Speaker 1: Well whiskey coming, Take pain, money, Oh don't.
Speaker 2: From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet
Speaker 2: dot Com. This is the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with
Speaker 2: your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International
Speaker 2: Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Speaker 1: Cat gotta giving.
Speaker 3: Let that whiskey bloat when you're being in love, down
Speaker 3: and low. Welcome everyone to this really really super special
Speaker 3: edition of They're all special of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour.
Speaker 3: We're all drinking whiskey even though we're in different time
Speaker 3: zones across the world yet again. John is in an
Speaker 3: undisclosed bunker in Washington, d C. Steve is on a
Speaker 3: float in the middle of some Norwegian fume.
Speaker 1: Ord j Ord, and I am.
Speaker 3: Trying to rescue my mouse from Nixy, who keeps I
Speaker 3: have cats playing on the YouTube video on another screen
Speaker 3: to try to keep her occupied, but it's not working.
Speaker 3: But you know, she's not leaving my side because she's
Speaker 3: really worried about those Haitians. So how are you guys today?
Speaker 1: I think we should.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, John, I was gonna say, to keep the
Speaker 4: cat occupied, you should just start showing it pictures of
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: She hates Taylor Swift. She thinks Taylor Swift sounds worse
Speaker 3: and when she's screaming in the middle of the night
Speaker 3: in her cat language. So but she has good taste,
Speaker 3: that's why. So it's been quite a week yet again,
Speaker 3: and when when the Three Whiskey Happy Hour finally managed
Speaker 3: to get together, we actually really like each other, we do.
Speaker 3: It just seems like we can never find a time
Speaker 3: that works out for everybody. We are coming very late
Speaker 3: to debate. Punditry Steve said, it's old news. John wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about it. I said, I'm splitting the baby
Speaker 3: because we're not going to talk about the debate. I
Speaker 3: do believe that one's been beat to death, that poor horse.
Speaker 3: But it is now five six days after the debate,
Speaker 3: and we're seeing some weird fallout, weirder than ever. A
Speaker 3: people say debates rarely matter. Nineteen sixty the debate with
Speaker 3: Trump and Biden probably was very significant, but not because
Speaker 3: of the topics of the debate, shall we say, but
Speaker 3: simply because it produced an undeniable truth that Biden was
Speaker 3: senile and that he had been seen now for a
Speaker 3: while and all the people who told us that he
Speaker 3: wasn't we're lying to us. And then, of course they
Speaker 3: flipped quite quickly, as quickly as what's the name of
Speaker 3: that country in nineteen eighty four when the when the
Speaker 3: war changes sides anyway Oceana And so you know, we've
Speaker 3: seen plenty of memes about Joe Scarborough and everybody else
Speaker 3: saying that Biden had to go, that debate mattered. Did
Speaker 3: this debate matter? Well, we were told, kamala ie, we
Speaker 3: were told Trump did terribly because he took the bait
Speaker 3: and kind of rambled, Except that, as we all know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what the way Trump is. He takes
Speaker 3: the bait. He's easily offended by what people say about him,
Speaker 3: and he rambles. And people have known that since Trump
Speaker 3: first ran, starting in twenty fifteen, right, I mean, is
Speaker 3: that anything? Was that news to anybody?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, I can't. I mean I missed the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It was three am over here.
Speaker 5: But look, I so all I heard about it is
Speaker 5: not surprised me at all. All these articles you read
Speaker 5: every day by smart people saying here's what Trump must
Speaker 5: do to win are completely irrelevant.
Speaker 1: He's either gonna do what he wants to do or
Speaker 1: he's not. He's not going to take our advice. But
Speaker 1: that leads to point too.
Speaker 5: I think John you said in a text chat debates
Speaker 5: don't matter except when Joe Biden is one of the contestants.
Speaker 5: But well, I mean there's a few moments that may
Speaker 5: have been important, like Gerald Ford liberating Poland in nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy six.
Speaker 1: Things that creates some legs.
Speaker 5: Reagan's age problem in Debate one in eighty four, which
Speaker 5: then he squashed in the second debate, Nixon Kennedy. It's
Speaker 5: kind of a legend. I think that people say, the
Speaker 5: people listen on radio thought Nixon one, but the people
Speaker 5: who watchot Kennedy one. I think that's actually probably an
Speaker 5: urban legend that no one will throw aside. But the
Speaker 5: empirical social science literature says the debates really do not
Speaker 5: affect the outcome, and I think you can see it here.
Speaker 5: And the problem is who judges these debates. The professional
Speaker 5: pundit class, political scientists. They raided them the way they
Speaker 5: were created student papers, and that's not who what. Sixty
Speaker 5: seven million people watched it, according to ratings, and a
Speaker 5: lot of people watch it.
Speaker 1: They don't score it like we do.
Speaker 5: They they look at the people and you know what
Speaker 5: you hear is and they had some focus groups and
Speaker 5: they said, you know, Harris didn't really give any answers.
Speaker 5: You know, Trump was terrible, but Harris didn't impress me.
Speaker 5: And I know you want to talk about this. I
Speaker 5: think the whole cats and Dogs in Ohio thing that's
Speaker 5: got some strange legs, whether it's true or not.
Speaker 1: And we can say more about that, but that's all
Speaker 1: I have to say now to open things up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about that in just a moment, because
Speaker 3: I want to hear what John thinks. He's the one
Speaker 3: who wanted to talk about the debate.
Speaker 4: Mostly because I wanted to hear what you guys thought.
Speaker 4: I mean, I thought that Trump lost. I thought Kamala won,
Speaker 4: but it's just a matter of tactics, like winning winning
Speaker 4: one battle doesn't mean that she won the war. And
Speaker 4: there are these interesting stories I thought that came out
Speaker 4: afterwards in liberal places like the New York Times or
Speaker 4: Reuters that said that when they did focus groups of
Speaker 4: undecided voters in places like Pennsylvania after the debate, the
Speaker 4: majority decided to vote for Trump, which I find you know,
Speaker 4: amazing And the reason why is it goes to what
Speaker 4: you both have been suggesting. Everyone knows Trump. He's a
Speaker 4: you know, he's a known quantity. He acted in the
Speaker 4: debate the way he always acts, and Paris. It's a
Speaker 4: missed opportunity for her because she could have come out
Speaker 4: and said, I believe in this, this is my plan,
Speaker 4: this is what I think, instead of you know, I
Speaker 4: think she almost like gave in too much to her
Speaker 4: own media stories, which was bake Trump, make him look
Speaker 4: crazy and then he'll lose votes and you won't have
Speaker 4: to do anything. It was what is the media is
Speaker 4: telling you to do? But I think for undecided voters
Speaker 4: that's the exact rotten thing to do. So she missed
Speaker 4: a chance to see to give her plan for the economy.
Speaker 4: And so I've been spending time in Philadelphia these last
Speaker 4: few days. By the way, she was interesting to see
Speaker 4: campaign ads again, I find them very interesting. But my
Speaker 4: local TV news station in Philadelphia had a one on
Speaker 4: one exclusive interview with Kamala Harris yesterday, her first interview
Speaker 4: by herself for the media, and they picked the local
Speaker 4: media market. You know a guy, the interviewer, you know,
Speaker 4: he's known in Philadelphia, but he's not known nationally. And
Speaker 4: he asked her, what's your plan for the economy. You know,
Speaker 4: people say it's tough now with the Flichy Stone, And
Speaker 4: she repeated the same story about being raised by her mother,
Speaker 4: who was a small businesswoman apparently, and never detailed her
Speaker 4: plan to get inflation down and to get the economy
Speaker 4: back on track. It's so I think they're engaged. They're
Speaker 4: maybe solidifying their their farthest base, but they are not.
Speaker 4: The Democrats are not reaching out to middle of the
Speaker 4: road under side of voters at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I have one more thought about that's the whole thing,
Speaker 5: which is here's something that Trump didn't do that I
Speaker 5: think the Harris people were trying to base him into.
Speaker 5: Remember the Harris team wanted live mic for the whole
Speaker 5: debate and not the first whether you might cut off
Speaker 5: like the CNN debate.
Speaker 1: And I think what they were hoping was they could.
Speaker 5: Bate Trump into being rude and nasty and saying something
Speaker 5: really off putting about Harris, you know, call her a
Speaker 5: you know, a b.
Speaker 1: Ch or something. Right, he didn't do any of that.
Speaker 1: He didn't interrupt her. Adny Olt Ladder.
Speaker 5: Now, you know, he got caught up in the egle
Speaker 5: things and all the rest of that, but he didn't
Speaker 5: go too far. That would have been a debate moment
Speaker 5: that would have harmed Trump. I think he could not
Speaker 5: be in the same way that Joe Biden couldn't be
Speaker 5: as nasty as we know he can be when he
Speaker 5: debated Sarah Palin back in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Right, and just a couple more comments about that, and
Speaker 3: then we can we can move on. But number one,
Speaker 3: I want to say that Steve and I belonged to
Speaker 3: a group of mostly squishier Republicans than we are. I
Speaker 3: guess is the best. There's a few people that are,
Speaker 3: but one of them very I don't want to embarrass
Speaker 3: him on this. Quite prominent journalist for Professer wrote an
Speaker 3: article almost immediately the next morning saying Trump lost badly,
Speaker 3: this was a triumpher kamala blah blah blah. And I
Speaker 3: wrote very early in the day back and said, you know,
Speaker 3: I am going back to that whole Leslie Stall incident
Speaker 3: when Reagan was president. Steve, do you remember this when
Speaker 3: they were trying to insinuate that Reagan when he was
Speaker 3: up for reelection eighty four would would get rid of
Speaker 3: Social Security, would eliminate Social Security or at least cut
Speaker 3: benefits to seniors. And they did this whole big leslie
Speaker 3: Stall did this whole big, you know, expose. But what
Speaker 3: she did was she went to senior citizen centers for footage,
Speaker 3: and she she went, you know, she did all this
Speaker 3: footage that made it look like the Reagan administration was
Speaker 3: just so pro old people. And even though the narrative
Speaker 3: over the top was you know, anti reg and he
Speaker 3: hates you know, he's going to make old people die
Speaker 3: in the streets of hunger and so on. But the photos,
Speaker 3: the visuals were all positive. And I don't remember if
Speaker 3: it was d for somebody else looked at it and said,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what a great video. And it turned
Speaker 3: out when they showed the video to people without the
Speaker 3: sound on, it was one hundred percent pro.
Speaker 4: So back to the debate.
Speaker 3: Do you remember that, Steve, It was kind of a
Speaker 3: legend a while.
Speaker 1: But I don't know any of that.
Speaker 5: But I remember something similar to bears on the point
Speaker 5: which we have time, I'll tell you, but go ahead.
Speaker 3: All I was going to say is a couple of days.
Speaker 3: My argument was, if you're actually not paying a whole
Speaker 3: lot of attention, which you know, even I do this
Speaker 3: sometimes because it's so awful watching those things. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm doing other stuff. I'm looking at the TV now
Speaker 3: and then, and Kamala Harris is just making the nastiest faces.
Speaker 3: She just looks like she's, you know, applying for the
Speaker 3: role of Crouella Deville, you know, auditioning for the role
Speaker 3: of Kuelaville in one hundred and one Dalmatians, and she,
Speaker 3: you know, they're exaggerated that it's just awful. And so
Speaker 3: a couple of days after I wrote that, Miranda Devine
Speaker 3: and The New York Post said the many ugly faces
Speaker 3: of Kamala Harris, and I think that that probably played
Speaker 3: a role. I'm overstating it a bit, however, if you
Speaker 3: think about Kamala's smug, nasty, refusing to answer any questions,
Speaker 3: you know, being called out, and then you add to
Speaker 3: that the it's it's been beat to death as well,
Speaker 3: the bias of ABC, the bias of the moderators, the
Speaker 3: bias of the questions that were asked, the bias of
Speaker 3: them interrupting, the bias of them fact checking Trump usually wrongly,
Speaker 3: but never fact checking her people Trump has done as
Speaker 3: well as he has because he has been persecuted on
Speaker 3: so many sides by the DOJ, by the media, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I think that the reason that am Alam ding Dong
Speaker 3: got no bounce is because it wasn't from the point
Speaker 3: of view of the political triumph. It wasn't a political triumph.
Speaker 3: You can't say she won the debate because it wasn't
Speaker 3: a debate. I mean, geez, wait, if this is what
Speaker 3: we actually call a debate, how about we just let
Speaker 3: them get up there like Lincoln and Douglas did. Give them,
Speaker 3: give them two and a half hours, no moderator, you
Speaker 3: get this much, you get this much, you get this much,
Speaker 3: rejoined her. Next time, we do it the opposite for
Speaker 3: seven times. How many of them you think he could
Speaker 3: do Trump could do it. Trump could do it. He
Speaker 3: could talk for an hour.
Speaker 1: I mean, now here's Chryla Guild.
Speaker 5: That point is, remember that there are a lot of Americans,
Speaker 5: a lot of voters who really have paid no attention
Speaker 5: to Harris.
Speaker 1: They're still getting to know who she is. And if
Speaker 1: they watched it, I think they didn't like what they saw.
Speaker 1: They're used to.
Speaker 5: As you said this, we know Trump's grumpy face and
Speaker 5: people are used to it, by the way. I think
Speaker 5: it's one of the things that makes him look commanding
Speaker 5: to people her They're like, uh, I don't know, but again,
Speaker 5: but that's.
Speaker 1: Importance of image of these things.
Speaker 5: And you know, you opened the door to this, lou
Speaker 5: Creesia by mentioning eighty four quick quick story, Yeah, you
Speaker 5: were in trouble here. Not an analogy, but a point.
Speaker 5: You remember the movie The Day After from the Fall
Speaker 5: of eighty three about it was the World War three.
Speaker 5: That was an out and out anti Reagan propaganda movie.
Speaker 5: And you know, I went through all the details of
Speaker 5: this and research. They were very worried about it, and
Speaker 5: it got by the way Super Bowl ratings in terms
Speaker 5: of viewerships, like a hundred million people watched it in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty three, and you know, Reagan got to pre
Speaker 5: screen it and his team and they thought, all this
Speaker 5: is this thing is really bad.
Speaker 1: It's really devastating. It's got very a huge emotional impact.
Speaker 5: But because it was so controversial, ABC practically gave away ads,
Speaker 5: and when it was broadcast there were ads and you
Speaker 5: know in me Queen the Gloom and Doom and the
Speaker 5: end of the world that's Pepperidge Farms remembers and it
Speaker 5: was always sort of happy American, you know, buy bread
Speaker 5: and you know, by a Chevrolet truck. And they said,
Speaker 5: when we watched it broadcast, we thought, well, and that's
Speaker 5: going to remind people what the real world really still is.
Speaker 1: And it totally blunted the impact of it.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, this is actually setting up I think
Speaker 5: about cats and dogs in Ohio. But still I think
Speaker 5: this is why it's important how these things look more
Speaker 5: than what is said.
Speaker 3: I think that that's true again because the voters were
Speaker 3: talking about it are not people like us. They're not
Speaker 3: people who live and breathe politics, and so of the
Speaker 3: all of the input makes a difference. You and I
Speaker 3: John probably don't watch a debate and pay too much
Speaker 3: attention to visuals like the fact that Trump looks serious,
Speaker 3: he might look grumpy. I heard more than one person
Speaker 3: comment that talking to someone who watched the debate hadn't
Speaker 3: made up their mind that when Trump looked angry, it
Speaker 3: didn't upset them because they were angry too. They're angry
Speaker 3: about the price of their groceries. They're angry about the
Speaker 3: fact that, you know, gas costs more and living costs more,
Speaker 3: their wages haven't gone up accordingly, there are angry about,
Speaker 3: you know, migrants moving. We'll move on to that in
Speaker 3: just a second. Uh So, when when Trump looks angry
Speaker 3: while while Hamam and Ding Dong sitting there looking smug
Speaker 3: and and this whole empathy, I'm the only one who
Speaker 3: really cares about you that If any politician, even a Republican,
Speaker 3: says that to me, I'm not voting for him because
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in them caring about me. I'm interested
Speaker 3: in them fixing the country. So we're gonna move on
Speaker 3: to We may as well move on to talk about
Speaker 3: Haiti Haitian immigrants, because Nixie's asked.
Speaker 1: How well I have.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, a terrible joke came to my mind during the
Speaker 4: debate about that, Can I tell it? Yes? So, being Korean,
Speaker 4: when I heard they were talking about some immigrant group
Speaker 4: eating dogs, I was so glad when I heard it
Speaker 4: was Haitians and not Koreans, being from people who has
Speaker 4: been accused of eating dogs and having been a Korea
Speaker 4: we once didn't I starting to sound like job dogs,
Speaker 4: love them, don't eat them anymore. That's somebody else.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, welcome back, everybody. I want to start off
Speaker 3: actually with not a not a happy story about the
Speaker 3: guy whose son was in fact killed by a Haitian immigrant,
Speaker 3: an eleven year old boy, and the dad this is
Speaker 3: how the left can be so ooh, I don't even
Speaker 3: have a right word for it. I mean, this mindset
Speaker 3: is not something I can wrap my own brain around.
Speaker 3: The father gets on, gets in public and says, I
Speaker 3: wish that my son had been killed by a sixty
Speaker 3: year old white man. And yeah, because he says that
Speaker 3: Trump and others are now using his son, making political
Speaker 3: hay out of his death to bash poor, poor immigrants,
Speaker 3: poor Haitian and other immigrants, and that's why we should
Speaker 3: been killed by a sixty year old white man. If
Speaker 3: you think that through the corruption of the mind of
Speaker 3: the left is so far gone that I don't know
Speaker 3: how we come back from that. Never mind that logically
Speaker 3: that makes no sense in the sense that, you know,
Speaker 3: why wasn't his son killed by a six year old
Speaker 3: white man, because generally speaking, as a matter of a
Speaker 3: relative to the population, they don't do that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: They're not barbarians.
Speaker 5: Well, look, first of all, this guy's probably well he's
Speaker 5: probably a partisan democrat and he maybe even you know,
Speaker 5: maybe he knows somebody who's part of the democratic establishment.
Speaker 1: So all right, and he can make news doing it.
Speaker 3: But to say it, I couldn't say something like that
Speaker 3: if you held a gun to my head.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, but some people, my kids.
Speaker 5: Well but here's what the media didn't do is remember
Speaker 5: the accident wasn't just this one kid car. It was
Speaker 5: a school bus the person hit, and there are a
Speaker 5: lot of kids injured. But what about their parents?
Speaker 1: What do they think? Do they agree with Trump about
Speaker 1: this or not? But they won't ask that question.
Speaker 5: In other words, this guy's not the only person who
Speaker 5: had someone injured by any legal immigrant crashing into the bus.
Speaker 5: And of course what interesting me about this whole thing is,
Speaker 5: at first, I you know, a whole cats and box thing.
Speaker 5: We can I have one thing to say about it.
Speaker 5: But the shocking thing to me was, wait a minute,
Speaker 5: twenty thousand Haitian immigrants were sent to a town of
Speaker 5: sixty five thousand.
Speaker 1: People in Ohio.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a staggering number. From anywhere. It could
Speaker 5: be twenty thousand Germans, it could be twenty thousand Frenchmen.
Speaker 5: I don't care that's a huge number, an influx of
Speaker 5: people who are you know, income, don't know the language,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And you think this is not going to
Speaker 5: cause difficulties. And that's the astounding thing. And I think
Speaker 5: this is what so many people are reacting to.
Speaker 3: John.
Speaker 4: What I don't understand is how the federal government decided
Speaker 4: to move everybody there. So yeah, seems to me that
Speaker 4: in order to do that, you'd have to have the
Speaker 4: cooperation of the city. Right, that's because where would do
Speaker 4: people stay, where would they go to work? I mean,
Speaker 4: I assume that it's Youngstown, Ohio, right, Springfield, Ohio. It's
Speaker 4: not like they got up and just were you know,
Speaker 4: unwillingly deluged by immigrants. I bet there's some kind of
Speaker 4: sanctuary city like San Francisco, and probably agrees. So that
Speaker 4: just goes to my point that Steve saying that, you know,
Speaker 4: this is probably the reaction of I mean, a father's
Speaker 4: totally breathed. Of course, he's sympathized with him, and maybe
Speaker 4: he wouldn't say or think this, you know, when you know,
Speaker 4: you know, years from now, but in the midst of it,
Speaker 4: maybe he's you know, part of as Steve said, the
Speaker 4: Democratic community to which this is happening, and he wants
Speaker 4: to blame someone in a partisan way. He's trying to
Speaker 4: blame Trump for it, even though you can't.
Speaker 3: So I think that's that's the bigger, a more stark
Speaker 3: picture of the real problem, kind of what you guys
Speaker 3: have both been saying, And that is the whole thing
Speaker 3: with eating cats and dogs. We know that Haitians do that.
Speaker 3: We know that in Haiti that might be the difference
Speaker 3: between starvation and not start not starving to death.
Speaker 4: You know, it might be.
Speaker 3: Haiti's just a you can't even call it a third
Speaker 3: world word that Trump often uses. It's much much worse
Speaker 3: than that. And anybody from Haiti who was able to
Speaker 3: contribute anything to that god awful place has pretty much left.
Speaker 3: The people they're bringing in now are just you know,
Speaker 3: they're and they're bringing them in. As you pointed out, John,
Speaker 3: my understanding, it's hard to tell nowadays, is that that's
Speaker 3: actually a fairly republican, small Midwestern town, and this was
Speaker 3: just one of those incredibly cynical move by the Biden
Speaker 3: administration to force Haitians on this town. You know, remember
Speaker 3: the city manager supposedly denies that any of that stuff
Speaker 3: is happening. So my guess is that the city manager
Speaker 3: at least was complicit in it in the way you argued.
Speaker 3: But back to the whole idea that I've never seen
Speaker 3: the left push back as hard as they have on
Speaker 3: this whole Haitian thing. And it's not just the left,
Speaker 3: it's people all the way to the squishy middle of
Speaker 3: the right saying, oh, this is just not true. This
Speaker 3: is just not true. In some ways, A, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if it's true or not, because we know that
Speaker 3: if they're not actually eating cats and dogs, they're capable
Speaker 3: of it. A And B the things they do in
Speaker 3: many ways are worse the way they destroy communities.
Speaker 1: Right, go ahead, Steve, Well, it's an alien culture.
Speaker 5: And by the way, there is a video that Elon
Speaker 5: Musk posted of a young black lady who is the
Speaker 5: daughter of a Haitian immigrant, and she.
Speaker 1: Says, look, yeah, sixty million view was as of this morning,
Speaker 1: kind of what I just said.
Speaker 5: Well, she said it is true about it, says, I
Speaker 5: don't know, you know, if it's happening, but it certainly
Speaker 5: is true of the Haitian culture.
Speaker 1: And he said, what you just said.
Speaker 5: The Lucretia, which was Look, it's a matter of survival
Speaker 5: and Haiti for a lot of people. So but he says,
Speaker 5: you know they do practice voodoo and Haiti. This is
Speaker 5: not a you know, a joke. And I think what's
Speaker 5: going on here is I doubt that it's true to
Speaker 5: any but I don't know.
Speaker 4: In Supreme Court lore, there's a Supreme Court case about
Speaker 4: this called City Huffi Leah. Yes, because remember because they
Speaker 4: tried to they tried de band Santaria and so the
Speaker 4: problem was you're not allowed to stop religious practices. So
Speaker 4: this Remember the city said you basically can't kill animals,
Speaker 4: but there's an exception for food.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean it's like in the Supreme Court reports.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's right, it's true that there's animal sacrifice.
Speaker 5: And well, first of all, just once again though, notice
Speaker 5: the medium outpractice. Oh, the city manager says it's not true. Normally,
Speaker 5: the reporters that there's a story, they go investigate for themselves.
Speaker 5: There's no curiosity to do that.
Speaker 1: But I think it's.
Speaker 3: Steve Can I just for one moment go back and say,
Speaker 3: why was he calling the city manager? Why on earth
Speaker 3: was that hack of a moderator calling the city manager.
Speaker 3: Were they plant Were they expecting that?
Speaker 5: I mean, anyway, go ahead, Well, if the manager said
Speaker 5: something else, you wouldn't have heard about it.
Speaker 1: Probably. Look, I mean, what is the I have to say?
Speaker 1: This is say, in an odd way, a triumph.
Speaker 5: Of turning postmodern leftism against them. What are the postmodern
Speaker 5: left to say? There's no truth, There's only what is
Speaker 5: created by our images and words and you know, cultural depictions.
Speaker 5: And so the fact that the whole eating cats memes
Speaker 5: thing has caught on around the country means the left
Speaker 5: has lost control of the narrative. And that's why they're
Speaker 5: so angry about and pushing back so hard at it.
Speaker 5: And I think that's why it's white has caught on,
Speaker 5: is because people don't like what's happened, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's like, I don't know, king you.
Speaker 4: Can see though it would have been better if you'd
Speaker 4: never mentioned it though, And one thing I didn't which
Speaker 4: worried me was that it turns it seems like the
Speaker 4: story comes from this crazy person who hangs around with Laura.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, who's a.
Speaker 4: Nine to eleven denier and all this stuff. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: this is this is the thing I don't like about
Speaker 4: Trump is you know, you heard some crazy story and
Speaker 4: somehow immediately gets in the presidential debate. And I bet
Speaker 4: you know, fifteen twenty years from now, when we look
Speaker 4: back on debates and you're going on, oh, Kennedy, Nixon
Speaker 4: remember or Reagan? We remember, you know, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: Reagan remember about you know that line about not using
Speaker 4: his you know, Mondale's youth against him. I bet the
Speaker 4: only thing we're gonna remember from this debate was that
Speaker 4: they talked about eating pets.
Speaker 3: Well, but here's the funny thing, John. I got up
Speaker 3: that morning Tuesday morning, the morning of the debate, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's five o'clock in the morning, and I'm
Speaker 3: brain dead, and so so I check my email. I
Speaker 3: go to X and I see all these cat memes
Speaker 3: with you know, Trump carrying these adorable little kids. I'm like,
Speaker 3: what the hell is this? And but you know, then
Speaker 3: I go to work and I'm busy, and then then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, finally I say, I gotta feel
Speaker 3: so So the story was out there like Tuesday morning,
Speaker 3: and it was so viral that by Tuesday night, it
Speaker 3: wasn't Trump bringing this up. It was already like this huge,
Speaker 3: big thing that he was just responding to. And that's
Speaker 3: why I say, even the moderator called up the city
Speaker 3: manager in Springfield to find because it was it was
Speaker 3: such a thing that happened so quickly, and all these
Speaker 3: clever people out there putting together these memes with Trump,
Speaker 3: you know, rescuing baby ducklings and kittens and puppies. They
Speaker 3: were awesome, even if it wasn't true. I was just
Speaker 3: loving it. So all I'm saying about that is it's
Speaker 3: not that I disagree with you, John, but it actually
Speaker 3: was a huge story before Trump said anything, at least
Speaker 3: in certain weird circles, I suppose, like the ones I
Speaker 3: run in. I do have to say that I thought
Speaker 3: my own meme, which was not at all ai or
Speaker 3: you know, photoshopped, was a picture of Nixy, my kitten
Speaker 3: over my my statue of Saint Michael. She was sitting
Speaker 3: on the piano and the statue of Saint Michael's on
Speaker 3: the piano, and it says Saint Michael protect her from
Speaker 3: the wickedness and snares of barbarians welcomed into this country
Speaker 3: by Harrison Biden. And it got it was it was
Speaker 3: well received let me just say John, it was well
Speaker 3: received anyway. So I suppose we beat that subject to death,
Speaker 3: not not for purposes of animal sacrifice, and I'll take
Speaker 3: a look break well again, Welcome back everybody. I do
Speaker 3: want to talk to John quickly and get Steve's thoughts
Speaker 3: on it as well. Last week, Steve, John and I
Speaker 3: had a discussion about the whole Jack Smith case against
Speaker 3: Trump and John confessed, which, by the way, you got
Speaker 3: some comments. I got some comments, I got some emails
Speaker 3: saying I'm glad to see John's finally coming around and
Speaker 3: seeing the tews some things out there. But confess to
Speaker 3: a little bit of embarrassment on the behalf of the
Speaker 3: at least some of the people at the top of
Speaker 3: the DOJ for you know, not if nothing else. And
Speaker 3: I don't want to put words in your mouth John,
Speaker 3: not recognizing how these things looked. So I want to
Speaker 3: ask you if a you heard or watched Garland's address
Speaker 3: and be what you thought of it.
Speaker 4: I didn't watch it, but I read it. And so
Speaker 4: this was a Lucretie is referring to as a eah
Speaker 4: Garland gave to the Justice Department workforce where he said,
Speaker 4: I want to make clear that you know, we're a
Speaker 4: political and that we're not doing anything that's a response
Speaker 4: to the elections.
Speaker 1: And so it did remind me of.
Speaker 4: You know'd I've worked for judges and people of the
Speaker 4: Justice Department, and you should never have to say you're
Speaker 4: being a political and you should never have to say
Speaker 4: you're neutral.
Speaker 2: You just do it.
Speaker 4: And I've always thought when people start complaining by saying
Speaker 4: they are, it makes me immediately suspicious because you didn't
Speaker 4: have to say that at all anyway. So, you know,
Speaker 4: with I don't know, I don't know what the reader
Speaker 4: said about what I was saying last week, but you know,
Speaker 4: to extend it a little further, I think one question.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, obviously over the last few cycles
Speaker 4: there have been the leadership at Justice and the FBI
Speaker 4: that were anti Trump and went too far. You know, obviously,
Speaker 4: like the leadership at the FBI. You know, the Inspector
Speaker 4: General of the Justice Department, you know, a neutral guy
Speaker 4: who actually doesn't go around saying he's neutral all the time.
Speaker 4: He's a very guy. Horror whiz, he's quite good. He
Speaker 4: actually recommended that Comy Go be prosecuted for out of
Speaker 4: all this. But you know, the whole Steele dossier and
Speaker 4: the you know, the Cross Crux fire hurricane investigation, and
Speaker 4: that was just going too far with the Special Council investigations.
Speaker 1: I think what they did, I think.
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not saying that the Attorney General actually
Speaker 4: tried to drive Trump out of the election.
Speaker 1: I do think that the.
Speaker 4: Das, the elected partisan elected das in New York and Atlanta,
Speaker 4: are trying to do that. But what they did at
Speaker 4: the Justice Department is they showed no sensitivity to the
Speaker 4: political implications of what they were doing, which was to
Speaker 4: appoint this wild Special Care Council who has gone way
Speaker 4: too far in the most politically sensitive prosecution, perhaps in
Speaker 4: the history of the country.
Speaker 3: It's not sensitive, didn't you know what Judge Chuck Kinton said.
Speaker 3: It's not sensitive. She's not even caring about any of
Speaker 3: those political issues. This is just about the law. John.
Speaker 1: I did see.
Speaker 5: I did see some highlights on cable TV, which I
Speaker 5: can actually get on a ship over here, and I thought,
Speaker 5: and then also John, I read some of the texts.
Speaker 5: I thought the speech was utterly tone deaf, and the
Speaker 5: way it was constructed and delivered, I politically, I thought
Speaker 5: he looked terrible giving his speech, like you can't really
Speaker 5: believe this guy the fact that they And I think
Speaker 5: the other problem is, remember apparently Biden said pretty early
Speaker 5: on that he thought Frump should be prosecuted, and they
Speaker 5: waited two full years to start a case, and you know,
Speaker 5: I just I just think that they had no conception
Speaker 5: of how problematic was going to be to proceed in
Speaker 5: the party way that they did with Jack Smith and
Speaker 5: all the rest of it that has unfolded since then,
Speaker 5: and so I think that was a a net negus
Speaker 5: for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to me, it's a question of commission, like did
Speaker 4: they and I don't think that intentionally at the Justice
Speaker 4: Department again intentionally wanted to affect the election, but they
Speaker 4: affected election by their negligence by appointing guy like Jack
Speaker 4: Smith and then not supervising the guy. And he has
Speaker 4: totally botched this. I mean, there's a reason why he lost.
Speaker 4: He's been losing at the Supreme Court again and again.
Speaker 4: I mean he lost, right, he was a special counselor
Speaker 4: tried to prosecute the Governor of Virginia and he lost
Speaker 4: nine to zero at the Supreme Court, lost again on immunity.
Speaker 4: I mean he he's actually the best thing that's ever
Speaker 4: happened to presidential power, because every time he gets the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, he produces a great decision on behalf of
Speaker 4: the president.
Speaker 3: Well, remember Garland claimed that every single decision made by
Speaker 3: any of these people was made by him, not not BG,
Speaker 3: not those people, but of course anybody, any US attorney
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. Every single decision was cleared through him,
Speaker 3: Which means you have to say that all the decisions
Speaker 3: made by Jack Smith were cleared through him, right, I mean.
Speaker 4: If problem, this is his problem with the Special Council.
Speaker 4: It's actually one of the reasons why the district judge
Speaker 4: in Florida just struck down the Special Council as unconstitutional,
Speaker 4: because they say, they say both things. They you know,
Speaker 4: the constitutionally, there is no such thing as a special Council.
Speaker 4: Everything they do has to be ultimately accountable to the
Speaker 4: Attorney General and the President and President Biden, right, President Biden.
Speaker 4: But at the same time and at the same they're saying,
Speaker 4: but we've given him full independence and freedom. He can
Speaker 4: do whatever he wants. Which is why this is, which
Speaker 4: is why the district judge said this is unconstitutional. Creation
Speaker 4: of a federal position that doesn't actually exist.
Speaker 3: One more point about the gas lighting. I found in
Speaker 3: that speech and I actually was driving so I heard
Speaker 3: it was this this the hypocrisy in this that people
Speaker 3: are threatening uh d o J lawyers and FBI agents,
Speaker 3: that there's these credible threats out there, and he mentioned
Speaker 3: somebody by name, Tommy. But nobody since that's that awful
Speaker 3: address came out, has even been able to uh substantiate
Speaker 3: any actual, uh serious threats against any member of the
Speaker 3: d o J. Sure there are people like me who
Speaker 3: say all of those people should be executed for treason,
Speaker 3: but I'm not making a threat. I just think in
Speaker 3: a just world, that's why when.
Speaker 4: Threat though, yeah, but but.
Speaker 3: Every now and then then then my then Steve tugs
Speaker 3: at my heart strings and I take it back, and
Speaker 3: I didn't mean it, but uh but I think that.
Speaker 3: So the whole gas lighting business, you know, people discussed
Speaker 3: and it got plenty of coverage. But this idea that
Speaker 3: there are that there's credible threats against the dj as
Speaker 3: opposed to say to what they did to may not
Speaker 3: like him. Roger Stone, the dad who the preacher who
Speaker 3: was you know, acquitted by a jury but they showed up,
Speaker 3: The FBI showed up with a swat team in the
Speaker 3: early hours of the morning, at gunpoint. You know, it
Speaker 3: was just all the horrible things that the FBI and
Speaker 3: the dj have done to as Garland says, you know,
Speaker 3: both sides. No, of course, not both sides. Let me
Speaker 3: remind you again of the idiotic, stupid. There are not
Speaker 3: enough words for me to describe what I think about this.
Speaker 3: When Garland was asked, why do you prosecute people who
Speaker 3: are protesting at abortion clinics, but you don't prosecute people
Speaker 3: who commit van or or worse against pregnancy centers designed,
Speaker 3: you know, to help pregnant women out of doing something
Speaker 3: like having an abortion. And do you remember Garland's answer,
Speaker 3: you guys, do you remember what that idiot said?
Speaker 1: I've forgotten now I'm sure you remember.
Speaker 3: I do. He said, it's because abortion protesters protest in
Speaker 3: the day. Oh that's right, yeah, and people who destroy
Speaker 3: pregnancy centers do it at night.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was amazing, right.
Speaker 4: I have one thing that and I think this. I
Speaker 4: saw two points or broader points to make about this,
Speaker 4: you know. So first, I'm really disappointed in this kind
Speaker 4: of leadership. You see from Garland. But I think it's
Speaker 4: typical of this administration, which is this kind of a
Speaker 4: fantalization of one of the most powerful agencies in the
Speaker 4: federal government and in the country. I mean, this is
Speaker 4: an agency that, unlike other ones, they could take care
Speaker 4: of themselves. You know, they've got a national police force,
Speaker 4: the FBI, they're well armed, they have the power of
Speaker 4: investigation and prosecution. I mean they're but yet you know,
Speaker 4: they are the victims and all this that's the thing
Speaker 4: I find, you know, you know, I can't imagine like
Speaker 4: some of the great attorney generals or Jaeggar Hoover even
Speaker 4: having to have a press conference or give a speech
Speaker 4: claiming to be the victims and woe is me for
Speaker 4: being a Justice Department employer. Everybody hates me, And I
Speaker 4: mean that's that's that's not how you show leadership, is
Speaker 4: claiming victimhood. But the second point, this Tison, this is
Speaker 4: one point I thought of the debate was the media
Speaker 4: and the you know, the established government. They're doing a
Speaker 4: great job of turning Truck into the outsider. Again, here's
Speaker 4: a guy who is essentially running as an incumbent. But
Speaker 4: if the media goes so hard against them with all
Speaker 4: these fact check geting and maneuvers and bias in the
Speaker 4: way they ran the debate. And now you have the
Speaker 4: government saying, oh, Trump is you know, agitating such that
Speaker 4: we're the victims here, and they're creating the impression again
Speaker 4: that Trump is the outsider who wants change and that
Speaker 4: Harris is the one defending all the establishment institutions, which
Speaker 4: is I take it. That's not the way to win
Speaker 4: an election.
Speaker 3: It's it's can I just finished by saying that I'm
Speaker 3: still not convinced that we wouldn't have been better off
Speaker 3: with Garland on the Supreme Court. And the reason I
Speaker 3: say that is because there's obviously some real bitter, pardon me,
Speaker 3: resentment from Garland for not being on the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: that has allowed him because I remember, you guys, I
Speaker 3: remember hearing other people say he was a decent guy.
Speaker 3: He wasn't always an absolute partisan hack. But his bitterness,
Speaker 3: combined with the all of the things John just said
Speaker 3: about the Biden administration general has turned him into a
Speaker 3: truly horrible, the most horrible Attorney general ever in the
Speaker 3: sense that whatever else you can say about his stupid address,
Speaker 3: and he talked about the norms of the rule of
Speaker 3: law and so forth. Nobody has done more, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: to destroy the notion that the DOJ is actually a
Speaker 3: non partisan arm of the executive designed to be to
Speaker 3: execute the law in in a non partisan way. I mean, think,
Speaker 3: think about back during Watergate, you had the Attorney General
Speaker 3: resigning rather than carrying out what they considered to be
Speaker 3: Nixon's partisan request. You can't imagine Garland in a million
Speaker 3: years resigning over anything that Biden asked him to do.
Speaker 3: Am I wrong about that? Well?
Speaker 1: Remember Nixon?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 5: Rickinson resigned refusing to implement a partisan but lawful request. Right,
Speaker 5: That's the key point. Nixon had every right to do
Speaker 5: that legally. Look, I've wondered about that about Garland too.
Speaker 5: I thought, you know, I thought Biden was going to
Speaker 5: give us I don't know Katangi Brown Jackson is the
Speaker 5: Attorney General or someone like that.
Speaker 1: I thought that was the best case.
Speaker 5: But then as things start unfolding, I thought, you know,
Speaker 5: I wonder does he take a phone call from Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 5: the guy who kept him off the Supreme Court more
Speaker 5: than anybody else.
Speaker 1: Does he think?
Speaker 5: Does he have friendly thoughts about the Republican Senate, Republicans
Speaker 5: and the party that denied him that seat on the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court, that he was so emotional about the day
Speaker 5: he was nominated by President Obama.
Speaker 1: And you know, you could see him being bitter, and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, there's no way to know, and
Speaker 1: we may never know, but.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we've even talked about Gorsage and
Speaker 3: why he should be bitter at least on behalf of
Speaker 3: his mom and he's not right, you know, it seems
Speaker 3: not I don't know. I mean, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter because it is what it is. The history went
Speaker 3: the way it went. But I often wonder about whether
Speaker 3: or not the DJ will actually ever be able to
Speaker 3: recover from the damage that Garland has done. Whereas had
Speaker 3: he been on the Supreme Court, things would have been
Speaker 3: very different, obviously, and the and you know, we probably
Speaker 3: never would have seen Roe versus Wade and some of
Speaker 3: those other great victories come through. So it's really, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not a fair thing. But I do think that
Speaker 3: had he been on the Supreme Court, he would have
Speaker 3: been a not as bitter, but be one of nine,
Speaker 3: one of nine, and you know, his opinions, he might
Speaker 3: have joined with Kitten G when she came on and
Speaker 3: so on. But I think that the effect of his
Speaker 3: awful leftism would have been muted or else.
Speaker 1: I don't look, I might might hunch Adam john reaction.
Speaker 4: I think it's a reaction to January sixth. Actually, I
Speaker 4: think that sometimes we don't appreciate how you know, they
Speaker 4: really believe what they're saying. They really do think it
Speaker 4: was an insurrection. A Democrat, you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 4: I think Garland at this time January sixth, he's a
Speaker 4: judge on the DC Circuit, and I worked in that building.
Speaker 4: It's at third in Constitution, so you could actually see
Speaker 4: exactly from that building.
Speaker 1: To the ride.
Speaker 4: He might have been watching it from his office window.
Speaker 4: He probably saw the crowd go down by the building
Speaker 4: on its way to the Capitol. I really think they
Speaker 4: do think it was an insurrection. But the problem is
Speaker 4: they can go around and say it, but when it
Speaker 4: came down to it, they didn't have any facts or proof,
Speaker 4: and that's the thing that bothered. Like you could see,
Speaker 4: I could see having an investigation into January sixth, I
Speaker 4: could se have an investigation to Trump, but when it
Speaker 4: turns up nothing as it seems to have done so far.
Speaker 4: That's when you have to have the judgment to say
Speaker 4: this is over now, and then when the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: smacks you back pretty bad. You couldn't dropped the whole
Speaker 4: thing after that now and said the Supreme Court made
Speaker 4: us drop it. But to continue going on with these,
Speaker 4: you know, charges which don't make any that just don't
Speaker 4: fit the crime, and then politically go around saying he
Speaker 4: is an insurrectionist edition as present of Biden has been saying,
Speaker 4: I think that's that's what is undermined the rule of law.
Speaker 4: But I think it's it's an emotional response in a way.
Speaker 4: You're right, but it's not. I think it's not to
Speaker 4: his failure to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. I
Speaker 4: think that he and a lot of leaders and the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party really believe January sixth was an insurrection and
Speaker 4: they've got to punish Trump for it.
Speaker 3: You're such a nice guy, John, I don't believe any
Speaker 3: of that. I believe that they that they know it
Speaker 3: wasn't an insurrection, but just let's out pretend to be
Speaker 3: objective for a moment. There is enough evidence of irregularities.
Speaker 3: That's all I'm going to say. Enough. Excuse me, evidence
Speaker 3: of irregularity is manipulating the the fact of COVID to
Speaker 3: make sure that laws did not need to be applied
Speaker 3: or executed the way they should have been, you know,
Speaker 3: going around what the legislators had done, all of those things.
Speaker 3: We've been over a million times. But I think January
Speaker 3: sixth persecutions are all about and calling Trump an insurrectionists
Speaker 3: is that they never want to see anybody question a
Speaker 3: democratic victory again. And if that's why they're prosecuting all
Speaker 3: of these people, that's why they keep calling Trump and insurrectionists,
Speaker 3: even though there's all the evidence in the world that
Speaker 3: not only was Trump not an insurrectionist, but that there
Speaker 3: may have been at least malfeasance on the part of
Speaker 3: people like Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Department with regard
Speaker 3: to January six Leave that aside too. But if they
Speaker 3: can't convince people that you should not question our electoral system,
Speaker 3: the integrity of our elections, our democracy trademark is threatened,
Speaker 3: then people might actually demand fair and free elections going forward.
Speaker 3: And that's that I honestly believe that.
Speaker 5: But go ahead, can I offer this maybe as a
Speaker 5: last word, It's true, I mean, you know, we talked
Speaker 5: to people who talked to people in Washington in the
Speaker 5: federal government said they were shocked that there could be
Speaker 5: such a riot in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: At the capitol. If John, if those folks really.
Speaker 5: Think, oh my god, democracies and perils, an insurrection and
Speaker 5: we can't even we don't know if we can trust
Speaker 5: our own security services.
Speaker 1: That was one of the subtraining things you heard among
Speaker 1: Washington DC officials.
Speaker 5: My response is, you know, maybe you guys needed spurs
Speaker 5: around the country and be in Minneapolis during a riot,
Speaker 5: and Seattle when it's overrun, and Chaz Zone and actually
Speaker 5: see what's happening around the rest of the country, and
Speaker 5: then maybe they would have a different view of these things.
Speaker 3: I was at the twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen inauguration of
Speaker 3: Trump and walked around the entire perimeter and there was
Speaker 3: way more damage done then to Washington, d C. There
Speaker 3: were way more people out violently protesting, not more people,
Speaker 3: I guess you would say, heading to the capitol. But
Speaker 3: those same people watch in the summer of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and the George Floyd riots, them burned down churches and
Speaker 3: you know, and they weren't scared to death. Then that's
Speaker 3: why I'm very very suspicious of this idea that they
Speaker 3: really thought it was a dangerous insurrection, and that even
Speaker 3: though aoj Aoc was killed thirteen times that day, at
Speaker 3: least right that it really wasn't the danger that they
Speaker 3: that they were claiming it to be. It's you said
Speaker 3: this a long time ago, Steve. Those same bureaucrats in
Speaker 3: Washington couldn't believe that people didn't like them. They couldn't
Speaker 3: believe that that there were actually Americans out there that
Speaker 3: were against the swamp and the power that they have
Speaker 3: in DC. Anyway, I don't want to beat that one
Speaker 3: to death, but we were sort of in agreement that
Speaker 3: that Garland has all the wrong motives, were just not
Speaker 3: necessarily agreeing about what those motives are. So let's move
Speaker 3: on to our next story. I want to hear a
Speaker 3: little bit from John about his experience at the American
Speaker 3: Political Science Association. It's really funny because Steve and I
Speaker 3: are actually technically both political science professors, and I have
Speaker 3: a degree. I have two degrees in political science. Actually,
Speaker 3: you couldn't get me to the APSA if it was
Speaker 3: the last place on earth. I'll be honest with you,
Speaker 3: but John, he's a brave soul. Not only did he
Speaker 3: go to APSA not being a political scientist, but he
Speaker 3: went with the Claremont crowd, and in fact, he held
Speaker 3: a lovely party for the Claremont crowd who had been disinvited.
Speaker 3: Shall we say, well, John tell the story.
Speaker 1: No, this is great.
Speaker 4: And it was curious to me, since I'm not a
Speaker 4: political science to go to one of your conventions, which
Speaker 4: struck me much more like a trade show than an
Speaker 4: academic conference. It was at the Philadelphia Convention Center, and
Speaker 4: you walk around and they are all these rooms, dozens
Speaker 4: and dozens of rooms with people holding presentations where it's
Speaker 4: like the panelists seemed to outnumber the members in the
Speaker 4: audience with lots of powerpoints, and then an enormous like
Speaker 4: trade show hall with like all kinds of people hawking
Speaker 4: things like books and stationary and it was like it
Speaker 4: really was more like a trade show convention than an
Speaker 4: academic conference. So that was one second. Yeah, So I
Speaker 4: had not known that the Claremont Institute had been kicked
Speaker 4: out of the APSA and that this was their first return,
Speaker 4: I guess in five years, and it seemed to me
Speaker 4: that Claremont people were back and forth. You know that
Speaker 4: there's a lot of people at the panels. The panels
Speaker 4: panels are really interesting. I mean they're about topics that
Speaker 4: I think topic listeners would be interested in. Yeah, Like
Speaker 4: my panel was on the Supreme Court term, and we
Speaker 4: have really interesting discussion about administer what do all these
Speaker 4: administrative law cases mean. I spoke about the Trump immunity
Speaker 4: cases and presidential power. Now, my panel was at eight
Speaker 4: am on Saturday, so we didn't have panelists out numbering
Speaker 4: the audiences in my panel, but it could have been close.
Speaker 4: I think that the Claremont people are punishing me for
Speaker 4: my Heertrodox views, my positivest views, and sticking me in
Speaker 4: the worst slots. But the best part was that the
Speaker 4: I arranged for the Clermont is too to have a
Speaker 4: reception and then a dinner at the Union League, which
Speaker 4: is one of the great institutions in the hometown of Philadelphia,
Speaker 4: founded in eighteen sixty two to support the Union. It's
Speaker 4: still very much caught up with the honoring of Abraham
Speaker 4: lincol We actually had the reception in the Abraham Lincoln Room,
Speaker 4: which is a beautiful sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and has
Speaker 4: the Gettysburg address imprinted into the walls. It has Civil
Speaker 4: War historical memorabilia in the room. So it was a
Speaker 4: great event. But I did I was very conscious of
Speaker 4: what you guys have told me about political science now
Speaker 4: that a lot of it has become swept up by economics,
Speaker 4: by empirical measurement of this and that, and fantasy, statistical manipulations,
Speaker 4: and the kind of things that I would have thought
Speaker 4: would have been important, like political theory. Constitutional theory is
Speaker 4: barely there if you look at the titles of the panels,
Speaker 4: And that's why I think the Claremont Intitute is the
Speaker 4: most interesting, you know mostly now. Then I read I
Speaker 4: forged you the story because it got forwarded to me
Speaker 4: that there were these people were very unhappy to see
Speaker 4: the Claremont Institute there because they showed you with John Eastman. Yes,
Speaker 4: but John Easton wasn't around, so that they said, I
Speaker 4: wish John you wasn't there instead.
Speaker 1: Well, they're back to picking on you. I mean, can
Speaker 1: I share the story John that.
Speaker 5: We I remember you and I were together on the
Speaker 5: Claremont APSA panel in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: What was that twenty sixteen. It was twenty sixteen, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: Anyway, the funny thing is there have been rumors there
Speaker 5: would be protests, and so the panel had what four
Speaker 5: presenters and on the administrative state I think, and you
Speaker 5: were last. And so I thought that was a genius
Speaker 5: having you go last, because the protester to assemble to
Speaker 5: yell at you. I had to listen to the rest
Speaker 5: of us and learn something. And then remember, the protesters
Speaker 5: got up and they tried to disrupt your talk in
Speaker 5: the hotel, and APSA was very good about rousting and
Speaker 5: and kicking them out so we can proceed with that.
Speaker 1: You know, that was very good of them to do that.
Speaker 1: But I'll say this, Johnny met you trade show. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing.
Speaker 5: Obviously, you don't go to a lot of sort of
Speaker 5: conventional academic discipline annual meetings. I don't either go to APSA,
Speaker 5: but I've talked to the so you always have a
Speaker 5: big haul of the book publishers academic mostly, but some
Speaker 5: trade they're trying to persuade professors to give away free
Speaker 5: books to you to consider for course adoption.
Speaker 1: They're often trying to sign up authors, usually the editors
Speaker 1: of the presses.
Speaker 5: Are there and you wander through, what are you working on?
Speaker 5: You have something we might be interested in, and a
Speaker 5: lot of deals get cut. But if you talk to
Speaker 5: the people the book publishers who go to all they
Speaker 5: go to the Modern Language Association, they go to American
Speaker 5: Historical Association, they go to the American Sociological Association.
Speaker 1: And they all say the same thing.
Speaker 5: The political science meeting is always the most interesting of
Speaker 5: all the disciplines.
Speaker 1: Why is that worse?
Speaker 4: The other ones are worse, Yes, much much worse.
Speaker 5: And the reason is this gets back to the Claremont
Speaker 5: angle on it. The reason is political science still has
Speaker 5: some methodological diversity, which leads to a little bit of
Speaker 5: ideological diversity, which is absolutely it's much.
Speaker 3: I mean, think about Aristotle's I would go a little well,
Speaker 3: it's not you're wrong. I'm not saying you're wrong. It's
Speaker 3: one step further. Aristotle says that political science politics actually
Speaker 3: is the architectonic science, meaning political science actually looks at
Speaker 3: important questions. Now, that's part of the problem with modern
Speaker 3: political sciences. They don't take important questions as seriously as
Speaker 3: they used to. At least some elements of it. You know,
Speaker 3: the whole empirical stuff usually has the dumbest questions that
Speaker 3: they're asking, but not always.
Speaker 1: But see, the thing is Lucretia. You don't. I mean
Speaker 1: you've never been, I think you said, or not for
Speaker 1: I've been.
Speaker 3: I've been half a dozen times, but I wouldn't go back.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean, I'm sure it has changed a lot.
Speaker 1: It's gotten people. And two people in the audist.
Speaker 3: Always Steve, you're breaking up. You're breaking up. Well, you
Speaker 3: get some that's it, right, when you get some coverage,
Speaker 3: you're still right enough.
Speaker 1: I think Steve just two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, folks, Steve just hit an iceberg. So hopefully
Speaker 3: the Titanic's will say and he'll he'll get on a life.
Speaker 4: I think I heard that girl that gurgling sound with
Speaker 4: Steve going down in the lifeboat because he did not
Speaker 4: make space for men. He did not make space for
Speaker 4: women and children.
Speaker 3: Let me just say that back. Let me say quick, well,
Speaker 3: you're is that next year's aps A. This is the
Speaker 3: title of it read Imagining Politics, Power and Peoplehood in
Speaker 3: Crisis Times? Can you imagine anything that more nauseating? Anyway?
Speaker 3: And one last thing about that, I just want to
Speaker 3: say the new executive director of the aps A, Kimberly Neely.
Speaker 3: She is, of course a woman of color. There's a
Speaker 3: big surprise. And her entire academic background is you'll never
Speaker 3: guess what di She has no actual substance, but she's
Speaker 3: been a great mover and shaker in advancing people of
Speaker 3: persons of color and inclusion and belonging. And so I
Speaker 3: mean that's the APSA. The fact that they even let
Speaker 3: Clermont in. I'm gonna say it's probably not a bad thing.
Speaker 3: It's probably a good thing, but it's not really going
Speaker 3: to change the character of it very much. You want
Speaker 3: to give it a try.
Speaker 5: Talk about talk about being late to the party. I mean,
Speaker 5: the zeitgeist has moved on. It's a rare time. I
Speaker 5: use that stupid German term.
Speaker 1: But good grief, good grief indeed.
Speaker 3: Okay, our last topic. Steve published a piece that is
Speaker 3: some what of a continuum of the things John and
Speaker 3: I were discussing last week, and we'd be discussing for
Speaker 3: a while on common good originalism. Do you want to
Speaker 3: tell us quickly, Steve, what that piece argues so we
Speaker 3: can share you down.
Speaker 1: I will try. Yeah, I see I will try.
Speaker 5: But first of all, I want to reassured room of
Speaker 5: listeners that the word prudence does not appear once and
Speaker 5: then won't appear here. Second, you'll be relieved, John that
Speaker 5: the Clean Air Act has not discussed or referenced od
Speaker 5: all in the article, although that's.
Speaker 4: What you're really talking about. I'm sure no.
Speaker 1: Well, I had run across this unusual empirical study.
Speaker 5: I think I had lots of flaws, but it had
Speaker 5: an interesting conclusion based on this weird methodology that gosh,
Speaker 5: you know, these original Supreme.
Speaker 1: Court we have now seems to be relying a lot
Speaker 1: more on.
Speaker 5: The old treatises that would have appealed to the American
Speaker 5: founders two hundred and thirty some years ago, you know, Blackstones,
Speaker 5: Redward Cook, Matthew Hale, Bracton from what the twelfth century
Speaker 5: I think it was, and they left some people out
Speaker 5: they might have talked about. But and he, you know,
Speaker 5: gives the receipts, especially Alito writing the majority opinion in
Speaker 5: the Dobbs case, where the question turned on what was
Speaker 5: the status of abortion in the common law at the
Speaker 5: time of the founding before that and also the time
Speaker 5: the Fourteenth Amendment was written, and you know, Elito made
Speaker 5: a very strong case that blackmen had gotten that completely wrong,
Speaker 5: had a just terrible history in the Road decision, which
Speaker 5: I think is all true. And you know, if you
Speaker 5: put together the numbers and they went back sixty seventy years,
Speaker 5: what you saw was is those old treatises and they
Speaker 5: were still kind of around in the forties and fifties.
Speaker 5: They disappeared, guess when during the war in court era
Speaker 5: when you had you know, legal realism or the living constitution,
Speaker 5: And now they've come back.
Speaker 1: And I thought, isn't this interesting?
Speaker 5: And of course I worked at It's a short article
Speaker 5: and I'll link it to the show notes, but I
Speaker 5: worked it into the point being that this is a
Speaker 5: portal back to the natural law tradition, because.
Speaker 1: I believe firmly that the common law is the.
Speaker 5: Application practical application of natural law philosophy, and that the
Speaker 5: Court's not really going to settle out what their originalism
Speaker 5: really means, I think, until they move closer in that
Speaker 5: direction and acknowledge it more directly and openly. And that's
Speaker 5: just an opening bid to cause fights.
Speaker 4: So well, I don't I think you could read that
Speaker 4: evidence one of two ways. So I'm not surprised that
Speaker 4: you're seeing more citation and reliance on the common law
Speaker 4: because the Court has turned towards originalism. It's not a
Speaker 4: surprise that you see this happen along start along with
Speaker 4: the edition of Scullia and Thomas the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 4: it's only going to grow as more originalist justices on
Speaker 4: the Court. I'm not sure I would read it as
Speaker 4: a victory lap for natural law, because you could use
Speaker 4: it one of two ways. And you know, for those
Speaker 4: of you who want to come visit, you know, Steve
Speaker 4: Lucretia and I are going to be teaching a court
Speaker 4: so Berkeley next month about constitutional interpretation and we debate
Speaker 4: this very subject. So it could be that you have
Speaker 4: people who grew with Steve and Lucretia or Hadley Arciz
Speaker 4: or you know, we could go on a lot of
Speaker 4: the people at Claremont School who think the Court ought
Speaker 4: to be borrowing or incorporating natural law and natural rights
Speaker 4: into its interpretation the Constitution. Or it could show that
Speaker 4: what the Court is doing, and I think this is
Speaker 4: what it's been doing so far, is that when they
Speaker 4: try to recapture the original understanding of the constitutional provision,
Speaker 4: for example, what did life, liberty, and property mean to
Speaker 4: the people who ratified the fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty eight.
Speaker 4: They look at the common law treatises and the common
Speaker 4: law to see what regular lawyers thought those words meant
Speaker 4: at that time. So it's not a incorporation of the
Speaker 4: natural law natural rights. It's an effort to figure out
Speaker 4: what does the original understand. So the treatises are important,
Speaker 4: but so would be course case decisions, so would be books,
Speaker 4: law books, law dictionaries, all kinds of materials, and those
Speaker 4: are the most important distillations of the meaning of regular
Speaker 4: legal words, which are then used in the Constitution. So
Speaker 4: I think you could we'd have to see whether I'm
Speaker 4: right or you're right in terms of why the justices
Speaker 4: are doing it. But I can still see it being
Speaker 4: part of a positivist enterprise interpreting the text of the world,
Speaker 4: rather than your non positive approach.
Speaker 3: Think. I think the problem I have, Steve, is with
Speaker 3: the the basic definition that somehow the common law is
Speaker 3: our access to the natural law, because I actually see
Speaker 3: common law in the hoddest understanding of it as a
Speaker 3: positivist thing and meaning that think about how common law
Speaker 3: developed in great Britain, and maybe that's why I'm being
Speaker 3: too narrow minded about this, but it is in fact
Speaker 3: the result of judges determining that A B or C
Speaker 3: is a good thing in these circumstances. That becomes a
Speaker 3: precedent for things in the future. I guess the best
Speaker 3: way to say it is, how does common law actually
Speaker 3: help justices overturn precedent? I don't get the argument that
Speaker 3: common laws are access to natural law, and maybe this
Speaker 3: is not the time or place to discuss it, but
Speaker 3: that was my That's the argument I've had with you
Speaker 3: every single time we've talked about the common law originalism.
Speaker 3: We even had a nice podcast about it a long
Speaker 3: time ago before John joined us, and I said, I
Speaker 3: don't see common law jurisprudence as the answer to I
Speaker 3: think it's a simpler thing. It's I wouldn't look at
Speaker 3: story and say he's common law.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Lucretia. I agree with Lucretia on this point that
Speaker 4: the common law sometimes can be judges trying to honor
Speaker 4: the natural law and put it into decisions, but often
Speaker 4: it isn't. It is. So to just give an example
Speaker 4: we talked about in class last year, the common law
Speaker 4: used to say, don't break your word.
Speaker 1: In a contract.
Speaker 4: If you know made a contract, keep your promise, and
Speaker 4: it was a very moral principle. Today, in a lot
Speaker 4: of jurisdictions the common law says it is okay to
Speaker 4: break your word and break the contract if you can
Speaker 4: find a more efficient use of your property and resources.
Speaker 4: Because the law and economics movement has so influenced common
Speaker 4: law judges that they have now adopted, you know, an
Speaker 4: efficiency approach to contract law, and they totally rejected the
Speaker 4: earlier moral approach to contracts. But that's the common law.
Speaker 4: It doesn't you know, inevitably, you know, it's in the
Speaker 4: hands of these judges who are given the authority under
Speaker 4: their state institutions to make policy.
Speaker 5: Well, three quick things, John, If that approach can get
Speaker 5: us to overturn rent control, I'll be all for it.
Speaker 1: Look the two quick right, Yes, I win, I win.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: Look, John, the description you gave of the common law
Speaker 5: a couple of minutes ago. I kept thinking, I am
Speaker 5: listening to Sir Edward Cook's description of the common law
Speaker 5: given in the seventeenth century. He described it exactly the
Speaker 5: way you do. I actually thought you were quoting him
Speaker 5: from memory. But you know, common law is not just
Speaker 5: one thing. It's you know, decisions, things in the statute books, precedents, cases,
Speaker 5: It's this big soup.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Look, here's the distinction that I think clarifies it.
Speaker 5: And if you ask somebody today, some educated person, what's
Speaker 5: the common law, they'll often say it's judge made law,
Speaker 5: you know, deciding controversies that don't have a statute to
Speaker 5: refer to. And the real common law tradition I thought
Speaker 5: of itself, and you can find us in the older
Speaker 5: literature and treatises.
Speaker 1: It's not judge made law. It's judge discovered law. That's
Speaker 1: the phrase of use of it, judge discovered.
Speaker 5: Well, how do they discover it? Well, you have to
Speaker 5: do like Blackstone. That's why I was like assigning a
Speaker 5: couple of those Blackstone chapters. He was a firm natural
Speaker 5: law man. But when it came to you know, how
Speaker 5: do we consider all the different kinds of homicide circumstances
Speaker 5: that come to us. We have to use our reason,
Speaker 5: anchored ultimately in some principles to make the distinctions about it.
Speaker 1: And okay, I'll stop there, but I think.
Speaker 3: To be continued continued, we could discuss this forever, and
Speaker 3: I confess to some confusion about it again because I
Speaker 3: understand it differently than you do, Steve So.
Speaker 5: But I always like to show people. I think you
Speaker 5: have a John Pluck that's short history, concise history of
Speaker 5: the common law. That's twelve hundred pages.
Speaker 4: It's like nothing in that title is true, including the punctuation.
Speaker 4: As someone said, oh.
Speaker 5: My god, and the book is twelve hundred pages, a
Speaker 5: very small print, and that that's the concise history.
Speaker 1: Good grief.
Speaker 3: So I want to end this. There's so much more
Speaker 3: we could talk about, but I want to end this
Speaker 3: to just talk about an email that I received and
Speaker 3: responded to. I copied Steve on it, but I should
Speaker 3: have copied you, John So. Steve and I are both
Speaker 3: graduates of Clermont Graduate University. I'm actually from back in
Speaker 3: the days when they were just a college. That's how
Speaker 3: long ago it was. But they sent an email saying that,
Speaker 3: you know, basically, what's happened is they've spent themselves in
Speaker 3: deeply into debt and they're going to have to do
Speaker 3: all these things to try to get out of debt
Speaker 3: because they've just poorly handled their finances and it's a
Speaker 3: you know, explaining to that all this great stuff is
Speaker 3: going to happen and they're going to be they'll be back.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you got the email, Steve, but
Speaker 3: you got my response. My response was, I went to
Speaker 3: their website, found their DEI page. I think to the
Speaker 3: DEI page and said, I suggest that Clermont Graduate University
Speaker 3: could save millions by eliminating these useless and devisive offices
Speaker 3: and by terminating the employment of anyone associated with this grift.
Speaker 3: But guess what I didn't get a response.
Speaker 4: This is how how how could any you know, major
Speaker 4: college or university be claiming financial difficulties when there was
Speaker 4: extraordinary demand for their products, Like they could double the
Speaker 4: size of their classes and still fill every seat. So
Speaker 4: if there's any mismanagement going on, right, it's there. It's
Speaker 4: if there's any deficit, it's because of their own internal mismanagement,
Speaker 4: failing to run their institutions.
Speaker 3: For me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I hate to don't give them any money.
Speaker 3: Part of it. Don't give them, Oh god, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: give them a penny. But you know, most most universities,
Speaker 3: most colleges have so many never mind just DEI nonsense,
Speaker 3: vice provosts and this and that every college has those,
Speaker 3: but they have so many administrators and staff now, and
Speaker 3: if you look at it, it's the same in Cage twelve.
Speaker 3: But if you look at any data about education in general,
Speaker 3: the number of administrators and staffs is chipbled and quadrupled
Speaker 3: and sextupoled and whatever else you want to say. Wow,
Speaker 3: the number of students has actually gone down. And so
Speaker 3: that's why they can't they can't pay the bills because
Speaker 3: they have too many people that are absolutely useless towards
Speaker 3: the mission. But anyway, that's my I mention.
Speaker 5: One little news item today that showed up on Twitter.
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris has said she wants to eliminate a lot
Speaker 5: of college to create requirements for many federal jobs.
Speaker 1: I thought that's interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, higher education is considered an adjunct of
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party and a propaganda organ for spreading liberal ideology.
Speaker 1: Here's the first step of they're recognizing that maybe it's
Speaker 1: not working for them, that they don't need it.
Speaker 3: I don't know what, but I think that I think
Speaker 3: it's because I sorry, I think it's because of the
Speaker 3: Formative Action decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be exactly, and right, I think I
Speaker 1: think this is just about Pennsylvany.
Speaker 4: This is just about Pennsylvania. I think Trump's made a
Speaker 4: lot of that way and I think that I don't
Speaker 4: remember if this was this administer the Trump's campaign, but didn't.
Speaker 4: This is something that Trump people have wanted to do. Also,
Speaker 4: they've wanted to write downgrade college requirements for a lot
Speaker 4: of employment. And so right, this is did you see
Speaker 4: that Trump also said he didn't want to have taxes
Speaker 4: on overtime pay? Now I don't know, so I'm sure
Speaker 4: that Harris is going to do that too. Next.
Speaker 1: I think they are.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're really I mean, this is these are
Speaker 4: the condeagues are going to play really well in Pennsylvania
Speaker 4: and Wisconsin and Michigan.
Speaker 3: All right, I think since we're way over time, even
Speaker 3: with our breaks for commercials. Again, folks, let me just
Speaker 3: tell you that don't beat up on Steve about this.
Speaker 3: It's not his fault. We don't control what happens with
Speaker 3: the ads, and so we've given some breaks to try
Speaker 3: to control it so at least they don't come in
Speaker 3: the middle of a of a sentence by one of
Speaker 3: the three of us. So I'm going to move on
Speaker 3: to Babylon Beast really quickly. Do O J warns if
Speaker 3: Trump is elected, he will do to them all the
Speaker 3: stuff they're doing to him. That's not even funny. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know it's not funny, though. Democrats concerned California wildfires
Speaker 3: may burn up their stock of pre filled Kamala Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris ballots. Sorry, John, why would they need to in
Speaker 3: California anyway? White House? It doesn't. White House responds to
Speaker 3: Haitian immigrant crisis by air dropping crates of cats into Springfield, Ohio.
Speaker 1: That's funny.
Speaker 3: A fetus should not be treated like a human, says
Speaker 3: woman with cat named Dave that wears a sweater. Just
Speaker 3: a few quick debate ones. Kamala accused of using performance
Speaker 3: enhancing moderators. Kamala proposes second debate, moderated by Michael Moore
Speaker 3: and Joy Behar. That's really all I have today, and
Speaker 3: I think it's time for you guys to close this
Speaker 3: thing out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all we have now is just drink your whiskey.
Speaker 3: Meat.
Speaker 4: We're still waiting on Steve to pick our new sign off.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm an improvise from Campbelli's interview yesterday and just
Speaker 5: urge all the listeners be proud of your lawns.
Speaker 1: That's what she started with.
Speaker 3: Didn't hear that, neighborhood?
Speaker 5: What's your plan for inflation? Well, you know, I grew
Speaker 5: up in a neighborhood where everybody was proud of their
Speaker 5: lawns and of your lawns. So everybody, and we'll be
Speaker 5: back next week when I'll be back on filand for church.
Speaker 3: Which is good because you were just garbled against you,
Speaker 3: but we're gonna leave that in there so everybody can
Speaker 3: enjoy you and in the joy you're experiencing on the Okay, okay, okay, goodbye, everybody,
Speaker 3: have a one.
Speaker 5: H don't.
Speaker 3: Don't do you know where? Don't inside.
Speaker 1: The Ricochet joined the conversation.