Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister garbachow, tear down this wall.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Steven Hayward. I'm James Lylax.
Speaker 2: Whoa Peter Robinson. He's back and who are we going
Speaker 2: to talk to?
Speaker 3: Our meet Dylan? So let's Arizlve's a podcast.
Speaker 4: And they're hoping that activists will get those tickets to
Speaker 4: either disrupt the event from inside or not show up
Speaker 4: and try and make it look like we have an
Speaker 4: empty event. There's also a standby line that we usually
Speaker 4: have in place so that if people with tickets don't
Speaker 4: show up, that the standby line is able to get in.
Speaker 4: They refuse to let us do that, and they told us, quote,
Speaker 4: it's not our job to fill the event. Well, University
Speaker 4: of Berkeley, it's also not your job to make sure
Speaker 4: our event is empty.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: He's the Ricochet Podcast at number seven hundred and sixty six.
Speaker 2: Why don't you join us at ricochet dot com and
Speaker 2: believe me, I got a code later in the show
Speaker 2: that's going to give you fifty percent off that you're
Speaker 2: gonna love it, because once you join, you're part of
Speaker 2: the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm
Speaker 2: James Lylax in a very overcast and very atumblal Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: Stephen is.
Speaker 2: While we're looking at Stephen in a bare room, he appeared.
Speaker 2: It looks like a liminal space from a video game
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety seven. We'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 2: And Peter Robinson is with us. We had rob Long
Speaker 2: last week, and now we've got Peter. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like we could just mash those two shows together.
Speaker 3: It'd be like old times.
Speaker 5: But Peter, Welcome, Welcome back, Welcome James. It's good, good,
Speaker 5: very good to be here, very good to be here.
Speaker 5: Although here in California it's a rainy, drippy day, it
Speaker 5: sounds as though it's a similar to the day you're
Speaker 5: having in Minneapolis.
Speaker 6: Why did God give us Autumn Whoa's of the year?
Speaker 5: No excuse excuse me. I put that, I put that,
Speaker 5: I put that a little loosely. Why did God give
Speaker 5: us the last third of autumn?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: The first a necessary transition from which we go from
Speaker 2: the absolute chromatic glory that is well actually know, Audi
Speaker 2: starts in full green involvement where everything is perfect and
Speaker 2: everything's alive, and then it gradually diminishes, which can either
Speaker 2: look as a shedding of identity to assume a new one,
Speaker 2: or you can look at as death, or you can
Speaker 2: look at as part of the cycle.
Speaker 3: Of life and things.
Speaker 2: So here even so, I'll be walking the dog in
Speaker 2: the creek in the woods in a little bit. And
Speaker 2: while most of the trees are scratching bare limbs against
Speaker 2: the sky, there's a few trees that still have some
Speaker 2: brown leaves on. There'll be a bush here and there
Speaker 2: that's still verdant. There'll be a tree there that still
Speaker 2: is green, and they will carry that into the time
Speaker 2: when the first snow starts. And so we will have
Speaker 2: this wonderful easing into transitions. But you're absolutely right, at
Speaker 2: the end of November is a long, raw, miserable.
Speaker 1: And for Peter, no matter what the season, James Lyax
Speaker 1: will still wax poetic. So shut out, Peter, don't.
Speaker 2: Peter's got behind him a nice littographic of a beautiful library,
Speaker 2: and Steve and you have an empty shelves, and I
Speaker 2: so you look like a place that's going out of business, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in a borrowed office, and that's actually all
Speaker 1: I should say.
Speaker 2: So between the suspended feelings and the empty ply with Ikia,
Speaker 2: then we show a more harmonious place next to you.
Speaker 2: So what we have going on in the world we
Speaker 2: should talk about before we get to our guests, and
Speaker 2: stuff that probably I don't know counts issues of the day.
Speaker 3: Tariffs.
Speaker 2: The other day I noticed that the tariff I think
Speaker 2: I mentioned this last week, the price of bananas had
Speaker 2: increased by fource ends at Trader Joe's.
Speaker 3: Trader Joe's used a whole banana prices like.
Speaker 2: Costco held their hont dogs and now they'd gone up
Speaker 2: four cents, And I thought, well, there's your tariffs there.
Speaker 2: I can bear this. But presidents decided to do cut
Speaker 2: tariffs on beef and tomatoes and coffee, thank god, bananas,
Speaker 2: and perhaps a stimulus check.
Speaker 3: No I macs of Carter era.
Speaker 2: Biden esque stuff, but is not surprising. So guys, tell
Speaker 2: me what you thinking of the stimulus check.
Speaker 3: Idea and what you do with it if you got it.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, it's these are all liberal ideas, right,
Speaker 1: let's split throughout money, and the tariff decision really reveals
Speaker 1: the sort of incoherence and contradiction of Trump's claims that
Speaker 1: tariffs are paid for by the other countries and not US.
Speaker 1: But I think there's a bigger point here. Trump has
Speaker 1: been criticized by many conservatives for not recognizing the affordability
Speaker 1: issue really has traction and allowing the left to get
Speaker 1: back in on this. And here's one of the mistake
Speaker 1: is being made, I think by all of our teams,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Is so, you know, Mondamie a socialist
Speaker 1: and other and as also we've talked about it a
Speaker 1: few times in recent months. The abundance liberals have shown up,
Speaker 1: and so they're saying, oh, we're concerned about affordability. And
Speaker 1: that's when I raise my hand and I make two points.
Speaker 1: First of all, who created the affordability crisis? Well, liberals
Speaker 1: did with all their regulations for the last forty years
Speaker 1: or longer. So don't There's a great chart I've viewed
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll just describe it. It's not hard. If you
Speaker 1: look at the three sectors of the economy whose costs
Speaker 1: have increased the fastest over inflation. They are healthcare, higher education,
Speaker 1: and housing. Healthcare higher education distorted by government sub season regulations,
Speaker 1: and housing also suppressed and distorted badly by government regulation
Speaker 1: going back forty to fifty years, originating in California.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 1: I've written a lot about this over the years, And
Speaker 1: so why isn't Trump and other Republicans saying affordability, you
Speaker 1: guys caused it. The only way we're going to fix
Speaker 1: it is that for you guys to get out of
Speaker 1: the way and let us fix your messes. And instead
Speaker 1: we're doing these gimmicks. Oh, we'll send out a stimulus check,
Speaker 1: We'll take the tear off so off that you're not
Speaker 1: paying anyway. And so I think it's been a handheaded
Speaker 1: response by Trump and our team when we should be
Speaker 1: going in for the kill about what are mont Dommy's ideas. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's have more rent control and government run grocery stores.
Speaker 1: Oh that's going to work.
Speaker 5: I agree with absolutely every word Steve said there is,
Speaker 5: And so why is Trump doing all this? And I'm
Speaker 5: afraid to I have to state the conclusion that he
Speaker 5: doesn't actually know better. I don't mean to condescend to
Speaker 5: the chief executive, who is in all kinds of ways
Speaker 5: an astonishing figure and has done more good than harm
Speaker 5: by a lot, by a lot, but he doesn't really
Speaker 5: know his way around economics. He knows his way around business,
Speaker 5: he knows how to do deals, but he doesn't know
Speaker 5: his way around economics. There is exactly one justification for
Speaker 5: imposing tariffs. It might apply in the case of China,
Speaker 5: and the justification is that we are in a long
Speaker 5: term conflict with China. We have only two levers, one
Speaker 5: is military and the other is trade, and we'd all
Speaker 5: rather pull the trade lever than the military lever. Even
Speaker 5: that needs to be hedged around with all kinds of qualifications.
Speaker 1: You have to be extremely.
Speaker 6: Careful about what you impose tariffs on and so forth.
Speaker 6: As for the rest of it, it's a drag.
Speaker 5: We can disagree about how much of a drag, but
Speaker 5: it's a drag on economic growth.
Speaker 6: Oddly enough, I don't know.
Speaker 5: We'll see where the spokesman for capitalism and free markets
Speaker 5: come from. But it felt to me as though a
Speaker 5: great debate has just gotten launched on the island of Manhattan.
Speaker 5: Two big events took place this past autumn. Steve mentioned
Speaker 5: the first New Yorker's elected a socialist. And that's not
Speaker 5: us calling names. He calls himself a socialist, a socialist
Speaker 5: mayor The other event got most noticed on editorial pages
Speaker 5: of the wal I beg your pardon, on architectural pages,
Speaker 5: the arts pages of the Wall Street Journal of the
Speaker 5: New York Times. But I think that it will prove,
Speaker 5: or it could prove, a very significant political and economic event,
Speaker 5: and that is that Jamie Diamond opened the three billion
Speaker 5: dollar cathedral to free markets, the new office, the new
Speaker 5: skyscraper office in the middle of Manhattan. Manhattan has a
Speaker 5: way of putting arguments in masonry. So we have thirty
Speaker 5: for we have the old Rockefeller Office, we have the
Speaker 5: old New York Stock Exchange trading floor. These are down
Speaker 5: on Wall Street. But this is incomparably the grandest monument
Speaker 5: to free markets that anyone has ever erected, even on
Speaker 5: the island of Manhattan. It's taller than the Empire State Building.
Speaker 5: The lobby apparently is a couple of hundred feet tall.
Speaker 5: And in the same season in which New York elects
Speaker 5: a socialist mayor, Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, says, no,
Speaker 5: I'm doubling down. I'm tripling down on this island, on enterprise,
Speaker 5: on America's capital markets. We'll see how all this goes.
Speaker 5: But that is one tough articulatembre in my opinion.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: And I cannot stand the building change it. I've been
Speaker 2: watching it go up for years. I have been trying
Speaker 2: because I love skyscrapers and people who make that commitment
Speaker 2: and say, yes, we're going to stay in Manhattan, and
Speaker 2: I do. There are a lot of super towels going up.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of other buildings proposed. There's the
Speaker 2: Commodore Tower, which actually I kind of like an awful
Speaker 2: lot better, even though it sadly overshadows the Chrysler building.
Speaker 3: But I do not like the JP Morgan building.
Speaker 2: The great cross bracing of it reminds me of the
Speaker 2: John Hancock, which is okay. The way it's sort of
Speaker 2: stacked up like decks of cards and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not crazy about the color. I really don't like
Speaker 2: the way it meets the street. It meets the street
Speaker 2: by swooping inward in a way that puts the mass
Speaker 2: in the bulk above you, and I don't think that
Speaker 2: that's a great idea. I think it makes people sort
Speaker 2: of uncomfortable. But I just don't like it. I don't
Speaker 2: like the hue, I don't like this, the brusqueness of it.
Speaker 2: It is a broad shouldered building and that's great. Probably
Speaker 2: would be better in Chicago. People call it art daco
Speaker 2: over darn. It's nothing the sort. It's a throwback and
Speaker 2: again glad they built it, good luck with it. And
Speaker 2: I like the fact that they're saying, now that we've
Speaker 2: built this palace, everybody's back in the office, Thank you Monday,
Speaker 2: see you then, because yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Well, James, I mean, what do you expect from Lake
Speaker 1: Capitalism by buildings like that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And Peter, the big question to Wag and Sharper is
Speaker 1: they're going to have people back to the office and
Speaker 1: they'll spend their first weeks packing up to move to Florida.
Speaker 1: We'll see, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Right, what we'll expect from Lake Capitalism. I expect a
Speaker 2: lot more Barroken freo foo stuff. I expect things like
Speaker 2: you saw in Billionaires roll along Central Park where they
Speaker 2: have those these ridiculously tall apartment buildings where people are
Speaker 2: on the eighty fifth floor and they take a bath
Speaker 2: and the water sloshes up because the buildings swing and
Speaker 2: the wind.
Speaker 3: They're welcome to it anyway, So yeah, Peter, that's good.
Speaker 3: We like that.
Speaker 2: That's fine, But you're right if he sat down and
Speaker 2: talked to some people. I'm willing to take, you know,
Speaker 2: eat the four percent of bananas. But I'm wondering exactly
Speaker 2: why we have a tariff on the banana countries at all.
Speaker 3: Is it to get to buy more of our stuff?
Speaker 2: The point you made about tariffs on China, about restoring,
Speaker 2: about reducing our dependency. All that's good, and let's have
Speaker 2: more of that, but you know, less of the coffee tariffs. Really,
Speaker 2: On the other hand, coffee comes from what from other countries.
Speaker 2: When it comes to foreign.
Speaker 3: Policy, the approval of the administration is way up. Now.
Speaker 2: I'd like to know why you guys think that is
Speaker 2: he's at forty three percent today approval in.
Speaker 3: Foreign policy versus thirty five percent about this time.
Speaker 2: Last year, and that's above where Obama and Bush were
Speaker 2: at their respective administrations.
Speaker 3: What do you think it is? Do you think it's
Speaker 3: the Hamas Gaza.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's the Ukraine handling or do you
Speaker 2: think that people are saying finally war with Venezuela or
Speaker 2: is that just not on people's mind yet because there
Speaker 2: seems to be something going on there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I actually think these polls are misleading.
Speaker 1: And I put to you this way. Peter may remember
Speaker 1: this that back in the Reagan years, the polster has
Speaker 1: always said Reagan himself is very personally popular. Individual policies
Speaker 1: are unpopular.
Speaker 3: By the way.
Speaker 1: That was mostly wrong. But you know, never mind that
Speaker 1: from another time, and I think with Trump we see
Speaker 1: the opposite. I think a lot of his policies, and
Speaker 1: some of the polling does show this, are popular. But
Speaker 1: Trump remains a lightning rod because he's so abrasive, right,
Speaker 1: I actually so My point is, I actually think his
Speaker 1: political strength is understated by these polls that are taken
Speaker 1: because I think you can't really pull Trump accurately for
Speaker 1: the purposes that we usually try to do these things.
Speaker 1: So I always kind of liked about you know, Trump
Speaker 1: always I wanted a huge landslide. That's not true. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm really popular. All the stuff he says is it
Speaker 1: strikes people says, oh, there he goes again. He's bragging
Speaker 1: and being weird and all the rest of that. I
Speaker 1: kind of like all that myself. It's fun.
Speaker 5: So Steve, I want to make sure I understand this.
Speaker 5: So in an ordinary job approval poll, and the question
Speaker 5: is some version of do you approve of the job
Speaker 5: the president is doing? People can't hear that. They can't
Speaker 5: answer that question without making some comment on whether they
Speaker 5: like him, And we know that something like a little
Speaker 5: over half the country just cannot stand him.
Speaker 1: Right, that's your point, That's right, although I mean at
Speaker 1: one more level of refinement, it is true that you
Speaker 1: need to sort of wait the issues that are most
Speaker 1: important in people's minds. So the approval rating is important
Speaker 1: if the key issues are things that the president's on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of, like affordability we were talking about
Speaker 1: a moment ago. I did just see an analysis by
Speaker 1: that very interesting progressive surveyor David Shore, and what he
Speaker 1: shows is that Trump's still very strong on the economy.
Speaker 1: On immigration, He's very strong on that, very strong, and
Speaker 1: to the extent that immigration is a high important issue
Speaker 1: like it was a year ago and still into this year.
Speaker 1: Then he does very well on it. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that is a declining issue for Democrats is
Speaker 1: climate change the environment. Right, we could do a whole
Speaker 1: episode on how the climate change movement is all right
Speaker 1: and Republicans are now trusted on energy, that is all
Speaker 1: Republicans are trusted more on that. So the point is
Speaker 1: so that all know, mix have an election tomorrow depends
Speaker 1: on the Democratic candidate. I still think Trump wins.
Speaker 5: So what do you guys think about the moving the
Speaker 5: USS gerald Ford into the Caribbean and the attacks on
Speaker 5: these gunboats off the coast of Venezuela.
Speaker 6: Where does that come into the polling?
Speaker 3: Not yet. I don't think it enters yet.
Speaker 6: You don't think it enters yet, all right, So may
Speaker 6: I try out?
Speaker 5: My own feelings on this are mixed because I take
Speaker 5: every word that Rand Paul says. If you're going to
Speaker 5: be killing people, if you're going to be attacking boats
Speaker 5: in where this needs to be done under coloration of law,
Speaker 5: even if it's by the chief executive of the United States,
Speaker 5: he's not okay.
Speaker 6: So there's that.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, it feels to me as the
Speaker 5: lot of people say, wait a minute, drugs have been
Speaker 5: a problem in this country for half a century, and
Speaker 5: finally somebody's doing something about it. I mean, at that level,
Speaker 5: it just feels to me as though a wide swath
Speaker 5: of ordinary Americans say, yeah, good for him. What do
Speaker 5: you how do you how do you do you feel
Speaker 5: both put tugs in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, absolutely so. I mean, I'm sure that
Speaker 3: somebody is going to.
Speaker 2: Say, well, there was a joint military resolution whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it, that was passed after nine to
Speaker 2: eleven to go after terrorism, and these guys are terrorism
Speaker 2: in this extent, and therefore we're gonna.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a bunch of made up stuff.
Speaker 2: I too, would prefer, as I do with continuing resolutions
Speaker 2: and all the rest of these things, a bill, a
Speaker 2: vote at the way it ought to be, instead of
Speaker 2: wrapping it into some vague thing and saying let the
Speaker 2: courts later hammer it out.
Speaker 3: But Peter, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, people look at this and say,
Speaker 2: hold on, you, isn't this what a country should do
Speaker 2: without really having to apologize for an thing that people
Speaker 2: are bringing noxious substances? That can I mean, if they're
Speaker 2: bringing in enough fentanyl to kill a million people and
Speaker 2: it's going to be cut down, of course, it seems
Speaker 2: to me to be something of a weapon of mass destruction,
Speaker 2: even if people willingly themselves ingested.
Speaker 3: And it's like the border.
Speaker 2: Situation with Biden, where they would say, well, yeah, these
Speaker 2: people are streaming over, but what are you going to do.
Speaker 2: I mean most people look at this and say, well,
Speaker 2: there are a variety of things that you can do
Speaker 2: and that you used to do. And all we need,
Speaker 2: basically is Sergeant Joe Friday who's got a gimblet eye
Speaker 2: about these things and looks coldly upon it and does
Speaker 2: what has to be done.
Speaker 3: And you know, they.
Speaker 2: Let the law take its course if there's a law here,
Speaker 2: but yes, you can't do something. And something is being done,
Speaker 2: and they seem very serious about it. And we don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what's being taken to the cartels. We don't
Speaker 2: know whether or not there is a delta force or
Speaker 2: some guys with some smeared on, you know, paint on
Speaker 2: their faces, no underwear, or a sneaking around there and
Speaker 2: doing some very very serious things to some very bad people.
Speaker 3: We don't know. The pressure on Maduro is interesting.
Speaker 2: What's happening in Mexico City is Mexico as people are
Speaker 2: protesting their own government for cartailed involvement is interesting. So
Speaker 2: I think there is an opportunity here. Of course, if
Speaker 2: Americans didn't want it, it wouldn't be a problem. But you
Speaker 2: know a lot of Americans do.
Speaker 1: Well, Can I make a larger. I think a larger
Speaker 1: point about this. By the way, I'm having a running
Speaker 1: argument with John you about the legality of it all.
Speaker 1: He has doubts about it. But I suggest there's a
Speaker 1: larger strategic dimension that is not being recognized by the
Speaker 1: media and commentators, and that is item one. As Peter
Speaker 1: likes to say, there's been NonStop flights from Tehran to
Speaker 1: Caracas for many years now, and I don't think that's
Speaker 1: for tourism, and I don't even think it's just about
Speaker 1: coordinating the OPEC and oil market stuff. Venezuela is a
Speaker 1: bad actor and they're getting worse, I think. And second,
Speaker 1: I think the other player that is on the mind
Speaker 1: of the Trump strategist is China. China would love to
Speaker 1: get close to Venezuela. It's just another market for them,
Speaker 1: an oil source. And I think that that's on the
Speaker 1: drug thing is totally legitimate and so forth. But I
Speaker 1: also think in the back of their mind, this is
Speaker 1: the Monroe doctrine, Baby, and we're going to stop Venezuela
Speaker 1: from getting closer to our.
Speaker 3: Enemies exactly right.
Speaker 2: Monroe doctrines back, Baby, which mean is it's about time
Speaker 2: for the Brison f doctrine to come back somewhere as
Speaker 2: the network outs. Well, listen, lots of stuff we could
Speaker 2: talk about forever an everde flapper jaws and amuse ourselves.
Speaker 2: But hey, we have a guest, and what a guest,
Speaker 2: And now we're welcome to the podcast. Army Dylan again
Speaker 2: the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of
Speaker 2: the US Department of Justice. She was nominated by the
Speaker 2: President in December, sworn in by ag Bondi in April,
Speaker 2: and prior to joining the administration, she ran her own
Speaker 2: private practice deal in law group, and she founded the
Speaker 2: Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing
Speaker 2: civil liberties legal claims.
Speaker 3: Welcome, how are you today?
Speaker 7: I'm great, Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2: Let's go right to Berkeley. Civil Rights Division has been busy.
Speaker 2: They've been investigating a disturbance, said Berkeley. I involved threats
Speaker 2: of and shows a actual viole. Was it a tp
Speaker 2: USA event which many people may have seen on their
Speaker 2: social media feeds. It seems this case reminds us of,
Speaker 2: you know, a classic problem we have in campuses, you know,
Speaker 2: the Heckler's veto versus the right of people to speak,
Speaker 2: especially in elite campuses were supposedly free information is supposed
Speaker 2: to flow, but this one has an added piquency given
Speaker 2: the killing, the assassination of Charlie Cook las September. So
Speaker 2: tell us what happened at UC Berkeley and why it
Speaker 2: matters to your team and what's being done.
Speaker 7: You're absolutely right. I mean, I dating back to my
Speaker 7: days in college at Dartmouth, we had these free speech
Speaker 7: issues on campus, and you know, I remember bringing William F.
Speaker 7: Buckley Junior to come speak on the campus and all
Speaker 7: the drama surrounding that and introducing him when I was
Speaker 7: when I was an undergrad, I sued UC Berkeley in
Speaker 7: twenty seventeen for preventing conservatives to come and speak on
Speaker 7: the campus, including and Culture and David Horowitz, and we
Speaker 7: used a settlement where they agreed that they were not
Speaker 7: going to impose higher security fees for conservative speakers and
Speaker 7: they were going to protect them. And you know, during
Speaker 7: the course of that litigation, Ben Shapiro came and indeed
Speaker 7: there was a big, massive police force to protect him
Speaker 7: and deal with all the silly protesters. So what I
Speaker 7: saw the news last Monday about this violent reaction to
Speaker 7: the speech on campus of Rob Schneider, the comedian. I
Speaker 7: was very disappointed because I personally negotiated that this would
Speaker 7: not happen again, and so the president got engaged in this.
Speaker 7: He and I spoke on the phone about it. He's
Speaker 7: very concerned about violence on campus and asked me to
Speaker 7: personally handle it. So I flew out to Berkeley last
Speaker 7: Wednesday and met with the US attorney and the special
Speaker 7: Agent in charge of the FBI and gave them some
Speaker 7: direction as to what I think they should be looking at.
Speaker 7: But so far, what we found is that ANTIFA related groups,
Speaker 7: and in this case, the name of the group that
Speaker 7: I'm very familiar with from prior litigation at Berkeley is
Speaker 7: by any means necessary, had been advertising that they wanted
Speaker 7: to attack this event for as much as two weeks
Speaker 7: according to witnesses before the event. And there were also
Speaker 7: five student or quasi student organizations, some recognize, some not recognized,
Speaker 7: that have been openly fomenting trouble on the campus around
Speaker 7: this event as well. And then finally the campus itself
Speaker 7: participated in I think, disrupting the event by forcing the
Speaker 7: student group to allow online reservations for the ticketing instead
Speaker 7: of how most student groups, particularly conservative student groups, prefer
Speaker 7: to do the ticketing, which is send out an email
Speaker 7: blast to their members, let their members sign up first,
Speaker 7: so that we don't have the pernicious signing up for
Speaker 7: tickets and not attending the event that you see on
Speaker 7: many campuses. Will Berkeley force them to do it this way.
Speaker 7: So the event was half empty, and we will be
Speaker 7: investigating the criminal aspects of this, the violence, the materials,
Speaker 7: support for terrorism potentially that may be part of these
Speaker 7: types of circumstances on campus, and potential First Amendment retaliation
Speaker 7: as well as other civil rights claims and so civil
Speaker 7: rights divisions kind running the show on this, but with
Speaker 7: significant support from our criminal FBI and DOJ components.
Speaker 2: There's something when they were willing to go black shirt
Speaker 2: over Rob Schnyder, I mean, wait until the heavyweights of
Speaker 2: the intellectual movement get up there and have the audacity
Speaker 2: appear on stage. When I was in college, there was
Speaker 2: a bruhaha and a threat of violence in all people
Speaker 2: getting upset because Jeane Kirkpatrick was coming to speak.
Speaker 3: And then a little while later somebody who.
Speaker 2: Sailed in with open arms and was warmly welcomed by
Speaker 2: the by the college was Angela Davis.
Speaker 3: So this is an old, old, timeless issue.
Speaker 5: Alas Peter Well, harm me, your old friend, Peter Robinson.
Speaker 5: Here civil Rights division has an honorable inception. It goes
Speaker 5: back to civil rights disturbances in the South, when there
Speaker 5: was a more than plausible argument that African Americans needed
Speaker 5: particular protections or particular oversight in Washington, make sure they voted,
Speaker 5: their rights were respected, and so forth. But by the
Speaker 5: time Donald Trump takes office for the second time, we've
Speaker 5: been through the me Too movement, We've been through the
Speaker 5: Obama years, we've been through the Biden years, and it
Speaker 5: was perfectly plausible, I think, and I came to this
Speaker 5: view myself that the Civil Rights Division had long ago
Speaker 5: been captured by the deep state and was a tool
Speaker 5: of the progressive or the left in Washington.
Speaker 6: You don't look at it that.
Speaker 5: Way, and I know you don't, because I know you,
Speaker 5: and I know you would never have taken the job
Speaker 5: if you did look at it that way. What is
Speaker 5: the right way to look at the Civil Rights Division?
Speaker 7: Both ways are correct, And the fact of the matter
Speaker 7: is that the personnel are the policy. A famous phrase,
Speaker 7: And when I showed up here what I found was
Speaker 7: over four hundred attorneys and other I mean, they are
Speaker 7: like gobs of statisticians and other non attorney staff here
Speaker 7: at the Civil Rights Division. Who you know, it's like
Speaker 7: that Obama photograph when the Obama White House was on
Speaker 7: their last day and the Trump folks were moving in
Speaker 7: in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: You know that.
Speaker 7: Sullen and menacing resentment kind of look. That was kind
Speaker 7: of how we were greeted here when we showed up.
Speaker 7: And I had to do my training, all kinds of
Speaker 7: HR training and how to handle sensitive documents training and
Speaker 7: don't sexually harass people training. And then the second week
Speaker 7: I put out memos to the heads of all the
Speaker 7: different sections in the Civil Rights divisions. I think they
Speaker 7: were eleven or twelve of them, and I said, these
Speaker 7: are the federal civil rights statutes that we enforced and
Speaker 7: their Title seven, Title nine America's Disabilities Act, and RALUPA
Speaker 7: and YOKABA and HAVA and MBRA, and are we going
Speaker 7: to take our priorities under these laws that we are
Speaker 7: definitely going to enforce because I swore I would enforce
Speaker 7: them from the President's executive orders, okay, And I put
Speaker 7: that in writing and I put it out there, and
Speaker 7: this caused over two undred attorneys to quit, and some
Speaker 7: of them. Now, mind you that under the.
Speaker 6: Half the staff, half your staff.
Speaker 7: By now more than two thirds of them have quit,
Speaker 7: and frankly a few more need to quit because they
Speaker 7: don't really aren't really really with the program. But I
Speaker 7: haven't fired a single person. I just told them their
Speaker 7: job was different than how they wanted to do it,
Speaker 7: which is absolutely how the executive branch of the government
Speaker 7: needs to work. And I think they thought, and some
Speaker 7: of them were featured in a New York Times article
Speaker 7: whining about our change priorities just a few days ago,
Speaker 7: and I think they thought that this would somehow cripple
Speaker 7: us and we weren't going to be able to function,
Speaker 7: and that hasn't turned out to be the case. First
Speaker 7: of all, I'm just sorry to say, as a person
Speaker 7: who had two CEO roles and worked around the clock
Speaker 7: just a few months ago, people in the government don't
Speaker 7: work as hard as those of us in the private
Speaker 7: sector on average. Now, some of them do have some great,
Speaker 7: you know, wonderful career attorneys here who work very hard,
Speaker 7: and they're the ones who you go to time and
Speaker 7: again and there's just a bunch who four years to
Speaker 7: do an investigation and never reach a conclusion that is
Speaker 7: supportable in court. And so we weren't crippled. We started
Speaker 7: hiring again. There was you know, there was some pickups
Speaker 7: in that process. I'm still understaffed, but that's a supply problem.
Speaker 7: At this point. Conservative lawyers are not stepping up to
Speaker 7: come and do this work. Throughout the government. We're having
Speaker 7: problems in staffing the US Attorney's offices, other sections of
Speaker 7: the DOJ. We're all kind of overwhelmed. But those of
Speaker 7: us who are here are doing the job, and we
Speaker 7: have actually, I would say, pound for pound, done more
Speaker 7: enforcement actions in the Civil Rights Division in the eight months,
Speaker 7: not even eight months that I've been here, then most administrations,
Speaker 7: perhaps all administrations do in four years. I include the
Speaker 7: last administration, and I include the prior Trump administration. I
Speaker 7: do not view it as my job to simply slow
Speaker 7: down the bad. A lot of the people who were
Speaker 7: far left left and so now we have an opportunity
Speaker 7: to enforce our federal civil rights laws on campuses, protect
Speaker 7: all were the disabilities who are being mistreated with autism,
Speaker 7: and so forth, protect the rights of the disabled in
Speaker 7: our country, which was a law passed by and signed
Speaker 7: by Republican President, and our voting rights laws. I am
Speaker 7: the first Assistant Attorney General to bring help America Vote
Speaker 7: Act and NVR enforcement actions I think at all, but
Speaker 7: certainly in the volume that we've been doing them. And
Speaker 7: so you know, we're just flipping the script and doing
Speaker 7: civil rights from a conservative perspective. And I love my job.
Speaker 1: So Harmie, it's Steve Hayward today actually just down the
Speaker 1: street from you here in Washington, d C. And I'll
Speaker 1: just say in passing that I'm not surprised that Berkeley
Speaker 1: came apart because John, you and I are taking this
Speaker 1: semester off, and we were there. We wouldn't have let
Speaker 1: it happen, So you can blame us. And then when
Speaker 1: I hear that two thirds of the career lawyers have quit,
Speaker 1: the first thing I want to say is congratulations. How
Speaker 1: did you do it? I mean, I know how you
Speaker 1: did it, but it does raise this point. And then
Speaker 1: I've got a big question to present to you. You
Speaker 1: may know the history of this. Your predecessor, way back
Speaker 1: in the Reagan years, William Bradford Reynolds. They were trying
Speaker 1: to make some course corrections on a civil rights a
Speaker 1: scene of distortions of civil rights that were minor compared
Speaker 1: to what we've seen in the last ten twenty years.
Speaker 1: And I think then something like two hundred lawyers threatened
Speaker 1: to quit. I think they ended up not quitting, but
Speaker 1: they made some accommodations and also made some important progress
Speaker 1: in the eighties. And that's an interesting story. But now
Speaker 1: things are so much worse. And Peter was too nice.
Speaker 1: I mean, look to restate what he said is the
Speaker 1: left thinks the civil rights or establishments and enforcement processes
Speaker 1: belonged to them. Holy right, We're not entitled literally what
Speaker 1: they think, right correct. So here's my big roundhouse question.
Speaker 1: We now, you're the first Republican civil rights Assistant Attorney
Speaker 1: General since the Harvard and North Carolina cases, which reversed
Speaker 1: to know more than forty years of complete corruption of
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 5: Rightly understood, Steve, some of those cases remind people what
Speaker 5: those were, well, well, at least were the the race
Speaker 5: based the firm of action and missions at Harvard and
Speaker 5: North Carolina and anyplace else that practices it, which was
Speaker 5: essentially everywhere, And on principle, I believe harmead and correct
Speaker 5: me if I'm wrong. It Also the principle clearly extends to.
Speaker 1: An awful lot of private sector activities, you know, hiring
Speaker 1: corporations and schools and so forth. Now the parallel is
Speaker 1: being drawn is that this is as monumental as the
Speaker 1: Brown versus Board of Education decision in the fifties, and
Speaker 1: as everyone knows who knows the history, massive resistance to it,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing massive resistance now to students for fair
Speaker 1: admissions by elite universities and so forth. And it took
Speaker 1: at least fifteen years of subsequent litigation by the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Division by a private lawsuits under the statutes to
Speaker 1: enforce Brown versus Board. And a lot of people are saying,
Speaker 1: and you know, Edward Bloom's a very good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: the same thing's going to have to happen now. So
Speaker 1: I wonder if you comment on that assessment is generally correct,
Speaker 1: and what you think are some of the priorities for
Speaker 1: how to extend well enforce that decision and then extend
Speaker 1: the principle of it in domains right well.
Speaker 7: When you add students for fair admissions to Aims versus Ohio,
Speaker 7: which applies an equal standard for majority plaintiffs versus minority
Speaker 7: plaintiffs and Title seven litigation in the private workplace. You
Speaker 7: absolutely have a sea change in the way that people
Speaker 7: are looking at this and they have to. And so
Speaker 7: what we've done is, you know, the signature I think
Speaker 7: we're going to look at back at this first year
Speaker 7: of the Trump administration, and a signature accomplishment is going
Speaker 7: to be are the letters that I sent out literally
Speaker 7: the first friday of my job here in the first
Speaker 7: week of April, to fifty of the top fifty universities
Speaker 7: in the United States, and then I added the top
Speaker 7: medical schools and the top law schools, and then we
Speaker 7: added a few more in there as well, and we've
Speaker 7: gone down I'd like seventy eighty investigations open into these institutions,
Speaker 7: and we reached settlements with several of them. I personally
Speaker 7: have negotiated the settlements in Colombia, Cornell University of Law
Speaker 7: school alma mater, and I've also met with university presidents
Speaker 7: at Dartmouth and UNC and some other schools that were
Speaker 7: not going after because you know, they are in a
Speaker 7: dialogue with us and showing us their homework what they
Speaker 7: have done. To combat anti semitism on campus, to dismantle DEI,
Speaker 7: to bring their websites and their programs in compliance with
Speaker 7: the law. But it is very, very deep seated. It
Speaker 7: has been decades. There's a couple of different threads here
Speaker 7: that are problematic. First of all, the academic vogue for
Speaker 7: decades has been this concept of affirmative action in hiring
Speaker 7: and in faculty and even my goodness, footnotes in laarview
Speaker 7: articles and lar review selection they've measured that, and in admissions.
Speaker 7: So it's a culture. And you know, the liberals who
Speaker 7: go into this field feel like it's deeply offensive to
Speaker 7: them and their moral code to have to change that.
Speaker 7: It's repugnant to them, just as it would be repugnant
Speaker 7: to us to you know, go back to the nineteen
Speaker 7: sixties and fifties and separate water fountains. It's repugnant them
Speaker 7: to dismantle this system. So they have a moral conflict.
Speaker 7: And secondly, generations of young people have gotten useless degrees
Speaker 7: in gender studies and of race hustling is what I
Speaker 7: call it. And who's going to hire them? You know,
Speaker 7: an AI company's not going to hire them. Google's not
Speaker 7: going to hire them. Unless it's for the Diversity Office.
Speaker 7: Their jobs have been imposing these frameworks in academia and
Speaker 7: in the American corporation, and now what their jobs have
Speaker 7: effectively been eliminated if these institutions are being honest. So
Speaker 7: people their friends don't want them to be out of
Speaker 7: a job. They like Susie down the hall, and so
Speaker 7: that rebranding Susie's job as the DEI officer or the
Speaker 7: equity officer as the Opportunity Office, the Office of Opportunity,
Speaker 7: and they're doing the exact same things and they think
Speaker 7: that we're not going to find out. Well, thanks to
Speaker 7: the Internet, whistleblowers are calling that out in five minutes
Speaker 7: and we know about it. We send a letter and
Speaker 7: it usually gets shut down.
Speaker 1: But it is wlackable.
Speaker 7: That's why I could use one hundred or two hundred
Speaker 7: more lawyers to do this enforcement work. And it's going
Speaker 7: to it's not going to be easy, but it is necessary,
Speaker 7: and it is it is our mandate. It is our
Speaker 7: duty to enforce these laws equally.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things you mentioned there before, where
Speaker 2: the people who come out with useless gender degrees I
Speaker 2: useless unless of course they go right to you know,
Speaker 2: to another university and get hired to teach it there.
Speaker 2: But the reevaluation of the gender ideology that's flowed through
Speaker 2: the society in the last five.
Speaker 3: Ten years has been one of the emphasy of the administration.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, if you go right now
Speaker 2: to Google and you ask about the Civil Rights Division
Speaker 2: and the Trump administration and transgenderism, what you find, according
Speaker 2: to Google's AI Interview AI assummation, is that the Civil
Speaker 2: Rights Division under you has been accused of weaponization against
Speaker 2: civil rights principles in pursuit of a politicized agenda. That's
Speaker 2: how Wikipedia frames it, when in truth, we've been dealing
Speaker 2: with a politicized agenda for many years and this is
Speaker 2: the pushback to it. So what do you see as
Speaker 2: the end results, say, after the end of your tenure,
Speaker 2: when it comes to managing what many regard as the
Speaker 2: madness of the gender ideology that swept at the institutions.
Speaker 7: I'm touching my pearls, so let me unclutch them. After
Speaker 7: the horror of a politicized agenda and the Civil Rights
Speaker 7: Division is difficult to contemplate. But look, I'm a woman
Speaker 7: in the workplace and it just blows my mind that
Speaker 7: feminists have so easily given up the hard fought rights
Speaker 7: of girls and women in this country and handed them
Speaker 7: over to dudes and dresses. It is outrageous. And on
Speaker 7: top of that, I think the sexual mutilation of children
Speaker 7: in this country is a civil rights crisis, and it
Speaker 7: is the abortion of our and it's We're going to
Speaker 7: look back on it as a shameful period in our history.
Speaker 7: And so I feel very comfortable weaponizing, if you will,
Speaker 7: the current laws, enforcing them to protect the rights of
Speaker 7: women and girls and boys. I find we just filed
Speaker 7: in a case in loud And County, Virginia. I authorized
Speaker 7: the filing in a case where, well, we have an
Speaker 7: investigation pending in the reverse where a girl comes into
Speaker 7: the boys locker room and boys have rights too, boys
Speaker 7: have privacy rights also. It's an equal problem as far
Speaker 7: as I'm concerned, and so I don't think there's any
Speaker 7: there's any problem here. Now, what's going to happen in
Speaker 7: the next administration is going to depend on who's the president. Obviously,
Speaker 7: if it's a Republican president, I think we're going to
Speaker 7: see the same trend continue. If it's a Democrat president,
Speaker 7: I don't know. Because what I'm hearing from a lot
Speaker 7: of my Democrat friends, dads who have kids and care
Speaker 7: about them, they don't like this stuff either. It's not normal,
Speaker 7: it is fringe, and the Left has really been captured
Speaker 7: by the far left extreme of its own party. And
Speaker 7: so I think you may see a course correction. I'm
Speaker 7: not sure that Democrats in twenty twenty eight are going
Speaker 7: to be running on the agenda of boys and girls,
Speaker 7: locker rooms, or some of that other gender madness that
Speaker 7: we've seen at that level. I hope that people are
Speaker 7: coming to their senses, and.
Speaker 2: Bill Maher will give cover to the older boomers, Joy
Speaker 2: Reid will give cover to other people, but there's going
Speaker 2: to have to be somebody from the younger generation that
Speaker 2: actually breaks with it and says, no, this is anti
Speaker 2: scientific nonsense.
Speaker 3: Peter, I think you had something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Armead, I'd like to go back to something you
Speaker 5: mentioned in passing a few minutes ago. You've got a
Speaker 5: couple hundred lawyers you need more, but you added conservative
Speaker 5: lawyers are not stepping up, they're not putting their resumes in.
Speaker 5: So my question, my question is not to the rights
Speaker 5: and wrongs of what you're doing, needless to say, I'm
Speaker 5: totally behind you. The question is the structure of legal
Speaker 5: careers for young lawyers, so to speak, to put it
Speaker 5: crudely on our side, for the old structure was there
Speaker 5: were going to be some lawyers who were perfectly content
Speaker 5: to go to the Civil Rights Division and make an
Speaker 5: entire career there because they felt comfortable with it because
Speaker 5: of the stability of government employment. And then there were
Speaker 5: going to be other lawyers, again on the democratic or
Speaker 5: left or progressive side, who understood that they could spend
Speaker 5: a couple of years at the Civil Rights Division because
Speaker 5: there would be big time law firms right there in
Speaker 5: Washington that would be happy to hire them right out
Speaker 5: of the Civil Rights Division. Young talent on our side
Speaker 5: doesn't want government as a full time career. Might be
Speaker 5: I'm guessing this, I'm putting this to you as a question,
Speaker 5: might be happy to go to work for Harmeat Dylan
Speaker 5: for a couple.
Speaker 3: Of years, But then what do they do.
Speaker 5: The big time law firms in Washington are going to
Speaker 5: be nervous about them, aren't they.
Speaker 6: How do you make this permanent? How do you change?
Speaker 5: How do you change the incentive is for talent? Young
Speaker 5: talent on our side.
Speaker 7: So let's break it down. First of all, when I
Speaker 7: refer to conservative, I'm talking about the front office political staffing.
Speaker 7: Of course, when we're hiring for career attorneys, we don't
Speaker 7: take politics into consideration. That said, I've very clearly articulated
Speaker 7: what my agenda is, and it's to enforce Trump administration's priorities.
Speaker 7: So I think people can get the clues they're not
Speaker 7: going to be coming here and doing consent decrees on
Speaker 7: trivial differences and arrest rates in some city and then
Speaker 7: you know, making a city pay at tens of millions
Speaker 7: of dollars to a monitor for that. We're not doing
Speaker 7: that anymore, and that's what a lot of these folks
Speaker 7: have been doing. But the lecture I've been giving to
Speaker 7: people is if you want to come and pick up
Speaker 7: some new skills, this is a great place to work.
Speaker 7: Think of it like the Peace Corps or something, or
Speaker 7: Teach for America or something like that. Young lawyers today
Speaker 7: in the movement, well, when I got out of law
Speaker 7: school thirty two years ago, thirty three years ago, there
Speaker 7: was no opportunity to go work at a nonprofit like
Speaker 7: the one that I founded six years ago, the Center
Speaker 7: for American Liberty, which provides jobs for several lawyers who
Speaker 7: enforce our federal civil rights laws and state civil rights laws.
Speaker 7: But now there are Now there's an ADF, and now
Speaker 7: you know, there's foundations like the Foundation. Steve's talking about
Speaker 7: having a meeting today at Jim Krantz to those nonprofits,
Speaker 7: and they do good works. If you wanted to do
Speaker 7: good for your career, you could do that. You don't
Speaker 7: have to be a young lawyer. I want to make
Speaker 7: this very clear. Unlike my predecessors who really put a
Speaker 7: premium on hiring young people, I've offered jobs to lawyers
Speaker 7: at the end of their careers, lawyers who made their millions,
Speaker 7: Lawyers who want to end their careers by doing some
Speaker 7: good for their country. Some fellow members of the Republican
Speaker 7: National Committee, one of my fellow colleagues in the RNC,
Speaker 7: this is going to be his last job in his career.
Speaker 7: He could have wound down or sold a law firm
Speaker 7: and came and joined us. And he's doing what he
Speaker 7: calls the reverse Sherman March. He is shutting down consent
Speaker 7: decrease from the nineteen seventies and nineteen sixties all over
Speaker 7: the South, we have school districts under consent decrease where
Speaker 7: that everyone is dead who did the discrimination, and yet
Speaker 7: there's still some lawyer getting paid to monitor the school district.
Speaker 7: That's nonsense, and we're stopping it. He's overjoyed every time
Speaker 7: he comes into my office. He's like our meet. We
Speaker 7: filed another motion to dismiss and a stipulation on a
Speaker 7: consent decree. So I would say, secondly, setting aside this context,
Speaker 7: the days of someone joining a law firm at the
Speaker 7: beginning of their career and then having the Cravath march
Speaker 7: when they die at the end of their career are over.
Speaker 7: People hop around like free agents all day long. I
Speaker 7: was at four major law firms before I started my
Speaker 7: own in New York, London, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco.
Speaker 7: And people are free agents. So I would encourage people
Speaker 7: to come get the skills to be a plaintiff's lawyer
Speaker 7: in civil rights litigation. That includes election litigation, it includes
Speaker 7: dei litigation, it includes this gender discrimination and gender mutilation litigation,
Speaker 7: and others. You can make a lot of money doing that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: I was a plane of s lawyer for the last
Speaker 7: twenty years. In my private practice, and it was a
Speaker 7: satisfying and successful career. I started my firm with two
Speaker 7: people and now they're forty people at my law firm.
Speaker 7: So I built up business doing good and every day
Speaker 7: I get up in the morning and I do good
Speaker 7: all day and then I go to bed. I don't
Speaker 7: feel guilty about what I did, and I couldn't feel
Speaker 7: that way when I was in big law, you know,
Speaker 7: representing to me, you know, the polluters, the sexual harassers,
Speaker 7: the napalm manufacturers, like I wasn't satisfying for me. And
Speaker 7: so you can be a lawyer and make money and
Speaker 7: do good and have choices. And that's how I would
Speaker 7: tell people to look at it is give yourself the
Speaker 7: opportunity to pick up some new skills there is. I've
Speaker 7: argued four cases in the federal Courts of Appeals as
Speaker 7: the Assistant Attorney General, which is also very rare. I
Speaker 7: don't know that my predecessors did one much less four,
Speaker 7: and I'm hoping to do a lot more. But there's
Speaker 7: nothing more satisfying than standing up in front of a
Speaker 7: federal court and saying I'm hard meat Dylan for the
Speaker 7: United States, And you know, I encourage to come get
Speaker 7: that experience. A career doesn't mean you have to spend
Speaker 7: your whole career doing it. You can have a career
Speaker 7: position at the DJ and leave after two years. That's
Speaker 7: what the that's what people have often done, and they
Speaker 7: may get trial experience. They get experience investigating hate crimes,
Speaker 7: interviewing witnesses, protecting people from anti semitism, protecting people from
Speaker 7: zoning discrimination, and all the other things that we do here,
Speaker 7: and and election law. I mean, you know it's there.
Speaker 7: These are transferable, valuable skills.
Speaker 3: Great, thank you, And you add something to add before
Speaker 3: we let her go.
Speaker 2: We understand we're coming up against the time at which
Speaker 2: he has to get back to the business of the country.
Speaker 1: Well, well let me try and cheer her meat up
Speaker 1: real quick. And you have the very last word for
Speaker 1: we don't have to let you go. I understand the
Speaker 1: frustration you and other people have finding people who can
Speaker 1: go do these jobs. On the other hand, the conservative
Speaker 1: legal movement, to me is so impressive these days, and
Speaker 1: but it's been the different mode. I mean, who wanted
Speaker 1: to go to the civil division before you got there? Right,
Speaker 1: So there was your law firm, right of course, sort
Speaker 1: of a private civil Rights Organization, our friends at consaboy
Speaker 1: McCarthy that I know, you know, Phil Hamburger's new Civil
Speaker 1: Liberties Alliance, and it's gon take a while, but I
Speaker 1: think we should take heart that the talent is there
Speaker 1: in depth, and that the frontiers of activism on the
Speaker 1: side of the true and the right are been advancing
Speaker 1: on many fronts. I mean, Bloom, we mentioned already once, right,
Speaker 1: and now you're there. And I know, I know you're like,
Speaker 1: you're fighting surrounded and you don't have enough troops. But
Speaker 1: I say take heart, Peter Harmeet. I think we're going
Speaker 1: to win.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Harma, I would just ask you one thing. Please,
Speaker 6: don't be such a shrinking violet, you know.
Speaker 5: Right, stand up for yourself, harmony, will you once in
Speaker 5: a while?
Speaker 3: Well, what's asure?
Speaker 1: What a pleasure?
Speaker 7: One thing I didn't expect when I took this job
Speaker 7: is to see my name drag through the mud viciously
Speaker 7: by a federal judge of Chaps week. That was pretty
Speaker 7: bad thirty six hours until another federal judge stepped in
Speaker 7: and bench slapped the other two. But I mean, this
Speaker 7: is this was not a thing. In law school. Everyone
Speaker 7: was very polite. Everyone wanted to be a federal judge,
Speaker 7: and when I got up close to it, I was like,
Speaker 7: I don't think I want to do this, but the
Speaker 7: lack of decorum from the bench is something new and alarming,
Speaker 7: and I think it's not a fund that we see.
Speaker 7: Because I can't fight back.
Speaker 1: I have to go.
Speaker 7: I have to go in front of these judges again
Speaker 7: and again and again. So I can't say. I can't
Speaker 7: say nan yah nah, call them names, but they can
Speaker 7: do that to me. It's just it's wrong. And I
Speaker 7: hope that the court step in indisciplinement of what is
Speaker 7: happening here in our court's writing. Anyway, that was my
Speaker 7: extraneous thought.
Speaker 2: Write it down for the inevitable book and we'll be
Speaker 2: sure to buy it and enjoy our me deal. And
Speaker 2: thanks so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure,
Speaker 2: and we hope to speak to you again in the future.
Speaker 3: And good luck.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, ar meet.
Speaker 3: Thanks. You know.
Speaker 2: It's entirely possible that somebody out there is going to
Speaker 2: want to say happy Holidays to somebody or maybe even
Speaker 2: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3: Will they be brought up.
Speaker 2: In judge just by hr for using alienating language during
Speaker 2: this Christmas season.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, during this holiday season.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's something that actually the uh
Speaker 2: you know, the Harmat's division would get to around to
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: But it is something you think about, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: I had a little Christmas tree in my desk back
Speaker 2: at the office when I used to work at the
Speaker 2: office in.
Speaker 3: A previous life.
Speaker 2: Nobody complained because really, frankly, it's not that big of
Speaker 2: a deal. But the holidays are coming, Christmas is coming,
Speaker 2: and that is a big deal, especially if you're looking
Speaker 2: around and saying, oh, what am I going to get
Speaker 2: everybody this year?
Speaker 3: What am I going to do?
Speaker 2: I've been married for thirty eight years. Is no possible
Speaker 2: thing I can possibly think of that I miss. Well, listen,
Speaker 2: when the holidays get busy and a little overwhelming, what
Speaker 2: is the gift that you'd like to give your loved
Speaker 2: ones the most? And that's right, the serenity, the gift
Speaker 2: of slowing down and feeling cozy and making home your
Speaker 2: sanctuary to write out those bitter winter months to come.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what Cozy Earth delivers. Now, if Charles was here,
Speaker 2: Charles C. W. Cook, Charlie, he tell you all about
Speaker 2: the sheets. And one of these days, I think he's
Speaker 2: going to have to drag his wife in to tell
Speaker 2: you why exactly she likes them, Because it's being filtered
Speaker 2: through Charlie, and we know that probably there's a feminine
Speaker 2: element to denning and to the comforts and durability and
Speaker 2: washability and pleasure of these sheets. The Charles is not
Speaker 2: able to completely accurately connote. But take it from him,
Speaker 2: he loves them, not just because his wife does. And
Speaker 2: everybody frankly uses Cozy Earth sheets says the same. And
Speaker 2: here's how you can tell Cozier they stand by their quality.
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Speaker 2: before we go, lots of stuff that we haven't talked about,
Speaker 2: Actually we have. Oh, I can't get interested in the
Speaker 2: Epstein story. I don't know why you think that somehow
Speaker 2: this would peak all the purient interest and memories of
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton and address with the red shoes and a
Speaker 2: painting in the foyer.
Speaker 3: But you know, where do you stand on this?
Speaker 6: I'll be really interested to hear what do you guys.
Speaker 3: Make of it? I can't that's a great way at dodge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, no, I am sort of interested in it,
Speaker 5: But I'm interested in the part that nobody else seems
Speaker 5: to be interested in, which is a puzzle to me,
Speaker 5: just as the whole thing is a puzzle to you, James.
Speaker 5: In as much as the sex stuff, I don't find
Speaker 5: that particularly interesting on what seems to me the invincible
Speaker 5: grounds that Donald Trump has been a major figure in
Speaker 5: this country for a decade, and if there were stuff
Speaker 5: in those files to use against him, it surely would
Speaker 5: have leaked long before now, And in fact, what has
Speaker 5: leaked has rebounded against leading Democrats, most notably Larry Summers,
Speaker 5: who now has been forced to leave harst public life.
Speaker 5: Yes exactly, Well, first he withdrew from public life, and
Speaker 5: now he's announced that somebody else is going to finish
Speaker 5: the last three lectures of his core. He's even been
Speaker 5: removed from teaching at Harvard, which is I mean, as
Speaker 5: Harvard things go, that's quite a blow.
Speaker 6: Okay, So that's the sex stuff.
Speaker 5: What nobody seems interested to me, and what still makes
Speaker 5: absolutely no sense is the money side. This guy started
Speaker 5: out as a high school math teacher and ended up
Speaker 5: living in the biggest private residence on the island of Manhattan,
Speaker 5: with a private island in the Caribbean and a big
Speaker 5: ranch I think in nim Where did this money come from?
Speaker 5: That's what I haven't seen. Honestly, Even journalists don't seem
Speaker 5: I say, even journalists, if there are were people who
Speaker 5: are real journalists left. Nobody seems to be digging into
Speaker 5: exactly what this guy did to end up a very
Speaker 5: very rich man. So that puzzles me, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: seem to be the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's Jay Gatsby, right, There was always that mystery Gatsby,
Speaker 1: you would do these parties, right, that's kind of an
Speaker 1: insult of Fitzgerald and Gatsby, I think in this case.
Speaker 1: But look, I can't resist some James Lilac's bait and
Speaker 1: say this scene. You'll see why. This whole business reminds
Speaker 1: me of the scene in the Wrath of Khan where
Speaker 1: Kirk taunts Khan by saying, like a bad marksman, you
Speaker 1: keep missing the target. Because this reminds me of a
Speaker 1: rerun of Me Too. Remember the whole Me Too business
Speaker 1: precipitated to be sure by Harvey Weinstein's grotesque grease, if
Speaker 1: that's a word, but pretty clearly the left grabbed onto
Speaker 1: it and ran to it, hoping it was going to
Speaker 1: take down Orange, the bad Orange Man, because of what
Speaker 1: he'd said and you know about grabbing parts of anatomy.
Speaker 1: And instead it took down liberal after liberal in the
Speaker 1: media and in politics. You know, it ended this Charlie Rose,
Speaker 1: Charlie Rose and Al franken Hey got kicked out of
Speaker 1: the Senate. And so in other words, it mowed down
Speaker 1: a ton of liberals and Democrats. And now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the Epstein files they think are going to
Speaker 1: bring down Trump instead you mentioned it's already taken one scalp.
Speaker 1: Hilarry Summers. By the way, I found it amusing that
Speaker 1: he used the same language that the Royal the House
Speaker 1: of Windsor used in England about Prince Andrew's going to
Speaker 1: step back from his royal duties. Yes, Larry Summers is
Speaker 1: going to step back from his So a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stepping back on here. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if Trump there's a genius to a method or
Speaker 1: a genius to his madness. It's not really madness. But
Speaker 1: the point is I won't be surprised that this is
Speaker 1: another boomerang that comes back and hits Democrats squarely in ahead,
Speaker 1: because that's certainly what all the circumstantial evidence looks like.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, the walls are closing in. I think I
Speaker 2: saw that actually at the other day. This is going
Speaker 2: to be the one that does it. And I mean
Speaker 2: anybody who was a conservative during the Clinton years remembers
Speaker 2: that every six or seven months or so, there was
Speaker 2: something that was going to put this guy away. If
Speaker 2: it wasn't Whitewater, if it wasn't Vince Foster, if it
Speaker 2: wasn't this, it wasn't that the walls were always closing
Speaker 2: in on Bill Clinton. He was just I was this
Speaker 2: closed and finally being revealed to all, and it never happened.
Speaker 2: And when you see it happening to the other side,
Speaker 2: you can say, I've been there, brother, I know exactly
Speaker 2: how it feels. The walls are not closing in. When
Speaker 2: I look at Reddit, for example, which is coded way
Speaker 2: to the sort of bubble left, very much blue sky,
Speaker 2: very much of their own creation. There's always mega panic,
Speaker 2: mega panics, Trump furious Mega panics, and Trump is furious
Speaker 2: over Mega Panics.
Speaker 3: And it's all.
Speaker 2: Because apparently the Mega movement and conservatives in general have
Speaker 2: fled from Donald Trump because of the Epstein thing and
Speaker 2: his positions on it.
Speaker 3: And I look at these people and I say, I
Speaker 3: don't know anybody who cares about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know anybody who doesn't think that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump was it was a bit of a you know,
Speaker 2: Studio fifty four kind of guy, maybe back in the seventies,
Speaker 2: part about doing coke and drinking.
Speaker 3: It's, you know, straight arrow that that way.
Speaker 2: I think anybody would be surprised of the libertine nature
Speaker 2: of the life that they live the guy's on the
Speaker 2: cover of playbook for ifan sakes. So no, there's no
Speaker 2: mega panic, and there's no walls closing in, and there's
Speaker 2: no fleeing in the rest of it. It just kind
Speaker 2: of is a dull fud, maybe wrong. The people who
Speaker 2: are really interested in this are the people who have
Speaker 2: a close connection to those who believe that a huge
Speaker 2: pedophile ring runs through Washington or River of Adrenochrome that
Speaker 2: goes back to the Pizza Gate thing, and you know
Speaker 2: all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: They're very much invested in this.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, how did Epstein get its money by,
Speaker 2: you know, by arranging things. I just think he was
Speaker 2: a great arranger in an era that had a disgustingly
Speaker 2: curdled sort of sexual politics that came from the the
Speaker 2: you know, the inevitable result of the sexual revolution is
Speaker 2: that worked its way from hippies into the bourgeois.
Speaker 3: Clett I go on, well, you know, I can, if.
Speaker 1: I were an irresponsible person, I could make up a
Speaker 1: unified field theory that says Epstein got his money by
Speaker 1: arranging the cocaine shipments to the Mina airport and airport.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: That would bring us we'll circle back to the glory
Speaker 1: days of the Clinton scandals.
Speaker 2: There you go, where his brother arranged for the assassination
Speaker 2: of the two youth who were found by the railroad tracks.
Speaker 3: I get it absolutely. I was there too. Thank you
Speaker 3: David Brooks for that hard hitting stuff.
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the more interesting things that
Speaker 2: I've seen in the last couple of days is that
Speaker 2: Epstein files revealed that Epstein hated Donald Trump and thought
Speaker 2: he was a bad man. And they're holding this up
Speaker 2: like proof of something like, I mean, like, the guy
Speaker 2: who's the worst man in the world thought that this
Speaker 2: guy was a bad guy.
Speaker 3: What does that necessarily toll?
Speaker 2: That mean that he's lower on the ranks, or he
Speaker 2: didn't like him because he was trying, he was indifferent
Speaker 2: to him and his blandishments and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: I don't think the twenty twenty six elections will will
Speaker 2: revolve around this. I do know, however, that unless you
Speaker 2: guys have something sparkling and bright to add, we best
Speaker 2: get out and leave these people in a nice, tight
Speaker 2: one hour podcast. Peter, anything you'd like to tell us
Speaker 2: about your long absence and where you've been and what
Speaker 2: you've done.
Speaker 5: I've been minding my p's and q's. James, I have
Speaker 5: nothing entertaining to say about that.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, oh I've been informed. Of course there was
Speaker 2: David Brock, now David Brooks.
Speaker 3: Who am I thinking of? I'm thinking of James Brooks.
Speaker 1: The Simpsons said they all met one to get it right.
Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry, sorry, I don't have coffee or too much.
Speaker 2: And Stephen, you've got Thanksgiving coming up as well. We
Speaker 2: hope everybody has a good one, and remember that Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: COVID Thanksgiving twenty.
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