Speaker 1: Well, sorry, James, I'll go ahead. I just asked if
Speaker 1: you want.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 3: I will, and you can take it wherever you wish.
Speaker 3: That's what we do here. Imagine your roblong and I'm
Speaker 3: asking a question that he's just going to go where
Speaker 3: he wants to go.
Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister Gorbut you'll tear down this wall. It's the Ricordshe
Speaker 3: Podcast with Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook.
Speaker 3: I'm James Lellax. Today we're going to be talking to
Speaker 3: Anne McCarthy about Trump's leap of woes and more so,
Speaker 3: let severs was a podcast.
Speaker 4: How should voters look at some of the changes that
Speaker 4: you've made that you've explained some of here in your policy.
Speaker 4: Is it because you have more experience now and you've
Speaker 4: learned more about the information? Is it because you were
Speaker 4: running for president and a Democratic primary? And should they
Speaker 4: feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is
Speaker 4: going to be your policy?
Speaker 3: Moving from Welcome everybody, this is the Ricochet Podcast, number
Speaker 3: seven hundred and six. I'm James Lilax drinking a cup
Speaker 3: of tepid office coffee in a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis,
Speaker 3: which did not burn to the ground parts. Yes, but
Speaker 3: the fires did not lap on the shores of our
Speaker 3: corporate office here and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and
Speaker 3: Charles C. W. Cook. Gentlemen, Hello, between Florida and California.
Speaker 3: Once again we span the nation.
Speaker 1: Actually, James, I am coming to today from Raykovic, Iceland.
Speaker 1: We're combining a business and pleasure trip. But I have
Speaker 1: found something for your Lilax Museum of Curious Cultural Collections,
Speaker 1: whatever you call it. Did you know, Yeah, because r
Speaker 1: right next to my hotel turns out to be the
Speaker 1: most visited museum in Iceland. It's called the Icelandic Fall.
Speaker 1: A lot of hamilgrit and Theseum.
Speaker 3: No, it's not okay, No, I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: You're thinking of the hot dog place that's the other
Speaker 1: side of my hotel.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I believe it was a hamburger that was putt It
Speaker 3: was a hamburger, that hamberger that was put under glass
Speaker 3: in Iceland about twenty years ago McDonald's Hamburger and is
Speaker 3: not decomposed in the least bit anyway. So phallologically, yeah,
Speaker 3: what's the only it's the only penis museum in the
Speaker 3: world that is exactly what you think it is.
Speaker 1: Ah, Okay, the brochure says it's family friendly. I'm skeptical
Speaker 1: of this, but there you go. I'll send you the brochure.
Speaker 3: Well, since my side is the Gallery of Regrettable Food,
Speaker 3: I am not sure whether or not that would constitute
Speaker 3: a goustatory experience, but of course it depends on one's
Speaker 3: orientation of preference.
Speaker 1: They have a phallic cafe b stro James, so maybe
Speaker 1: it will make your gast Okay.
Speaker 3: I you know, I I missed that when I was there,
Speaker 3: and I advise that everybody in their lifetime should go
Speaker 3: to Iceland, because it really is an incredible, spectacular, amazing place,
Speaker 3: this little island of civil It's little, this this this
Speaker 3: civilization that they built on this rock, which has in
Speaker 3: the you know, a certain part of the day, a
Speaker 3: certain part of the year, it's just always bright and
Speaker 3: then a certain part of the year is always dark.
Speaker 3: So everyone has two jobs in an alcoholic habit and
Speaker 3: and they're in a band. I just I love the place, Charles.
Speaker 3: How are you? How's Florida Muggy?
Speaker 5: I assume no, it's really nice. It's really nice. I've
Speaker 5: bed to Iceland. I went in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5: I agree, everyone's drunk, but that's why they have no money,
Speaker 5: because it's so expensive to drink in ice. And that's
Speaker 5: in Scandinavia. And I annoyed my sister on that trip
Speaker 5: by eating a puffin in a restaurant.
Speaker 3: Braids braised, puffin. Why not?
Speaker 6: It was on the menu.
Speaker 3: Do they bring the beak?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: But it was on the menu, and I thought, well,
Speaker 5: I'll try that because I like trying random and unusual things.
Speaker 5: And then she said, well, you can't eat a puffin.
Speaker 5: They're so cute, and I thought, well, now I have
Speaker 5: to eat a puffin.
Speaker 1: Well they don't they taste like spotted owls?
Speaker 3: I think, I exactly with a little snail darter relish
Speaker 3: if you will. One of the things that I love
Speaker 3: about Iceland, Reykovic, and also what it sort of says
Speaker 3: about Europe and Northern Europe, is that they have this
Speaker 3: incredible modern cathedral, this church. But you don't really get
Speaker 3: the sense that anybody believes in any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you were to believe it, if you
Speaker 3: were to build a church for a culture that was
Speaker 3: nominally habitually, ritualistically Christian, but really didn't believe it it
Speaker 3: would be that church. That was just the feeling that
Speaker 3: I got. It's so spare, it is absolutely so white
Speaker 3: and so pure, but so somehow lacking that wonderful effervescent
Speaker 3: divinity that you get in baroque churches, for example. But
Speaker 3: enough of our travelog gear. We're here to discuss the
Speaker 3: ways and means by which the country is going to
Speaker 3: come to rack and or ruin or success or as usual,
Speaker 3: middle and muddel in betwixt the two points. So we
Speaker 3: had an interview with Kamala Harris this week on CNN
Speaker 3: in which she laid everything out. I get the impression
Speaker 3: that the problem that we have been suffering in this
Speaker 3: country is an insufficient amount of government. Is that basically
Speaker 3: what you get. We're about four percent away. For if
Speaker 3: we had four percent or maybe seven percent more government,
Speaker 3: we would solve housing, we would solve the middle class problems.
Speaker 3: We would solve climate change, which we have to do
Speaker 3: on a schedule that is of time and to hours
Speaker 3: and the weeks that she said, so, what did you
Speaker 3: take away from this? Did you do you think this
Speaker 3: is a fresh breath emanating from the Biden administration. A
Speaker 3: clean break revitalized attempt to drag Joe Biden's great policies
Speaker 3: over the goal line. Well don't everybody talk at once.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: I don't know what I made of it, because she
Speaker 5: didn't say anything. She did an interview, she well, she
Speaker 5: answered questions, but she didn't really advance anything. And there
Speaker 5: was a tweet that went out off It's by DNM
Speaker 5: where they said, we got closer to understanding. They always
Speaker 5: talk about her, so she's an ancient Mayan civilization. We
Speaker 5: got closer to understanding what Kamala Harris wants to do.
Speaker 5: And I thought, well, actually that's not true at all.
Speaker 5: She didn't account for her shifts in policy. She said,
Speaker 5: my values haven't changed. And what she should have done
Speaker 5: if she was going to make that argument is say,
Speaker 5: here are two or three examples of where the policy
Speaker 5: has changed, but the values that informed them were different
Speaker 5: for this or that reason. In fact, Dana Bash tried
Speaker 5: to set her up to do that by giving her
Speaker 5: the answer before she gave it, but she didn't. She
Speaker 5: then said that, oh, I know that in twenty nineteen
Speaker 5: I said I would ban fracking, but in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: I said I wouldn't, which isn't even true. In twenty
Speaker 5: twenty she said Joe Biden wouldn't ban fracking. She didn't
Speaker 5: explain why she shifted view, or even if she has so.
Speaker 5: Throughout Yes, I got the vague, effveescent sense that she
Speaker 5: wants more government and that she thinks that we have
Speaker 5: been beholden to some ancient ideology for too long. But
Speaker 5: she never actually really outline what she wanted to do,
Speaker 5: so I don't think it was particularly useful as a voter.
Speaker 3: Stephen. There have been attempts recently, devious attempts, I think
Speaker 3: rhetorical slights of hands that have attempted to tether That's
Speaker 3: the word Kamila Harris with a Biden adminstration. Was there
Speaker 3: was there tethering going on? Was there breaking going on?
Speaker 3: Was there was there? Was there anything going on that
Speaker 3: made you sit up and say that's new?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. One of the blessings of being
Speaker 1: on overseas travel as you got to miss it, and
Speaker 1: I've only caught up with a few things I've seen online.
Speaker 1: I think Charlie puts his finger on something. The most
Speaker 1: important part of it is her saying over and over
Speaker 1: again her one message was my values haven't changed, which
Speaker 1: ought to be the four most terrifying words in the
Speaker 1: English language today, you know, after one's the old Ronald
Speaker 1: Ringing line, I'm from the government. I'm here to help,
Speaker 1: because what are those values. They're all pretty deeply radical,
Speaker 1: as any check of the record will show. And if
Speaker 1: you had an alert Trump campaign, and it's still not
Speaker 1: clear whether we have one or not, they would be
Speaker 1: running ads and they just have a clip of her
Speaker 1: saying my values haven't changed, and then just throwing up
Speaker 1: on the screen some of her previous statements on what
Speaker 1: her values are. I think that it was a wink
Speaker 1: and a nod to progressives and the media. Who are
Speaker 1: you know, carrying water for saying, you know, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'm still the progressive if you want, and you know,
Speaker 1: backing down on fracking and sting relatively quiet about climate change.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's going to be you know,
Speaker 1: Biden times ten when I get past the electorates in November.
Speaker 1: I think that this is not new, by the way,
Speaker 1: this has been a democratic playbook for quite a while,
Speaker 1: and people like Obama going all the way back to
Speaker 1: Doucaucus can try and get away with it, and have
Speaker 1: in some instances, like Bill Clinton, But in her case,
Speaker 1: she's got such a long record of very radical views
Speaker 1: that it still astounds me to think that she can
Speaker 1: away with it. On the other hand, as has been
Speaker 1: pointed out, the election is not sixty five days off
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Early voting starts in three weeks,
Speaker 1: and so the votes will start getting locked into the
Speaker 1: can very very soon.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: The CNN story about the interview says, Harris laid out
Speaker 3: an economic plan earlier this month, did you know, focused
Speaker 3: on bringing down costs on food, housing, and childcare, in
Speaker 3: part by going harder after corporations. There's stunning new development.
Speaker 3: She's going harder after those corporations. Her proposals include efforts
Speaker 3: to combat price gouging. My my mind, Okay, so we
Speaker 3: are going to do that again, where we're going to
Speaker 3: go and investigate and of course it doesn't matter whether
Speaker 3: or not anybody actually is price gouging. What matters is
Speaker 3: that they're going to be dragged through a process that
Speaker 3: we'll just add to their costs and you know, cripple
Speaker 3: them and keep them from doing things and hesitate to
Speaker 3: do this and they'll have rippling effects about the entire economy.
Speaker 3: But oh, well, you know she's doing something. She's least
Speaker 3: she's doing something. Recently, here we had an institution which
Speaker 3: raised its prices by eight percent. Eight percent, just announce
Speaker 3: eight percent. And the strain thing about it is here
Speaker 3: is that you don't have the option not to pay.
Speaker 3: You have to because there are property taxes. Our property
Speaker 3: taxes going up eight percent, and what's more, because of
Speaker 3: the new evaluations. It's a tax on unrealized gains. It's
Speaker 3: just perfect. Do we have any saying this, No, no, no,
Speaker 3: we just absolutely have to pay. That's not gouging at all, though. No,
Speaker 3: that's an absolutely reasonable response to the needs of the
Speaker 3: particulars of the people. But she also said that she
Speaker 3: was going to ramp up construction of affordable housing. Now,
Speaker 3: low information people may not look at that and nod
Speaker 3: and say, well, that's good. Folks need housing. That's something,
Speaker 3: But this is not the job of the federal government.
Speaker 3: The reason that you don't have affordable housing and so
Speaker 3: many of the cities that need it. Leaving aside whether
Speaker 3: or not the homeless crisis is a result of the
Speaker 3: lack of affordable housing usually isn't is because you have
Speaker 3: any number of heavy boat anchors that are draped around
Speaker 3: the neck of the people who are trying to build
Speaker 3: these things, from the code requirements to the cost of material,
Speaker 3: from this to that that. I mean, San Francisco does
Speaker 3: not have an a lack of affordable housing because there
Speaker 3: are people just for some reason who can't build there.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's the process, it's the rules, it's
Speaker 3: the nimbi's, it's the rest of it, things over which
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris has absolutely no control whatsoever, unless we want
Speaker 3: the federal government to march into our communities and say, well,
Speaker 3: you know what, you don't have enough affordable housing in
Speaker 3: this neighborhood. Therefore we're gonna build them, which they've been
Speaker 3: trying to do for years and years and years and
Speaker 3: years and years. And if that's what she's talking about,
Speaker 3: redoubling that effort to just sort of sweep aside what
Speaker 3: people in particular communities want and say, we're doing it
Speaker 3: from Washington. We're telling you what in Idaho you got
Speaker 3: to have in your neighborhood. That's again, dare I say
Speaker 3: I get the idea that she's in favor of expansion
Speaker 3: of the state that maybe just me.
Speaker 1: Maybe, just could you have gotten that idea, James, Look,
Speaker 1: the land thing, I mean, the talk of bringing back
Speaker 1: price controls. Let's be clear, that's what she's really talking about.
Speaker 1: That's a bad idea we thought we'd gotten rid of
Speaker 1: for the last time in the seventies. You may remember, James,
Speaker 1: I know you follow these things. I know the history
Speaker 1: of it. There was a push back in the mid
Speaker 1: seventies at the time of price controls to have the
Speaker 1: federal government get directly involved with local zoning. In other words,
Speaker 1: weren't just going to leave it to states and cities.
Speaker 1: And you know, there were bills in Congress that was
Speaker 1: back on the palmy days of the Clean Air Act
Speaker 1: and the Clean Water Act and all the other national
Speaker 1: legislation we passed after the First Earth Day, and you
Speaker 1: know it got shot down in Congress because of massive
Speaker 1: resistance by the states and local governments and the home
Speaker 1: building industry and others.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: All surprised if we're there have been sort of backed
Speaker 1: or ways to try and coerce states and cities for
Speaker 1: a while now. But I wouldn't be surprised if we
Speaker 1: did not see from the Harris administration a brand new
Speaker 1: initiative to get the federal government directly involved in local
Speaker 1: zoning decisions.
Speaker 5: I just think it's worth saying that this line that
Speaker 5: I've started to see that Kamala Harris is some sort
Speaker 5: of yimbi yes in my backyard is ridiculous because the
Speaker 5: primary reason that the demo crowds are struggling on this
Speaker 5: issue is that there are a whole host of interest
Speaker 5: groups on whom they rely that stand in the way
Speaker 5: of the production of new homes and development more generally,
Speaker 5: and those are environmental groups, unions of various sorts, and
Speaker 5: other left wing interest groups that don't like development for
Speaker 5: various reasons.
Speaker 3: And this is a.
Speaker 5: Problem that will only be solved when a Democrat stands
Speaker 5: up and says to those people, no, it is more
Speaker 5: important for us to fix this on the supply side
Speaker 5: than it is for you to get what you want.
Speaker 5: And I just don't see any evidence that this is happening.
Speaker 5: If you read left leaning self professed wonks in the
Speaker 5: United States, you will see that they are aware, especially
Speaker 5: in California, New York, that they have an issue here,
Speaker 5: but they don't really know how to fix it, because
Speaker 5: the internal politics within the party makes fixing it really tough.
Speaker 5: And I just see nothing in the history of Kamala
Speaker 5: Harris's life of public role that suggests that she has
Speaker 5: an interest in doing that whatsoever, Which is why, in
Speaker 5: addition to saying all of these things that some reformers
Speaker 5: have said are encouraging, she said, I'm going to give
Speaker 5: twenty five thousand dollars to anyone who's by, because that's
Speaker 5: actually something that won't be upsetting to the people she
Speaker 5: needs to win the election and keep on side.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think that's all very unfair, Charlie. We
Speaker 3: know that she curls up at night with a glass
Speaker 3: of wine in a copy of Shane Jacob's Life in
Speaker 3: Different of the Cities. Just deeply interesting, a great book
Speaker 3: and developed the progress it is, indeed, But that's another podcast.
Speaker 3: In this podcast, we bring you Andy McCarthy. Andy McCarthy,
Speaker 3: We're proud to do so again, senior fellow the National
Speaker 3: Review Institute and a contributing editor there as well as
Speaker 3: at Fox News. Andy, welcome back. Breaking news, right, Hi.
Speaker 2: Jans, how are you good? Yes, breaking news. Trump is
Speaker 2: trying to get his sentencing in the Manhattan case postponed
Speaker 2: by moving again in federal court to have the state
Speaker 2: proceeding removed there, that is, to have the federal court
Speaker 2: take jurisdiction over it.
Speaker 6: And the point of.
Speaker 2: This is there's now a profound immunity question in connection
Speaker 2: with Braggs prosecution, and immunity is supposed to be litigated
Speaker 2: whether Trump wins it or not as a different matter,
Speaker 2: but immunity is supposed to be litigated through appeal before
Speaker 2: other proceedings in the case happen. And that's obvious enough
Speaker 2: that even Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney of Manhattan who
Speaker 2: brought the case, has conceded that there should be a postponement.
Speaker 2: At this point, sentencing is supposed to happen on September eighteenth.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, Judge Merchon, who has been I think
Speaker 2: credibly accused of being biased against the defense in this case,
Speaker 2: has not acted on the motion to postpone the sentencing,
Speaker 2: even though the prosecutor agrees that it should be postponed.
Speaker 2: And the way this is teed up at the moment,
Speaker 2: merch On has said that he'll rule on Trump's immunity
Speaker 2: claim on September sixteenth, and then proceed to sentence him
Speaker 2: on September eighteenth, which certainly suggests that he's trying to
Speaker 2: frustrate Trump's appellate rights by not giving him enough time
Speaker 2: to get to another court to stop the sentencing from
Speaker 2: going forward until the immunities decided. So they're going to
Speaker 2: federal court at this point now to try to make
Speaker 2: them act.
Speaker 3: Before I hand it over to Stephen and Charles. I
Speaker 3: just want to bring everybody up to speed, because memories
Speaker 3: are short. Remind everybody what Trump fell for in this case.
Speaker 3: I use fell in the old dragnet sense of having
Speaker 3: been found guilty.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a very strange case. You know.
Speaker 2: I think there's some really strong allegations against Trump that
Speaker 2: come out of the law fair stuff.
Speaker 6: This case is just a joke.
Speaker 2: He was accused in thirty four counts of falsifying his
Speaker 2: business records in order to conceal a second crime. Ordinarily,
Speaker 2: in New York, nobody gets prosecuted for these kinds of offenses,
Speaker 2: particularly under Bragg, who is like a textbook progressive prosecutor. Ordinarily,
Speaker 2: business records offenses are misdemeanors. These misdemeanors happened, I think
Speaker 2: now twenty seventeen, so seven years ago. The statute of
Speaker 2: limitations on misdemeanors is two years. By alleging that Trump
Speaker 2: was trying to conceal a second defense, he got it
Speaker 2: inflated from a misdemeanor to a felony and thereby did
Speaker 2: an end around the misdemeanor statute of limitations. And then
Speaker 2: he carved this one transaction into thirty four by basically
Speaker 2: taking each piece of paper that was involved in the
Speaker 2: payments that occurred here and charging it as a separate felony,
Speaker 2: which totals up to I think one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: four or one hundred and thirty six years of criminal exposure.
Speaker 2: It's capped at twenty in New York, but that's still
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of penalty. So that's the crime,
Speaker 2: and I think the outrage, well, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: outrage about the case, but the worst part of it
Speaker 2: is that the judge did not require the jury to
Speaker 2: find beyond a reasonable doubt what the second crime was
Speaker 2: because the judge misinterpreted the law of conspiracy. What Bragg
Speaker 2: relied on as the so called second crime was a
Speaker 2: New York election law conspiracy to influence an election.
Speaker 6: By unlawful conduct.
Speaker 2: And therefore Bragg said, as long as the jury finds
Speaker 2: beyond a reasonable doubt that he conspired to influence the election,
Speaker 2: then that's sufficient.
Speaker 6: So we don't have to figure out what.
Speaker 2: Unlawful conduct he agreed to participate in.
Speaker 6: And the problem with that.
Speaker 2: Is in conspiracy law, first of all, it's not a
Speaker 2: crime to influence an election.
Speaker 6: That's what campaigns try to do.
Speaker 2: What makes it a crime, What makes it a conspiracy
Speaker 2: is the agreement, the meeting of the minds by two
Speaker 2: or more people on the criminal objective. So you can't
Speaker 2: have a conspiracy in the criminal law unless the jury
Speaker 2: agrees beyond a reasonable doubt on what the statute, the
Speaker 2: criminal statute the crime that makes it a conspiracy. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: if it's just an agreement to influence the election, that's
Speaker 2: not criminal.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of problems with the case.
Speaker 1: Well, any it's Steve Hayward who said a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago, why don't we have Andy here since so
Speaker 1: much legal news is breaking this week, and it turns
Speaker 1: out to be timely. Look my summary for lay persons,
Speaker 1: which I think as a lawyer you may find a
Speaker 1: little too cute, which was they try to elevate a
Speaker 1: misdemeanor jaywalking into a felony by first counting every step
Speaker 1: taken across the road as a separate felony, and two
Speaker 1: saying once the person reached the other side the road,
Speaker 1: he was either gonna mug somebody or rob a liquor store.
Speaker 1: And you can decide which crime you think the person
Speaker 1: was going to. I mean, that's silly to me, But
Speaker 1: then the other I don't want to I still have
Speaker 1: a question about the appellate process. But the other big
Speaker 1: story that first brought you our attention again was Jack
Speaker 1: Smith introducing a new set of indictments against Trump for
Speaker 1: election interference. And I'm it just took my breath away.
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought even this Justice Department would at
Speaker 1: this point say it's too late based on their rules.
Speaker 1: I know there's some ambiguity about whether it's a sixty
Speaker 1: day deadline or a ninety day deadline ahead of the election,
Speaker 1: that you do not bring a case against somebody who's
Speaker 1: up in an election or a political figure. But they've
Speaker 1: gone ahead and done this here, and I'm simply it
Speaker 1: takes my breath away that they would do this. It
Speaker 1: seems politically reckless, but then also the legal grounds. I
Speaker 1: haven't quite figured out the legal grounds yet, So why
Speaker 1: don't you comment or say your own thoughts on what's
Speaker 1: going on there and whether I'm right that it's politically
Speaker 1: reckless or legally dubious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Steve, I'm a pretty strong critic of Smith, but
Speaker 2: in this particular, I think he's getting a bad rap.
Speaker 6: So let me explain why.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, so we all know the Supreme Court didn't
Speaker 2: throw out the election interference case in the immunity decision, right.
Speaker 2: What they said is that Judge Chuckkin, who was the
Speaker 2: presiding judge Obama appointee in Washington, was supposed to get
Speaker 2: input from the parties and do an exacting examination of
Speaker 2: the indictment in order to determine which acts are official
Speaker 2: presidential acts that would be amenable of an immunity claim
Speaker 2: and which conduct that's alleged in the indictment is private
Speaker 2: and could be grisk for a criminal prosecution. So she
Speaker 2: wanted to have Smith weigh in on that issue and
Speaker 2: originally directed him to do so on August ninth, he
Speaker 2: asked for a three week delay, and the interesting reason
Speaker 2: why he asks for a three week delay is this
Speaker 2: is a dilemma for the Justice Department. Ordinarily, the Justice
Speaker 2: Department's job is to defend the executive branch. So the
Speaker 2: immunity ruling by the Supreme Court is a godsend to
Speaker 2: doj because in the future they will be able to
Speaker 2: use it to very expansively argue that presidents have immunity.
Speaker 2: Smith's case cuts against that. So anything that Smith does
Speaker 2: to try to argue that the presumption of immunity can
Speaker 2: be overcome in his case creates potentially a precedent that's
Speaker 2: going to hurt the Justice Department in the future. And
Speaker 2: therefore it's not just a matter of the Trump prosecution.
Speaker 2: Everybody in the Justice Department needs to get on board
Speaker 2: about what they think this decision means, which is why
Speaker 2: he has for the delay. Obviously, August thirtieth is today.
Speaker 2: This would have been the day that Smith had to file.
Speaker 2: So if Smith had simply done what Chuckkins said, he
Speaker 2: would have been providing this week his vision of what
Speaker 2: the case is going to look like. That is what
Speaker 2: things can still be prosecuted and what things Trump has
Speaker 2: immunity for. Instead, what he did was what I would
Speaker 2: have done, which is I don't want to consult with
Speaker 2: the court and the defense about what the case looks like.
Speaker 2: And the one advantage I have as a prosecutor is
Speaker 2: I can rewrite the indictment.
Speaker 6: And that's what he did.
Speaker 2: But all he did in rewriting the indictment is strip
Speaker 2: out the allegations that the Supreme Court said he can't
Speaker 2: run with, which is mainly Trump's control over the Justice Department,
Speaker 2: and to the extent that that piece of the indictment
Speaker 2: further the schemes that are alleged. So the four crimes
Speaker 2: that are in the new indictment are exactly the same
Speaker 2: as the original indictment.
Speaker 6: And the only thing he's done.
Speaker 2: Is strip out the stuff the Supreme Court told him
Speaker 2: I had to be stripped out. But whether he had
Speaker 2: done this by making a submission on Friday or done
Speaker 2: it by filing a superseding indictment on Tuesday, it's the
Speaker 2: same thing one way or the other.
Speaker 5: So Andy in the bragcase, it was assumed before the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court weighed in on the immunity question, once Trump
Speaker 5: had been found guilty, that there would be a sentencing,
Speaker 5: and it was possible that Trump could go to jail
Speaker 5: while he was running for president, and the question got
Speaker 5: a bit scrambled, partly because of the immunity case and
Speaker 5: then a few other legal developments. So my question is,
Speaker 5: given the changes that you described in your first answer,
Speaker 5: what is most likely to happen next in the brag case?
Speaker 5: And if there's no way of telling what's most likely,
Speaker 5: what are the options in the next, say, six months
Speaker 5: to a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Charlie, I think Bragg wanted to press ahead
Speaker 2: with the sentencing because he knows that Trump is not
Speaker 2: actually going to prison, and I think kind of almost perversely,
Speaker 2: that incentivizes him to give Trump an even more stiff
Speaker 2: sentence than he would otherwise have given him, because what's
Speaker 2: going to happen here. This is a non violent crime.
Speaker 2: Trump is not going It's not like he's going to
Speaker 2: get carted off to rikers the second that march On
Speaker 2: imposted sentence. But what they've always wanted out of this
Speaker 2: case was for the Democrats to be able to say
Speaker 2: he's a convicted felon facing a stiff prison sentence in
Speaker 2: the run up to the election, and they would have
Speaker 2: that the problem legally that they now have, and this
Speaker 2: is a I think reckless and certainly gratuitous presentation of
Speaker 2: the case by Bragg. They didn't need the Trump presidential
Speaker 2: acts as evidence in the trial. They could easily have
Speaker 2: proved up what was charged to the indictment by just
Speaker 2: sticking with employees of the Trump organization and the testimony
Speaker 2: of Colin and called it a day. Instead, what they
Speaker 2: did was they called two of Trump's White House staffers
Speaker 2: to testify about his customary with the way he ran
Speaker 2: the White House, you know, the way he conducted himself
Speaker 2: as president, etc. Bragg is now in the position of
Speaker 2: trying to argue that that was just harmless error, but
Speaker 2: when his prosecutors summed up to the jury, they described
Speaker 2: it as devastating proof of kilt. So he's got a
Speaker 2: tough time saying it was harmless error at this point.
Speaker 2: The other thing he did that I think was pretty
Speaker 2: outrageous was he had Cohen testify that Trump had told
Speaker 2: him that Jeff Sessions would make the Federal Election Commission
Speaker 2: investigation of the non disclosure agreements go away. There's no
Speaker 2: corrobore evidence that that happened, but it's important evidence, even
Speaker 2: though it was fleeting, because Bragg didn't make it prove
Speaker 2: anything that would indicate to anyone that Trump was even
Speaker 2: thinking about federal election law, much less that he was
Speaker 2: willful beyond a reasonable doubt in conspiring to violate it.
Speaker 6: Right, So this was all stuff that Bragg threw.
Speaker 2: Into the case that he didn't need and didn't have
Speaker 2: any business in the case. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: they proved that they knew that the Supreme Court was
Speaker 2: considering immunity and that the oral argument had happened, and
Speaker 2: during the oral argument a number of the justices had
Speaker 2: seemed to be sympathetic to Trump's position. Yet they kept
Speaker 2: insisting to Brag that there was no presidential immunity and
Speaker 2: certainly no derivative evidentiary privilege not to have proof of
Speaker 2: presidential acts come into a criminal trial. So Bragg understands
Speaker 2: now that he's stuck with having made this decision. There
Speaker 2: was proof of presidential acts that came into the trial,
Speaker 2: which if they had just waited until the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: ruled as Trump's lawyers asked them to, the judge would
Speaker 2: have known, you can't let that evidence into the case.
Speaker 2: But he let it into the case. So that gives
Speaker 2: Trump a strong immunity claim. Now Trump is not going
Speaker 2: to win his ultimate claim, Trump is saying that the
Speaker 2: indictment should get dismissed. I think ultimately what the courts
Speaker 2: will probably decide here is that the guilty verdicts need
Speaker 2: to be vacated, and if Bragg wants to try him
Speaker 2: again at some point, he can try him again.
Speaker 6: I don't think they're going to throw out the.
Speaker 2: Case on a ruling that couldn't be that would end
Speaker 2: the case completely.
Speaker 6: It'll be up to brag whether he wants to bring
Speaker 6: it again. That's what I think will happen.
Speaker 2: But this is going to take a long time to
Speaker 2: play out because it seems to me that merch On
Speaker 2: being merch On, and we've seen the way he's performed
Speaker 2: the whole time he's had this case. He's going to
Speaker 2: rule against Trump on the immunity, and then I think
Speaker 2: Trump is entitled if that, If that's the state of play,
Speaker 2: Trump is entitled to go to the appellate division first,
Speaker 2: and before brad can before merchand consentence him. He should
Speaker 2: be able to go to the appellate division and litigate
Speaker 2: the immunity because immunity is supposed to be decided first.
Speaker 2: What Trump is trying to do now is circumvent the
Speaker 2: process of going through the New York appellate courts and
Speaker 2: just get the case brought back to federal court again,
Speaker 2: and have at the very least have a federal judge
Speaker 2: tell merch On he can't impose sentence until immunity is litigated.
Speaker 6: To the ground.
Speaker 2: I think Trump would rather if he could litigate the
Speaker 2: immunity in federal court rather than in the New York courts.
Speaker 2: But at a minimum, and his immediate objective here is
Speaker 2: to get the sentencing postpone.
Speaker 1: Well, well, now, Andy, it quick jurisdictional question here, sort
Speaker 1: of law one on one. It's usually not simple to
Speaker 1: jump from state to federal court. The federal courts don't
Speaker 1: like to admit you until you've exhausted all the state
Speaker 1: courts and so forth. So But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I can I mean on political grounds. I can see
Speaker 1: some federal judge saying, hey, wait a minute, this is
Speaker 1: out of hand. Maybe one way of asking is this
Speaker 1: is judge merch On's I think pretty obvious bias is
Speaker 1: that sufficient grounds legal grounds for a federal judge to
Speaker 1: leap frog of state courts and search jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: Not in and of itself, but and there's always a
Speaker 2: butt when you have me on, right, and there's a
Speaker 2: butt to the butt. So if it was just if
Speaker 2: the only claim here was biased by merch on, that
Speaker 2: would be one of the bundle of things that happens
Speaker 2: in a criminal case that all goes up on appeal together.
Speaker 6: Right, There are a handful.
Speaker 2: Of issues in criminal law that have to be decided
Speaker 2: before anything else happens in the case because they go
Speaker 2: to the legitimacy of the preceding itself. In other words,
Speaker 2: if you have immunity, the constitutional offense is not convicting you,
Speaker 2: it's trying you in the first place.
Speaker 6: You have a right not to be tried. Right, So
Speaker 6: there's a handful of these issues.
Speaker 2: Immunity and double jeopardy are the ones that come immediately
Speaker 2: to mind. Where those actually are issues that you are
Speaker 2: allowed to have what's called an interlocatory appeal on. That is,
Speaker 2: you don't have to wait till the end of the
Speaker 2: proceedings in the trial court.
Speaker 6: You get to appeal those immediately.
Speaker 2: So because for two reasons, Steve, One because this is
Speaker 2: an immunity issue, and two because it's a question of
Speaker 2: a state prosecuting a federal official. Arguably in connection with
Speaker 2: activities in furtherance of his federal responsibilities.
Speaker 6: I think got it.
Speaker 2: Brad should have been able to obviate the second one
Speaker 2: by saying, look, I'm not proving any of his federal activities.
Speaker 6: This is strictly private. But he went there. He shouldn't
Speaker 6: have gone there.
Speaker 2: And on that Congress has had, i think since sometime
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, a removal statute on the books
Speaker 2: that is pretty forgiving that allows federal if a federal
Speaker 2: official is charged with a state crime and the federal
Speaker 2: official can argue that he's being prosecuted for the furtherance
Speaker 2: of his federal duties or and this is usually end
Speaker 2: actually that he has a federal defense to the charge,
Speaker 2: that case is supposed to be removed out of state
Speaker 2: court and brought into federal court.
Speaker 1: You know, this reminds me. I was gonna I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you a political question a minute, but this
Speaker 1: is starting to remind me a little bit of an
Speaker 1: obscure nineteenth century case called Kirby versus New York. Do
Speaker 1: you want any chance to know that Andy case? It
Speaker 1: was where some local Kentucky officials, local Kentucky sheriff arrested
Speaker 1: a person from a male carrying barge for murder, right,
Speaker 1: and as I'm look, I don't remember the exact details,
Speaker 1: but the claim was made that this was the state
Speaker 1: interfering with the delivery of the lawyer. The person's lawyer argued,
Speaker 1: there's a state interfering with the delivery of the mails.
Speaker 1: That's illegal and the constitution you have to dismiss the
Speaker 1: murder claim and put the sheriff on trialph Anyway, an
Speaker 1: absurd case, and the Supreme Court saw right through it
Speaker 1: right away. It's a fun one to bring up with students,
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you a political question.
Speaker 6: Can I just can I just say?
Speaker 2: Can I just say, Steve, there's analogous modern cases where
Speaker 2: you know, you have a lot of these states think
Speaker 2: that they're safe havens from the immigration laws. Right, So
Speaker 2: the thear always is that if the if the federal
Speaker 2: officials go in and try to arrest somebody or do
Speaker 2: a search and further into the immigration laws, that the
Speaker 2: state will arrest the federal officials. That kind of stuff
Speaker 2: is a concern all the time.
Speaker 3: Hi, this is and colder. You can hear me every
Speaker 3: Monday on Ricochet with the five things you need to
Speaker 3: know this week, and on Fridays, I'll give you the
Speaker 3: big stories of the week that you may have missed.
Speaker 3: Look for it every Monday and Friday on Ricochet or
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 6: Ricochet Join the conversation.
Speaker 3: If I may just jump in here for a second.
Speaker 3: I was attempting to find out exactly what case this was,
Speaker 3: and so I typed Kirby Versus into my search bar
Speaker 3: and it auto populated completed with Kirby versus Goku, Kirby
Speaker 3: versus Jigglypuff versus Dice, Kirby versus Sonic, Kirby versus Mennonite,
Speaker 3: Kirby versus Mario, and Kirby versus Superman. So I take
Speaker 3: it that there is a game character named Kirby out there, Sitch, Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm getting very nation.
Speaker 1: It might be Usb Kirby. I might have had it backwards,
Speaker 1: and so I screwed everything up.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of it. There's a lot of United
Speaker 6: States cases.
Speaker 3: So you know, good luck, right.
Speaker 1: Political question, I mean, you know, what was being thought
Speaker 1: for the last year and seemed to be borne out
Speaker 1: by events, was every one of these indictments of Trump
Speaker 1: strengthened him, at least with Republican voters in the Republican base.
Speaker 1: And everyone's been saying for months, well, gosh, if Merchon
Speaker 1: puts him in an orange jumpsuit and marches him off
Speaker 1: to Rikers, Trump's gonna win in a landslide. And I
Speaker 1: still kind of think that. On the other hand, everything
Speaker 1: has suddenly changed here. In the last sixty days, you had,
Speaker 1: you know, Biden was replaced by Harris. Harris is running
Speaker 1: on joy. The latest poll show her pulling ahead by
Speaker 1: you know, credible polsters. And suddenly I'm questioning everything I
Speaker 1: thought I knew about American politics. Not everything, but I'm
Speaker 1: questioning whether it's still true that the legal harassment of
Speaker 1: Trump helps him or not. I can actually see that
Speaker 1: maybe this is good. In other words, voters are going
Speaker 1: to say, well, Harris's untested, we know what she thinks,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Trump is this convicted felon, And I'm worried.
Speaker 1: Now that's just it just might work. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I've all along thought that this was
Speaker 2: a conspiracy, a brilliant one by Democrats. Are pal Jonah
Speaker 2: Goldberg has argued that I've been a little bit too
Speaker 2: conspiracy minded about this, but I don't think it's a
Speaker 2: complicated conspiracy. And I think it's when they ran in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and twenty twenty two as well, and that
Speaker 2: is that the indictments at the beginning, when the target
Speaker 2: audience was the Republican base, rallied the base to Trump,
Speaker 2: and it made it impossible for what I thought would
Speaker 2: have been a more electable candidate like a DeSantis like
Speaker 2: Haley to get traction with Republican voters. The Democrats wanted
Speaker 2: to run against Trump, but they always thought Steve that
Speaker 2: phase two of Law Fair was going to be in
Speaker 2: the run up to the election. They were finally going
Speaker 2: to get their trials, and they thought they were going
Speaker 2: to get two or three of them and dump out
Speaker 2: all the bad evidence in the form of riveting testimony
Speaker 2: that the press was going to cover in every gory detail.
Speaker 2: And then at that point, the target audience is the
Speaker 2: voter the electorate at large rather than the Republican base.
Speaker 2: In the electorate at large, Trump is much less popular,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think it's fair to argue
Speaker 2: that he's unpopular with about fifty five percent of the country.
Speaker 2: So I think that was the target audience. It was
Speaker 2: probably a good strategy, and to me, I don't. I
Speaker 2: think Charlie probably agrees with me on this, but I'll
Speaker 2: let him obviously speak for himself. I think that what's
Speaker 2: left on the table now are kind of low information
Speaker 2: voters if you haven't made up your mind about what
Speaker 2: you think about this, and while we look at this
Speaker 2: stuff very closely, I think all those voters are going
Speaker 2: to hear is that Trump got convicted of felonies. They're
Speaker 2: not going to look into it the same way that
Speaker 2: we have. And I just don't think this can help
Speaker 2: Trump at this point with those voters. I think there's
Speaker 2: a way that you can, like people who were informed,
Speaker 2: could look at Bragg's case and go just like a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, progressive commentators did. And I don't
Speaker 2: think Democrats are happy that the Bragg case went first,
Speaker 2: because I think the brag case tainted law there as
Speaker 2: an enterprise, whereas if they had gone, say with the
Speaker 2: Florida case, where there was a pretty strong obstruction element
Speaker 2: to it against Trump, they would have had a much
Speaker 2: better time with this than Bragg's case. Which is even
Speaker 2: people on the on the left, at least the credible
Speaker 2: ones diminute a small pool small pool, but they think
Speaker 2: it's you know, they think it's a joke.
Speaker 5: I think that low information point goes both ways, although
Speaker 5: I do think it probably hurts him more than helps.
Speaker 5: But if you're told it's a low information voter by
Speaker 5: Trump or sarrogates that the system has gone after him
Speaker 5: and you don't know any of the details, then you
Speaker 5: perhaps believe that. And then if you're told on the
Speaker 5: other side, why he's a convicted fell and you don't
Speaker 5: know any of the details, then you believe that. So
Speaker 5: the question is who gets to them first?
Speaker 6: I guess, well, that's a proble.
Speaker 1: I always say that low information voters is one of
Speaker 1: those you know, threewere euphemism for morons? How much I mean,
Speaker 1: I always hate these debates A little rant here. I
Speaker 1: always hate these debates with undecided voters are in town
Speaker 1: hall format with three weeks to go before an election.
Speaker 1: Who can be undecided with three weeks to go in
Speaker 1: the presidential race? Well morons, that's and that's why those
Speaker 1: debates so often are moronic, and why it always this
Speaker 1: favors Republicans. It seems to me, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well you don't want morons.
Speaker 2: And I thought about this a lot when we I
Speaker 2: tried the blind shake back in the nineties, and one
Speaker 2: of the things that the defense wanted was, like, anybody
Speaker 2: who had heard about the World Trade Center bombing or
Speaker 2: some other notorious things that we had shouldn't be on
Speaker 2: the case because they've already formed. And I said, like,
Speaker 2: anybody who hasn't heard about this has been living under
Speaker 2: a rock. That's not somebody that you want as ature
Speaker 2: in a case.
Speaker 6: You know, right right.
Speaker 3: Before we go, and we've plenty of time here. I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to hasten you off the broom or a hook,
Speaker 3: but to change the subject. Mark Zuckerberg re had a
Speaker 3: letter where he said, you know what, yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 3: did ask us to take some stuff down. And it's
Speaker 3: interesting that some of the things that the Biden Harris,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, there I go tethering again. Administration I wanted
Speaker 3: to get rid of was a satire and humor when
Speaker 3: it came to things like COVID and the virus in
Speaker 3: the vaccine and the rest of it. What are we
Speaker 3: to make of this? And isn't a little late for
Speaker 3: this information to be coming out? Or have we all
Speaker 3: just decided, as we did, that the laptop was faked,
Speaker 3: that the Twitter files and the Facebook files that they
Speaker 3: were coming out with, that's all settled and factored in
Speaker 3: and baked in. Isn't it something that somebody would want
Speaker 3: that a canny campaign would want to make a point of.
Speaker 3: I mean, when you talk about authoritarianism, which we're supposed
Speaker 3: to be very worried about because it's going to destroy
Speaker 3: our democracy, this seems kind of authority. This seems kind
Speaker 3: of fashy to me, to use their terms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say two things about it. First, it would
Speaker 2: have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony in the case
Speaker 2: that the Supreme Court decided at the end of the term.
Speaker 2: You know, remember they threw out that they threw out
Speaker 2: this challenge because they said that the States and the
Speaker 2: social media users whose communications or postings had been suppressed,
Speaker 2: that they didn't have standing. And the big problem with
Speaker 2: the case was there was a tenuous connection. This is
Speaker 2: always a problem when you're you're going after the third
Speaker 2: party actors. Right, their communications were suppressed directly by the
Speaker 2: social media platforms. But what they were saying was that
Speaker 2: the government officials were the ones who were responsible when
Speaker 2: you have a case like that, you have to show
Speaker 2: a tight connection between the actions of the third party,
Speaker 2: and you know, hear the suppression And what Justice Barrett
Speaker 2: said in her majority opinion was that the case was
Speaker 2: poorly pled by the plainers, that the lower courts had
Speaker 2: just gotten some stuff flatly wrong in their analysis of
Speaker 2: the record, and that the claims were too attenuated. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, Justice Alito had a pretty good pushback on that,
Speaker 2: but a lot of what Barrett said about the standing
Speaker 2: was very persuasive.
Speaker 6: It would have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's testimony could have helped them on the causation part
Speaker 2: of this. So, you know, I think to the extent
Speaker 2: people think that the Supreme Court has now said you
Speaker 2: can't bring a case like that, that's not what they
Speaker 2: said that. What they said was that this one was
Speaker 2: poorly played and that you have to show a better
Speaker 2: chain of evidence. The more important thing, I think, and
Speaker 2: this really goes to the Hunter Biden story, and this
Speaker 2: should be a major major scandal. The Hunter Biden laptop
Speaker 2: stuff that got suppressed happened in October of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: in the run up to the election. The FBI got
Speaker 2: Hunter's laptop in December of twenty nineteen. They had it
Speaker 2: for nearly eleven months when they were going to the
Speaker 2: social media companies and telling them watch out for that,
Speaker 2: you know, Russian disinformation.
Speaker 6: There could be Russian disinformation.
Speaker 2: About the Biden family and about Hunter. And I think
Speaker 2: if you I tried to do this in a piece
Speaker 2: at NR this week, if you trace the chrinology of
Speaker 2: what happened. The the FBI had Hunter's laptop, knew it was,
Speaker 2: they had subjected it to forensic testing, They knew that
Speaker 2: it was authentic. There was no reason to think it
Speaker 2: wasn't authentic. But what happened was in twenty twenty, the
Speaker 2: two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are investigating
Speaker 2: the Biden influence pedling scheme and they're getting all kinds
Speaker 2: of evidence about it, mainly financial records. That was really
Speaker 2: what the House built its investigation on the scut work
Speaker 2: that Johnson and Grassley had done. And they're collecting all
Speaker 2: these bank records and suspicious transaction reports from the banks
Speaker 2: and all this other stuff that show that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of smoke here at the very least, and the
Speaker 2: Democrats in Congress were very concerned about that. So top
Speaker 2: Democrats in the House and then also in the Senate,
Speaker 2: acting together, ask their pals at the FBI, in particular
Speaker 2: a guy named Tim Thiebo, who was running the Washington
Speaker 2: Field office and was later forced into early retirement over
Speaker 2: his anti Republican, anti conservative social media postings. They call
Speaker 2: up THEBO, the Democrats do, and they say, we would
Speaker 2: like a briefing from you on Russian disinformation and interference
Speaker 2: in our elections. And THEBO assigns to it a guy
Speaker 2: named Auton, who we know as the handler for the
Speaker 2: guy who provided the information for the Steele dossier.
Speaker 6: So that's where he's coming from.
Speaker 2: He's under investigation by the Bureau for his participation in
Speaker 2: the misrepresentations that were made to the Pisa Court in
Speaker 2: connection with the Russia Gate stuff, and yet he gets
Speaker 2: brought in to do an analysis of Russian disinformation as
Speaker 2: it affects as it may affect the election. So what
Speaker 2: Grassley says in a letter is we never asked for
Speaker 2: a briefing, and this stuff wasn't Russian disinformation.
Speaker 6: These were bank records.
Speaker 2: There was no reason to think any of this stuff
Speaker 2: was coming from the Kremlin. And as I've pointed out
Speaker 2: a number of times, the fact that something even if
Speaker 2: it is disinformation or information that's provided by the Russians,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make it inaccurate.
Speaker 6: Sometimes the Russians.
Speaker 2: Actually leaked through information if they think it could put
Speaker 2: somebody in a bad light. So the whole thing was
Speaker 2: complete bs. But the Democrats use the fact that the
Speaker 2: FBI collaborated with them in doing a writing an analysis
Speaker 2: up that talked about Russian interference in the election and
Speaker 2: did it particularly in the context of Biden and Ukraine.
Speaker 2: And then what the Democrats did was they began to
Speaker 2: that to the Washington Post and all the usual suspects,
Speaker 2: and wella, we have a you know, a gaslight situation
Speaker 2: where they've created this story that this is all Russian disinformation.
Speaker 2: And at roughly the same time when all this is
Speaker 2: going on, we now know that Anthony Blincoln, who was
Speaker 2: then a Biden campaign official, is working with Mike Morell
Speaker 2: and these other Clapper and Brennan and these former Obama
Speaker 2: intelligence officials, you know, national security officials, and they crank
Speaker 2: out the letter that's fifty one of them sign off
Speaker 2: on saying that we're not saying that we have any
Speaker 2: of the inside facts here, but this sure looks like
Speaker 2: Russian disinformation, which Biden then a couple of days later
Speaker 2: when they have the debate with Trump, like I think
Speaker 2: it was the last of the debates between Trump and Biden,
Speaker 2: when Trump raised the Biden evidence, Biden used the letter
Speaker 2: from the fifty one officials saying that it was Russian disinformation,
Speaker 2: like conclusively saying four former CIA directors have said this
Speaker 2: is Russian disinformation. So to me, the big issue here
Speaker 2: is not just what Zuckerberg said, which is remarkable on
Speaker 2: its face, but if you trace what happened here, this
Speaker 2: is an elaborate fraud conspiracy, and if it had been pulled,
Speaker 2: if Republicans had even tried to pull it off, it
Speaker 2: would be the scandal of the century.
Speaker 6: Now, I think.
Speaker 2: It's basically being dismissed as the old news. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: because the Trump campaign's not competent enough to make a
Speaker 2: big to do with this. Maybe it's because the media
Speaker 2: just won't let it be a story. But I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the most scandless things I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: I agree, if you have a laptop that has videos
Speaker 3: of an own drug addict chopping up some cocaon a mirror.
Speaker 3: Ockham's razor says, that's Hunter's a razor. Andy. It's kind
Speaker 3: a pleasure. You're talking to you as usual. We learn
Speaker 3: so much, and we'll talk to you again down the
Speaker 3: road again when something legal that we don't like or
Speaker 3: is annoying or frightening happens. So I have a good liberty, will.
Speaker 6: Have a great, weaken great weekend.
Speaker 3: Before we go. And we got a couple of other things.
Speaker 3: And yes, that's the second time I've said before we go.
Speaker 3: It's almost like I got to be somewhere. I don't
Speaker 3: you know. I got a lunch, I got the gym.
Speaker 3: We got a nice weekend ahead of me, three days
Speaker 3: in which the wife will put me to doing various
Speaker 3: things around the house. She's decided that there should be
Speaker 3: more stones in the front yard. We got three big
Speaker 3: stones last week, and then she cogitated a while and
Speaker 3: sort of study them the way an artist does when
Speaker 3: he steps back from his canvas to see how it's working.
Speaker 3: She's decided that we need more geological formations in there,
Speaker 3: which is my lot in life to haul stones. If
Speaker 3: I was the sort of person who enjoyed gaming on
Speaker 3: the Internet, and I do. And if I was the
Speaker 3: sort of person who also did things like fantasy football,
Speaker 3: and I don't, i'd be right up there with Ricochet's
Speaker 3: new fantasy football league. Luckily, Charlie Cook is a great
Speaker 3: fan of football and as a guy, can tell us
Speaker 3: what it's all about and encourage people to sign up
Speaker 3: and play. Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the exact details of this and how
Speaker 5: it's going to be executed still need working out, and
Speaker 5: we'll be very soon. But what is more important is
Speaker 5: who wants to do it. If you want to do
Speaker 5: it and you're a member at Ricochet, and there do
Speaker 5: seem to be a whole bunch of people, I just
Speaker 5: don't want anyonet to be left out. This is why
Speaker 5: we've mentioned it a couple of times and we pinned
Speaker 5: it on Ricochet and we will soon be sending out
Speaker 5: messages subliminally to all Ricochet members just to say football, football, football, football,
Speaker 5: If you want in say so. There's a little logo
Speaker 5: icon graphic on the right hand side of the site
Speaker 5: at the moment, which has a football picture and says
Speaker 5: Ricochet Fantasy Football and if you are interested, click it
Speaker 5: and register your interest. And the details will be forthcoming
Speaker 5: this week.
Speaker 3: And if you're thinking, what exactly is a center right
Speaker 3: political side doing talking about football and fantasy football, it's
Speaker 3: because Ricochet is so much more than just chattering upon politics.
Speaker 3: If you go to the member feed, which does cost
Speaker 3: a little bit, yeah, not a lot, but it's worth it,
Speaker 3: you will find mean the sites that are free, they're
Speaker 3: worth every penny Ricochet. We're talking old time radio, new
Speaker 3: time music, meme dumbs, literature, fiction also, got means just
Speaker 3: there's so much going on in the member feed, you
Speaker 3: ought to check it out. One of the things we've
Speaker 3: been talking about though, in the member is this question
Speaker 3: that's vexing me. And I'll end with this. That's the
Speaker 3: third time I mentioned we're ending. It's anagging question. I
Speaker 3: know it probably is ridiculous to bring it up, but
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask you guys and give you both a
Speaker 3: shot at this. Who's running the country right now?
Speaker 1: You can tell by our silence we have no idea
Speaker 1: who's running the country right serious question. I worry that
Speaker 1: it's some intern, or somewhat more seriously, that it's the
Speaker 1: chief of staff whose name I don't even remember right now,
Speaker 1: or that Susan Rice has been the shadow president from
Speaker 1: perhaps the very beginning. I have no idea, but I
Speaker 1: should hope we find out someday. It would be nice to.
Speaker 3: Know, you know.
Speaker 5: I was asked this a lot before Joe Biden disappeared
Speaker 5: from public view, when he seemed seen island.
Speaker 6: Indolent.
Speaker 5: I was asked who was running the country, And usually
Speaker 5: the question came in connection with a theory that the
Speaker 5: person asking me had you had a particular figure in mind.
Speaker 5: Is it Barack Obama? Is it Susan Rice? And my
Speaker 5: answer then is the same as it is now, which is,
Speaker 5: if you understand how the left works, the answer to
Speaker 5: the question is the progressive blob. The progressive blob is
Speaker 5: running the country. They are not reliant upon a president
Speaker 5: in the way that the Constitution envisions a president, which
Speaker 5: is a person who has control over the executive branch,
Speaker 5: not over legislation, not over the Supreme Court, but over
Speaker 5: the executive branch. This is another reason, incidentally, why they're
Speaker 5: so horrified by the idea of the executive being able
Speaker 5: to control all aspects of the executive branch, including these
Speaker 5: supposedly free floating institutions. The Department of Justice, and the FBI,
Speaker 5: the fourth branch of government that we are supposed to have.
Speaker 5: We don't have that, but in their estimation, it works
Speaker 5: much better if we have that set up. Because the
Speaker 5: Progressive Blob is this sort of permanent, lumbering, self executing
Speaker 5: thing that knows that its basic task in the world
Speaker 5: is to advance progressive policy in the prospects of progressive politicians.
Speaker 5: And they don't need Joe Biden to be active for
Speaker 5: that to work. They don't need Kamala Harris to be
Speaker 5: able to speak English or have any ideas for that
Speaker 5: to work. On the Republican side, because this exists, you
Speaker 5: actually do need someone and I'm afraid Trump is not
Speaker 5: this person, as the last administration showed. You actually do
Speaker 5: need somebody like a desantist in Florida who is full
Speaker 5: of vigor and ideas and resolve, who is going to
Speaker 5: through his own sheer force of character, make the executive
Speaker 5: branch to do what the elected head of that executive
Speaker 5: branch wants. So the answer is the Progressive Blob is
Speaker 5: how democratic administrations work, and they're not suffering from the
Speaker 5: lack of Joe Biden right now because everything's running on autopilot.
Speaker 1: Can offer you one last observation from a traveler, Believe
Speaker 1: it or not. Here in Kubik there is the Monument
Speaker 1: to the Unknown Bureaucrat. I am not making that up
Speaker 1: and our listeners won't be able to see this, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to show it to you guys here if
Speaker 1: I can. Yeah, there it is, and if listen, just
Speaker 1: look it up. It's the solid stone block that goes
Speaker 1: down about the waste of a bureaucrat, and I think
Speaker 1: it couldn't be any more perfect than it is. I
Speaker 1: encourage listeners to google the Monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat.
Speaker 1: It's a perfect, if unintended I think, an ironic a
Speaker 1: description of what Charlie describes, which is the blob that
Speaker 1: actually runs the country, that is impervious to outside pressure
Speaker 1: or erosion or lightening strikes, whatever metaphor you want.
Speaker 3: That art is a work of staggering genius. I heartily
Speaker 3: endorse it, and I think that it should be put
Speaker 3: up outside of every state capital in this great country
Speaker 3: of ours. Stephen, as long as you're in Reika vicdumuitzevor
Speaker 3: go down to the bar when you do and have
Speaker 3: a Reika r e Yka it is the best Icelandic vodica.
Speaker 3: I think they filter it through lava rock or something
Speaker 3: like that. You can really taste the lava, but it's
Speaker 3: really good. Charles, I can offer you no advice for
Speaker 3: Florida cocktails except to say that I hope you have
Speaker 3: one on this great week. And of course, as an American,
Speaker 3: you're going to be grilling. I'm going to be grilling.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're going to be doing, Steven
Speaker 3: out there when it comes to laborty, but I hope
Speaker 3: somebody can supply with hot dogs, ribs, beef, hamburgers and
Speaker 3: the rest of the staples. Happy long weekend and puffing
Speaker 3: and puffing that's right, that's right. If you have some
Speaker 3: puffin thyroid on a toothpick or something like that, I'm
Speaker 3: sure that that's gormand enough. Be lieve you with whatever
Speaker 3: song our producer says, And we thank you for listening
Speaker 3: to us. We enjoin you to give us good reviews
Speaker 3: at Apple iTunes, and we will see everybody in the
Speaker 3: comments where why of course Ricochet dot com Next week, guys,
Speaker 3: have a good weekend.
Speaker 5: All right, Thanks James.
Speaker 1: Next week