order it is next on the John
Speaker 1: Gerardi Show. Since Trump kind of entered the political scene,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of ink spilled and a lot
Speaker 1: of yapping done about violations of political norms. How Trump
Speaker 1: has violated this political norm of that political that this
Speaker 1: is disruptive to our republic, blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. The apex of this was January sixth, and
Speaker 1: the idea that Trump was pursuing this certain reading of
Speaker 1: federal election legislation about the vice president's role with regards
Speaker 1: to certifying the electoral college count and urging Vice President
Speaker 1: Pence to not certify the electoral college count, and this
Speaker 1: one interpretation of federal law basically to argue that the
Speaker 1: vice president sort of had this unilateral power, which I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people would. He did have a legitimate,
Speaker 1: real legal expert advising him on it, who was not
Speaker 1: a schmuck by any stretch. John Eastman, who was proponsing this.
Speaker 1: I think most everyone left end right kind of think
Speaker 1: Eastman was wrong. I think it's kind of a crazy
Speaker 1: argument to make that a sitting vice president can just
Speaker 1: unilaterally reject certifying the electoral college as he or she wishes.
Speaker 1: That would, you know, especially under our current system with
Speaker 1: the president and the vice president always being of the
Speaker 1: same party, which was not the original structure of the
Speaker 1: constitution necessarily no, that would You could almost guarantee that
Speaker 1: an incumbent could never lose an election off his own
Speaker 1: his or her own vice president had this unilateral authority
Speaker 1: to accept or reject electoral count certification. So that would
Speaker 1: be a real structural problem constitutionally, if Trump's interpretation of
Speaker 1: that were so. Nonetheless, Trump was trying to get Mike
Speaker 1: Pence not to certify the election results. That was seen
Speaker 1: as the greatest single example of Trump threatening the constitutional order,
Speaker 1: which is amusing because I think if the riot had
Speaker 1: not actually occurred on January sixth, no one would think
Speaker 1: of that act as being particularly threatening. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like the riot that happened on January sixth
Speaker 1: was one thing. Trump's pressuring of Pence not to certify
Speaker 1: the election results on January sixth was kind of another thing.
Speaker 1: It just sort of seems like the two got one
Speaker 1: conflated with each other when Jack Smith could not actually
Speaker 1: connect them to each other. Notice when Jack Smith charged
Speaker 1: Donald Trump with stuff surrounding January sixth, he didn't actually
Speaker 1: charge him with anything having to do with the violent
Speaker 1: condoct ud by you know, the rioters on January sixth,
Speaker 1: The people, the people actually doing bad stuff, the people
Speaker 1: who were you know, vandalizing stuff, fighting with police officers,
Speaker 1: those guys not you know mem who not not the
Speaker 1: Memas and the paw pawse who were waved through by
Speaker 1: security and walked into the you know areas, walked into
Speaker 1: Congress and said oh that's interesting, and then walked out.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the dj is aggressively
Speaker 1: prosecuting them for basically for a kind of trespassed crime. Anyway,
Speaker 1: for all the ink spilled about what a threat to
Speaker 1: the constitutional order, President Trump represents the way that we
Speaker 1: casually skate by Kamala Harris saying I want to propose
Speaker 1: court packing by another means I want to propose via
Speaker 1: legislation something that almost certainly you could only do by
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment to kick Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: and John Roberts off the Court as soon as I can,
Speaker 1: and just to reshape the court, to get rid of
Speaker 1: its current conservative majority, to put in a majority of
Speaker 1: my preference. And no one finds this to be the
Speaker 1: grave threat to the constitutional order that I think it
Speaker 1: clearly is. It's clearly a threat to the constitutional order
Speaker 1: if presidents are if presidents working with Congress can just
Speaker 1: reshape the judiciary to their liking with a snap of
Speaker 1: a finger, then it's going to lead to massive instability.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a huge flaw in the constitutional order.
Speaker 1: I think the very fact that Congress could really I
Speaker 1: think it is a flaw inherent than our constitutional order,
Speaker 1: that Congress can just pass a law to increase the
Speaker 1: number of justices. I think that's something that should be
Speaker 1: corrected via a constitutional amendment. If we actually want stability
Speaker 1: there and to take away the possibility for an aggressive
Speaker 1: president plus Congress to reshape the judiciary at a whim,
Speaker 1: we should actually try to pursue a constitutional amendment saying
Speaker 1: the number of justices on the Supreme Court is set
Speaker 1: at nine. They have lifetime ten years, you know, clarify
Speaker 1: that you can't do all these shenanigans that that Vice
Speaker 1: President Harris is proposing, that Ron Wyden is proposing. But furthermore,
Speaker 1: I think the constitutional safeguards we do have for lifetime
Speaker 1: appointment of justices, Harris wants to just blow past it,
Speaker 1: you know, with this idea of her idea of eighteen
Speaker 1: year term limits. Eighteen year term limits, which blatantly violate
Speaker 1: it's the provision with an Article three the federal judges
Speaker 1: serve during good behavior. That means for life. That means
Speaker 1: as long as they're not impeached and removed, they get
Speaker 1: to keep serving. It's a real, real sorry, I'm going
Speaker 1: through puberty on the radio. It's a real serious attack
Speaker 1: on our constitutional order that she's just flatly openly making.
Speaker 1: And the media is all pretending like it's normal because
Speaker 1: they want her to win, because they hate the current
Speaker 1: makeup of the Supreme Court. That's all it is. Nobody
Speaker 1: on the left is applying any kind of value neutral
Speaker 1: analysis to ask like, is this structurally a good idea
Speaker 1: for the Supreme Court. Yeah, I know, we don't like
Speaker 1: the current makeup of the Supreme Court, but maybe Let's
Speaker 1: think about this with the lens of decades rather than
Speaker 1: the lens of right now of being mad about something
Speaker 1: that happened. In being mad that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had
Speaker 1: the bad luck to die in September of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: rather than February of twenty twenty one when I return,
Speaker 1: How do people pick politicians? How do we self select
Speaker 1: for such terrible people to run for office? Next on
Speaker 1: the John Girardi Show, it's Friday, so you'll permit me
Speaker 1: to have a bit more of a discursive little ramble
Speaker 1: of a radio segment here, I'm wondering how it is
Speaker 1: that we self select for our politicians. What is the
Speaker 1: mindset that pushes someone to run for office? What is
Speaker 1: the mindset that convinces people to put people forward during primaries?
Speaker 1: What is the mindset that convinces people to vote for people?
Speaker 1: And I've got a lot of different sort of politicians
Speaker 1: I'm putting in different categories for how I'm thinking about this.
Speaker 1: So there's the we don't like this guy, but he's
Speaker 1: got our team's flag on him, so we're just gonna
Speaker 1: vote for him. I think the best example of that
Speaker 1: is Tim Walls. So everything I hear from my wife's
Speaker 1: relatives who are who live in Minnesota. So my mother
Speaker 1: in law and father in law, whom I love dearly.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's an underrated thing to really genuinely
Speaker 1: love your in laws, and I really genuinely do. I
Speaker 1: love my in laws. I think they're wonderful people. In
Speaker 1: addition to raising the most wonderful woman in the whole world,
Speaker 1: they are also incredibly nice, kind, good fun people to
Speaker 1: hang around. And anyway, I could go on and on
Speaker 1: about how much I love my mother in law my
Speaker 1: father in law. Now this is not what the segment's about. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Talking with my in laws and other people I know
Speaker 1: from Minnesota, they always talk about nobody likes Tim Walls.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes Tim Walls, and he was so terrible during
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty right and everyone's burning stuff down. And
Speaker 1: when we go to the Minnesota State Fair, the stopped
Speaker 1: him Walls booth whatever, the Republican But the line is
Speaker 1: going out the door blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, I mean, my observation as an
Speaker 1: outsider is like, well, how unpopular is he? I mean,
Speaker 1: he got elected in twenty eighteen. They had all the
Speaker 1: riots in Minneapolis in twenty twenty and all the post
Speaker 1: George Floyd's stuff, and you re elected him after that
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two fairly comfortably, and a lot of
Speaker 1: this unsavory stuff we see about him, it is showing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think people are more and more seeing
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of a phony. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like the Liberals are putting him for it as like
Speaker 1: this is our liberal answer to the masculinity problems that
Speaker 1: we have. That Okay, men are driving, men are leaving
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party in hoardes, especially young men. Harris is
Speaker 1: really turning off male voters. So here's Tim Walls. Here's
Speaker 1: our answer. Here's our liberal vision of what it means
Speaker 1: to be a real man wears flannel and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And the vibe I get from people in Minnesota is
Speaker 1: just the lack of enthusiasm. It's not like Walls is
Speaker 1: this wildly popular liberal governor. He just isn't. He's not
Speaker 1: this kind of figure. I mean, he didn't have the
Speaker 1: kind of enthusiasm behind him certainly that Barack Obama did
Speaker 1: in two thousand. In sort of that two thousand and
Speaker 1: four to two thousand and eight era where no people
Speaker 1: from Chicago really liked Barack Obama, really pushing him, really
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about him. Walls doesn't really seem to me to
Speaker 1: have that. I don't think he's actually as popular even
Speaker 1: in Minnesota as maybe a lot of people on the
Speaker 1: left assumed. But they still vote for him. Why. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's this begrudging You know, we're voting DFL.
Speaker 1: We'll never vote for a Republican, come hell or high water.
Speaker 1: And the DFL is the Democrat Farmer Labor Party, which
Speaker 1: is the Democrat party's kind of name in Minnesota. It's
Speaker 1: this weird quirk of Minnesota politics that the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: goes by the DFL the Democratic Farm Labor Party. And
Speaker 1: I think just people like, we're never going to vote
Speaker 1: for a Republican, come hell or high water, and here's
Speaker 1: this guy Tim, Well, all right, we'll vote for him.
Speaker 1: So you've got that kind then I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: Mark Robinson. Mark Robinson is the Lieutenant Governor of North
Speaker 1: Carolina who is running for governor of North Carolina. For
Speaker 1: those of you who've maybe been paying attention to the news,
Speaker 1: Mark Robinson had a bit of oppo research about him
Speaker 1: dropped that CNN reported was able to report basically, this
Speaker 1: online account for a pornography focused message board had a
Speaker 1: lot of messages from someone who it seems very distinctly
Speaker 1: likely that it was Mark Robinson back in the two thousands.
Speaker 1: It's around I think two thousand and seven, two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine ish, and he's saying a bunch of really
Speaker 1: lovely things, like about how Mark Robinson, who is himself
Speaker 1: African American, talking about how, hey, slavery was good, I
Speaker 1: would have had some slaves myself. Eh, you know, I
Speaker 1: consider myself a black Nazi. Like like, just the most wild,
Speaker 1: ridiculous anti social behaviors on display that we could possibly
Speaker 1: cook up in the context of like a pornography focused
Speaker 1: message board. And his response to it is not very convincing.
Speaker 1: I played the audio on here and it the way
Speaker 1: he was responding to hell, the media is at it again.
Speaker 1: They're trying to slander Rize And he sounded like he
Speaker 1: was doing an imitation of the politicians in the movie
Speaker 1: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, which is kind of set
Speaker 1: in the South, kind of around the turn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Oh It's slanderizing, malasizing, all this is a slanderific politician,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Pape o' daniel governor Mississippi, running here
Speaker 2: like he was trying to do an imitation of some
Speaker 2: like Foghorn leghorn esque, like folks say, politician without really
Speaker 2: giving any kind of clear, concise, serious sounding rebuttal to Hey,
Speaker 2: was this you saying that slavery was cool and Adolf
Speaker 2: Hitler kind of had a lot of good ideas and
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. This bizarrely disgusting,
Speaker 1: fetishizing porn a message board that you were messaging on
Speaker 1: and refusing to drop out of the race for North
Speaker 1: Carolina governor, which a lot of people on the right
Speaker 1: were like, hey, uh, are you gonna cost Donald Trump
Speaker 1: the election? Because North Carolina is a pretty close swing
Speaker 1: state and Trump probably needs to win it, and it's
Speaker 1: the state Trump won last time. Trump won North Carolina
Speaker 1: both in twenty twenty and twenty sixteen, he really needs
Speaker 1: to win it. If he can win Georgia, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania, then the things in the back and that
Speaker 1: seemingly has been from some stuff I've reading that seemingly
Speaker 1: is the Trump campaign strategy. They basically the way the
Speaker 1: math falls. If they win Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, it's over.
Speaker 1: There's no real road for Democrat victory as long as
Speaker 1: Trump wins those three states. So there's been a ton
Speaker 1: of Trump campaign focus on those three states. Is this Dingleberry,
Speaker 1: this Dufus, Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, gonna sink Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's chances by staying in this race when clearly when
Speaker 1: it seems pretty clear, I mean, I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a chance it with someone else with a profile
Speaker 1: suspiciously similar using a very suspiciously similar handle to other
Speaker 1: handles that this guy used. Are we going to sink
Speaker 1: this because this guy was being horny and racist on
Speaker 1: the internet in two thousand and nine, and this guy
Speaker 1: would be is unwilling to drop out. So where does
Speaker 1: this kind of a guy come from? What motivates someone
Speaker 1: who's this level of a moron to run for office?
Speaker 1: What motivates local Republican parties and stuff to push this
Speaker 1: guy when he seems clearly like he's an idiot, that
Speaker 1: he doesn't have much rattling around between his two ears
Speaker 1: and then I think there's sort of the ideological fatism
Speaker 1: that you see with someone like Harry Lake. Okay, Carrie
Speaker 1: Lake lost in twenty twenty or is it twenty twenty two. Rather, she,
Speaker 1: along with a whole bunch of other real, trumpy, aggressive
Speaker 1: candidates for office in twenty twenty two, got her butt kicked.
Speaker 1: She is losing in polls right now. To her, she's
Speaker 1: running for Senate now. She ran for governor last time,
Speaker 1: she's run for Senate. Now she's getting her clock cleaned
Speaker 1: by Reuben Gego, the guy who's running. I think. I
Speaker 1: think they're running for Kirsten Cinema's seat, which Cinema decided
Speaker 1: not to run for reelection. And she's getting her brains
Speaker 1: beat in. She's down. The most recent poll show she's
Speaker 1: down like twelve points. And it's like Trump's doing really
Speaker 1: well in Arizona comparatively, he's she's running way behind Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So she already lost. We already kind of had a
Speaker 1: referendum on her. In twenty twenty two. There was some
Speaker 1: thought that, you know, she's a really good messenger, she's
Speaker 1: you know, former TV newscaster or whether yes or something,
Speaker 1: you know, smart, seemingly smartener presentation, but clearly super heavy, heavy,
Speaker 1: mega and clearly voters in Arizona were like, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: we're we're not going for that. They made that decision
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, and Republican primary voters were like,
Speaker 1: we don't care. We still love this gal. And it's
Speaker 1: this bizarre thing in Arizona politics where it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: for Republicans to win, you know, you know how John
Speaker 1: McCain was a senator there for a million years. I
Speaker 1: don't love John. I didn't love John McCain. I don't
Speaker 1: like John McCain's liberal and moderate leanings at all, but
Speaker 1: clearly that was attractive to a very decent number of Arizonans.
Speaker 1: And I don't think a Republican party without the John
Speaker 1: McCain voters, without the John McCain enthusiasts. I don't think
Speaker 1: a Republican party without the John mcain enthusiast is going
Speaker 1: to do anything successful in Arizona. They're not going to win.
Speaker 1: And I think probably a lot of Trump's running to
Speaker 1: the middle, maybe even on things like abortion, it's to
Speaker 1: get those kinds of Arizona voters. Trump's even realized he
Speaker 1: needs the moderate middle of the Republican Party if he's
Speaker 1: gonna win, but primary voters don't. I just don't understand
Speaker 1: what is the mindset of people when picking these candidates,
Speaker 1: Like we know they suck, we know they have massive,
Speaker 1: glaring flaws, but we would rather go rather deep risk,
Speaker 1: deep catastrophic losses with them than possible victory with somebody
Speaker 1: else who would probably be fine. I just don't get it.
Speaker 1: I don't get the mindset that's animating these people. And
Speaker 1: I don't understand how do we find these people rising
Speaker 1: to politics. And that's not to say every politician's a dope.
Speaker 1: I look at someone like Jim Patterson and more and
Speaker 1: more I think of him kind of like that's you know,
Speaker 1: this is someone who was businessman, cared about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, was really animated by social conservatism too, Like
Speaker 1: brought his life experience as an adoptive father into his politics,
Speaker 1: and that animated his pro life beliefs for his whole career.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of good about I'm not saying
Speaker 1: every politician's a bum, and I'm not saying it's not
Speaker 1: a noble profession, but boy, it sure does seem to
Speaker 1: attract a lot of grifters. Losers and bozos who managed
Speaker 1: to make it really high up the food chain. Anyway,
Speaker 1: just my rant for the day when we return. The
Speaker 1: weird connection between rfk's siblings and the Just Stop Oil people,
Speaker 1: the people who throw paint on priceless works of art.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. Have you seen
Speaker 1: those videos online of those weird climate proteinsters who go
Speaker 1: to museums and throw like orange paint or cans of
Speaker 1: tomato soup on works of art, and they take off
Speaker 1: their jackets to reveal a T shirt that says just
Speaker 1: Stop Oil. So I learned this about that organization Just
Speaker 1: Stop Oil, which is so loathsome, and I feel like
Speaker 1: it could be a front by the oil industry to
Speaker 1: just make climate protesters seem unlovable. Just Stop Oil was
Speaker 1: founded and funded by Rory Kennedy, who is one of
Speaker 1: RFK Junior's siblings. She's his sister. So this is one
Speaker 1: of Robert, the original Robert Kennedys, Bobby Kennedy. This is
Speaker 1: one of his daughters and one of the big donors
Speaker 1: to it. It's actually funded by a lot of very
Speaker 1: mainstream American Democrat donors, so her and then Eileen Geddy
Speaker 1: who's part of the Getty family, which the Getty family
Speaker 1: is like Gavin Newsom's bread and butter. They funded Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom's entire career. So it's actually funny these climate activists
Speaker 1: who are throwing paint on stuff. It's actually coming from
Speaker 1: these very mainstream Democrat sources. I just thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. I hadn't learned that. So, hey, I got
Speaker 1: a radio show, thought ID tell you guys about it.
Speaker 1: That'll do it, John Gerardi Show. See you next time
Speaker 1: on Power Talk