Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister gorbitchaw tear down this wall. It's the ricochetfon guest.
Speaker 2: I'm James Lillings, General Siegel, your cooks out this week,
Speaker 2: but Stephen Hayward is with us to talk to Jason
Speaker 2: Willik at the Washington Post about all this deep ortation
Speaker 2: stuff and more so, let's advertise a podcast.
Speaker 1: Photos have emerged of Senator Van Holland sipping what appears
Speaker 1: to be Margarita's with the Bradio Garcia down in Al Salvador.
Speaker 2: Do you encourage other Democrats to fly down Al Salvador
Speaker 2: to meet with this illegal alien who's an acute I
Speaker 2: like this guy. See now, this is this is the
Speaker 2: kind of a reporter. We're like, there aren't enough of them.
Speaker 2: We got to get some more of them. Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: This is the Ricochet Podcast, number seven, one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty seven. As we're getting those numbers that resemble Boeing
Speaker 2: aircraft again. I'm James Lylyx and orbed as I'll probably
Speaker 2: be called if I'm grabbed out of my house and
Speaker 2: thrown onto a plane and dropped off Neill Salvador, Minnesota, Dad,
Speaker 2: and I'm joined not by Charles C. W. Cook, who's
Speaker 2: off rastling gators in the Everglades this week, but by
Speaker 2: Stephen Hayward. Stephen, Welcome, Hi, James Gould, to see you again. Indeed, indeed, well,
Speaker 2: it has been a week and it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: kind of a nice week where a story that began
Speaker 2: the week turns out to be dominating things at the
Speaker 2: end of the week as well. But beneath that, and
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that with our guest later. Recent news
Speaker 2: that had had seems to be under some stress rejecting
Speaker 2: the demands that the administration has said. The administration says,
Speaker 2: you know what, you've been letting anti Semitism run rampant
Speaker 2: on your campus. And unspoken, perhaps, or I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe spoken is the idea that you have promulgated a
Speaker 2: variety of anti American ideas in your leftist administration, and
Speaker 2: hence we are under no obligation to send you any money,
Speaker 2: according to the and so I think it's about two
Speaker 2: point two billion in grand send some other stuff in
Speaker 2: the contracts, and it's not just money handed to them,
Speaker 2: and it's not like one somebody walks over with a
Speaker 2: check for two point two billion dollars. From what I understand,
Speaker 2: it has to do with funding of certain things and
Speaker 2: certain things and this and that, and if we take
Speaker 2: that funding away, then the imminent cure for cancer will
Speaker 2: be lost, et cetera. But Harvard has said no, no, sorry.
Speaker 2: One of the things that seemed to be bulking at,
Speaker 2: and people can argue about whether or not it is
Speaker 2: the position and the right of an administration to put
Speaker 2: demands like this on an institution, is the requirement that
Speaker 2: they hire a critical mass of intellectually diverse staff. And
Speaker 2: I find this interesting because, I mean, we're seeing manifest
Speaker 2: almost every week, if not every day, an explicit act
Speaker 2: that conforms with things that the right has been complaining
Speaker 2: about for a long time. Right, I mean, the writer
Speaker 2: has been saying, you know, you, you parade around your
Speaker 2: notions and your examplars ofsity, but actually you are not
Speaker 2: diverse at all. You are your diversity consists of immutable
Speaker 2: personal racial identifiers. Intellectual diversity is what used to characterize
Speaker 2: the institution, and you don't have that, and if you
Speaker 2: don't work towards it, we're not going to give you
Speaker 2: any money. So, ay, Stephen, tell me what you think
Speaker 2: about Harvard's reaction, how you think it's going to play
Speaker 2: out and be whether or not you think it is
Speaker 2: wise to actually do the thing that people have been
Speaker 2: wanting to do for an awful long time, which is reshape,
Speaker 2: reform and reset the idea of diversity. Yeah. So I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess in reverse order.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, it may not be wise, but it
Speaker 1: is now necessary. I mean conservatives and also a lot
Speaker 1: of I think smarter liberals have been acknowledging for years
Speaker 1: now that universities have become just cesspools of narrow ideological conformity,
Speaker 1: but nothing was ever done about it. And two points
Speaker 1: I make among many more is we talk about diversity,
Speaker 1: but there's no viewpoint diversity, and so commitment to free
Speaker 1: speech is really insufficient when there's no one there to
Speaker 1: offer a contrariyant opinion to the campus orthodoxy. So it
Speaker 1: amounts to nothing to say, oh, we're going to redouble
Speaker 1: our efforts for free speech. The second thing is on diversity.
Speaker 1: You know, Thomas Sole likes to say, next time you
Speaker 1: hear an administrator say we're committed to diversity, ask them
Speaker 1: how many Republicans they have in their sociology department, and
Speaker 1: you want to talk about, you know, the demand of
Speaker 1: the Trump people that they hires more intellectual diversity, something
Speaker 1: that listeners and the general public are not aware of.
Speaker 1: It's the great move in the last five ten years
Speaker 1: at elite university is actually all over the place for
Speaker 1: what they call cluster hires. And of course right away
Speaker 1: we will joke about what particular now as four utter
Speaker 1: word is missing from that. But the cluster hires all
Speaker 1: say we want to increase in the interests of diversity,
Speaker 1: underrepresented minorities, and it's always in ethnic studies, you know,
Speaker 1: feminist studies, maybe history and so forth. And in other words,
Speaker 1: cluster hires mean let's hire six or more leftists all
Speaker 1: at once and install them. Now, I've always thought that
Speaker 1: the idea that you should require demand that universities self
Speaker 1: consciously hire some conservatives was a defective idea for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. But I'm also reminded of Churchill's great
Speaker 1: line that democracy is the worst form of government except
Speaker 1: for all the others that have ever been tried. And
Speaker 1: we now have come to the point where the only
Speaker 1: way Harvard and other elite universities are going to reform
Speaker 1: is if they're hit in the head repeatedly with a hammer,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it's not going to change. And so I'm
Speaker 1: all for what Trump's doing, even the unreasonable demands, which
Speaker 1: I think were designed intentionally to make Harvard say no, because,
Speaker 1: by the way, if Harvard capitulates, no other university in
Speaker 1: the country could possibly hold out.
Speaker 2: Well, when you say to people, you know, you talk
Speaker 2: about diversity, yet have you hired any Republicans? They will
Speaker 2: hear that as somebody going to, you know, a conclave
Speaker 2: of a nestists and saying, well, how many Kovorchians have
Speaker 2: you hired? Right, it's not as something that they regard
Speaker 2: as necessary or even welcome within the field of academia,
Speaker 2: because they may perhaps have a rather ancient, crusty, bigoted,
Speaker 2: narrow view of what a conservative is. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are people, and you see this all the time, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: when you're sometimes hearing college protesters vent their spleen that
Speaker 2: to be on the right is to have a set
Speaker 2: of ideas that is contrary to truth. Not necessarily just
Speaker 2: another way of looking at it, but anti science, anti truth,
Speaker 2: anti all the wonderful things that we know, and therefore,
Speaker 2: why would you include these people in your institution the
Speaker 2: idea of both sides ism, It just strikes them as
Speaker 2: trafficking with evil, so it's hard for them to make
Speaker 2: the leap and say, no, there actually is a conservative
Speaker 2: position grounded in a few other ideas, that approaches these
Speaker 2: topics that we all are concerned about and finds different solutions.
Speaker 2: And they're not insane. They're not insane at all. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, they happen to be based on
Speaker 2: about two or three thousand years of accumulated wisdom from
Speaker 2: observing various human societies around the globe and knowing human
Speaker 2: nature as opposed to you guys who just want to
Speaker 2: rewrite it. So yeah, once they get their head around that,
Speaker 2: they might find. But you know what I worry about,
Speaker 2: of course, is that oftentimes when institutions will hire a conservative,
Speaker 2: they will trumpet that fact and say, look, we've got
Speaker 2: a conservative here, and again, whenever they say that, it
Speaker 2: suggests that liberalism is the norm, is the default position
Speaker 2: for any smart, critical person, And therefore, you know, it
Speaker 2: just goes without saying there's truth and there's conservatives. But
Speaker 2: the other part of this is I don't think that
Speaker 2: people would be complaining about intellectual diversity, the lack of it,
Speaker 2: so much if indeed they hadn't somehow deduced inferred come
Speaker 2: to the conclusion that instead of just general variety sort
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifties sixties technocratic liberalism that we all grew
Speaker 2: up with around and the you know, the the waters
Speaker 2: that were whose temperature was set by Walter Cronkite and
Speaker 2: the New York Times editorial board, then instead of that,
Speaker 2: it's become this anti American, anti Western civilization gramsy and
Speaker 2: nonsense that seeks to upend everything and replace it with
Speaker 2: a farrago of nonsense that is that is contrary to
Speaker 2: what this country was founded on. I mean, when you
Speaker 2: when you have protesters out there in the quadrant, who
Speaker 2: are who are saying, you know, we are here to
Speaker 2: destroy Western civilization and maybe a one out of ten,
Speaker 2: one out of twenty, I don't know. But the idea
Speaker 2: that that idea Western sieve has got to go is
Speaker 2: something we've heard chanted for an awful long time. So
Speaker 2: if you just I mean, if you had your basic
Speaker 2: old old line liberals there, people wouldn't be complaining so much.
Speaker 2: What it is is they detect the presence of an
Speaker 2: of an element, a cohort that is antithetical to what
Speaker 2: we regard as the you know, the great American experiment.
Speaker 2: So ah, so I again, but you're right. If Harvard goes,
Speaker 2: the rest of them would have to go as well.
Speaker 2: You know, Princeton has got you know, something like two
Speaker 2: percent of their faculty votes republican. You know Yale's it's
Speaker 2: three percent. I mean, it's just absurd. And how did
Speaker 2: it get to this point? Self selection, bias, reinforcement, and
Speaker 2: a culture that just was fat and happy and unchallenged
Speaker 2: until now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the interesting critiques of this comes
Speaker 1: from an unlikely source. It's Cass Sunstein, who I think
Speaker 1: is the sort of smartest center left thinker around at
Speaker 1: Harvard Law. He wrote an article more than twenty years
Speaker 1: ago that in being cast Sunstein. He never published an
Speaker 1: article once. He publishes it six times in different forms.
Speaker 1: But it was about what he called the dominance of conformity.
Speaker 1: And what he said was when you get a bunch
Speaker 1: of like minded people together and they're only together inside
Speaker 1: their bubble, they become more extreme.
Speaker 2: And he gives lots of examples. Although the real.
Speaker 1: Target of his article, which he kind of admitted to
Speaker 1: me indirectly in an email exchange we had was universities.
Speaker 1: And so one of the problems that I find is
Speaker 1: that the presumption you mentioned that conservatives are simply crazy, wrong, bigoted, ignorant, stupid,
Speaker 1: whatever comes about from a reinforced intellectual laziness. And I'll
Speaker 1: give you a quick example of what I mean.
Speaker 2: I was last week.
Speaker 1: I went behind enemy lines at the University of Colorado
Speaker 1: at Boulder for three days for a conference at Boulder
Speaker 1: being the Berkeley of the Rockies. And that's why I
Speaker 1: missed the show last week Listeners And anyway, I met
Speaker 1: with a bunch of students and somebody asked to go
Speaker 1: around with the students in the small group.
Speaker 2: Where do you get your news? It was predictable.
Speaker 1: Oh, I read the New York Times, I listened to NPR,
Speaker 1: I watch MSNBC, and I thought, I'm gonna have some
Speaker 1: fun with these folks. It says that's why our side
Speaker 1: is generally winning elections and winning a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and liberals are losing because we also were conservatives.
Speaker 2: Who are you engaged in the world?
Speaker 1: We read the New York Times and listen to NPR,
Speaker 1: it's opposition research that makes us bilingual. See, we know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking, but you all never read a conservative
Speaker 1: publication or a conservative news outlet, so you never actually
Speaker 1: hear any serious arguments, and you don't know what we're thinking.
Speaker 1: And that gives us a great advantage. And I can
Speaker 1: go on from there, but it's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of uncomfortable shifting around in chairs. When I made
Speaker 1: that mischievous point, which happens to have the advantage of
Speaker 1: being true.
Speaker 2: Well, here you are the thinking, you know, the Charlie
Speaker 2: Kirk of your generation, wading into these places. How did
Speaker 2: they respond though, I mean, did anybody raise a hand
Speaker 2: and challenge you and say absolutely, you know, we don't
Speaker 2: read these things because we believe they are misinformation, because
Speaker 2: we believe they are bias. I mean, did they say
Speaker 2: anything or just shift their buttocks in a querulous way.
Speaker 1: Well, it was one of those rambling conversations that wasn't
Speaker 1: very sequential, so the subject got changed pretty quickly to
Speaker 1: I don't know, all kinds of crazy things.
Speaker 2: But it was always fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, what's the old line of fighter
Speaker 1: pilots about a target rich opportunity. That's why I like
Speaker 1: going behind behind the lines at liberal universities, because whichever
Speaker 1: way you point, there's something you could attack and throw
Speaker 1: people off balance. And I do enjoy that up to
Speaker 1: a point. After a while becomes tedious and exhausting.
Speaker 2: Well, the end result of this probably is going to
Speaker 2: be these these institutions will not accept the terms and
Speaker 2: they will have the funding yanked from them. Harvard, from
Speaker 2: what I understand, may have a huge endowment, but it's
Speaker 2: not particularly liquid, so who knows what they may have
Speaker 2: to do. There's also an administration press to investigate the
Speaker 2: intellectual tempera shore, we say, of people who are coming
Speaker 2: in from other countries, especially to put the screws to
Speaker 2: Chinese visa holders who want to come in and study. Now,
Speaker 2: this is something that again a lot of people have said, well,
Speaker 2: anybody who comes here is probably CCP connected. You know,
Speaker 2: they may be rich enough to come here, their parents
Speaker 2: are connected. There are we any under any obligation to
Speaker 2: allow this, and you know, perhaps we're not. But again
Speaker 2: this is this is being seen as as overly invasive
Speaker 2: and of course authoritarian and fascissistic. Whereas you know, I
Speaker 2: if I spend a lot of my time fulminating against
Speaker 2: every aspect of British culture, society, politics, and the rest
Speaker 2: of it. And I walk in with my passport and
Speaker 2: I put it down, the thing and the and the
Speaker 2: light goes red. I wouldn't particularly be surprised. I mean,
Speaker 2: having been given the stink eye by a Russian passport
Speaker 2: agent in Saint Petersburg, think branking back forty years to
Speaker 2: things that I wrote about Mother Russia, I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: particularly surprised. But we but we seem to be in
Speaker 2: this position of you know, we walk around with a
Speaker 2: kickney side in our back and and encourage everybody to
Speaker 2: give us a good boot behind.
Speaker 1: So but James, I've had that same stink eye from
Speaker 1: a passport guy in Saint Petersburg getting off a cruise ship. Right.
Speaker 1: I think it's standard operating procedure. But look, I think
Speaker 1: two points on the Chinese business. I think the real
Speaker 1: game here is I mean, regardless of how many students
Speaker 1: are CCP connected, probably a lot of them, but whether
Speaker 1: they're actually spies or not, a lot of wealthy Chinese
Speaker 1: want to send their kids to America for degrees and
Speaker 1: also to get some money out of the country. It's
Speaker 1: it's a long story, but so I think restricting Chinese
Speaker 1: students is not only a way of depriving many universities
Speaker 1: of revenue because they pay full freight, but also I
Speaker 1: think it's to cause trouble for China's rulers, because your
Speaker 1: rich elites in China are going to be mad that
Speaker 1: relations are so bad they can't send their kids to
Speaker 1: American universities. But getting back to the Harvard thing for
Speaker 1: a minute, because I think the other target audience of
Speaker 1: foreign students are people from the Middle East and elsewhere
Speaker 1: who are anti Semitic, anti American. And let's do this
Speaker 1: thought experiment. You know, we've heard, oh, we have to
Speaker 1: allow free speech and criticism of Israel. Okay, fine, let's
Speaker 1: try this as a thought experiment. We know at Princeton
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago there was a student mob
Speaker 1: yelling at Jewish students, go back to Europe because that's
Speaker 1: where you're from, That's where you emigrated from. Now, imagine
Speaker 1: if you had a group of students at Harvard who
Speaker 1: said to blacks go back to Africa. It would be
Speaker 1: a five alarm fire for weeks. The university would punish
Speaker 1: those students, probably expel them.
Speaker 2: And so there you.
Speaker 1: See the asymmetry of these things. Now to deepen that
Speaker 1: thought experiment, would Harvard be justified in saying, say, forty
Speaker 1: years ago or so, we're not going to accept any
Speaker 1: South African white students who are defenders of apartheid. Their
Speaker 1: views are not welcome in our universities. They're poisonous and insidious.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me that the Trump administration is
Speaker 1: saying exactly, They're taking a consistent line about who should
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be admitted to the United States and to
Speaker 1: our universities. And I'm all for that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically seems to be we kind of want people
Speaker 2: who don't hate us and our foundational principles. We can
Speaker 2: work around the details, but basically, we kind of want
Speaker 2: you to be like liking us and what we stand
Speaker 2: for and what we strive for and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: I guess that's an awful lot to ask. Hey, you know,
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Speaker 2: Jason Willock, columnist for the Washington Post, where he writes
Speaker 2: primarily about law, politics, foreign affairs. Gee, I wonder if
Speaker 2: there's any nexus of that. This week, for that he
Speaker 2: contributed to the Wall Street Journal and the American Interest.
Speaker 2: Welcome Jason, how are you good? Good to be with
Speaker 2: you guys. Well, we haven't yet talked about Maryland Dad,
Speaker 2: but let's do it now. Administration maybe a clerical error
Speaker 2: in March, and so the guy gets sent off to
Speaker 2: the bad big House. Two of our active branches of
Speaker 2: government are trying to get him back, and the Democrat
Speaker 2: Party seems to be taking an awful lot on bringing
Speaker 2: Maryland Dad home, where presumably he would be turned a
Speaker 2: runner to board it ELSEWHEO, You've been pointing out that
Speaker 2: the Democrats are fighting secure his release and they're sending
Speaker 2: the wrong message. Shall we say, what should they be
Speaker 2: talking about? What should the Democrats be doing if we
Speaker 2: all as a nation want to move past this incident?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the moment the Democrats started to make it about
Speaker 3: Maryland Dad, and you know, you know, personally, ryanize this
Speaker 3: one individual, I sort of had a sinking feeling, and
Speaker 3: then lo and behold, the administration releases some more bad
Speaker 3: details about him. Fox News reports on a domestic violence
Speaker 3: complaint from his wife, and so on. You know, these victims,
Speaker 3: when somebody tries to make a victim in the press,
Speaker 3: they're never a perfect victim. And that's the wrong way
Speaker 3: to think about this dispute. In my mind, the dispute is,
Speaker 3: you know, about the law and the fact that the
Speaker 3: administration is sort of thumbing its nose at the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court on this case. And I think that that should
Speaker 3: be the focus, not this individual, because most people, certainly
Speaker 3: most Republicans agree than the legal immigrant accused of domestic violence,
Speaker 3: suspected of gang membership, there's nothing wrong with deporting that person.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think Trump was elected to deport
Speaker 3: that person. But you also have to follow the law,
Speaker 3: and you have to follow the Supreme Court, and they
Speaker 3: are not doing that in a pretty ostentatious way. And
Speaker 3: to me, that's the problem, not only constitutionally and but politically,
Speaker 3: that's the problem that anyone who wants the administration to,
Speaker 3: you know, change course, needs to emphasize.
Speaker 2: I'll give this to Stephen in just a second, Moente,
Speaker 2: I want to respond to that one. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't care about the the Supreme Court's
Speaker 2: decision in this essence is because either a they believe
Speaker 2: Stephen Miller when he says that they won it nine
Speaker 2: to zero, when in the back of his head, mister
Speaker 2: Miller may be talking about the little the difference between
Speaker 2: facilitating and effectuating his release. But maybe they probably they
Speaker 2: basically don't care because they saw Biden thumb As knows
Speaker 2: that the Supreme Court when it came to student loans
Speaker 2: and regarded that that's your tit, here's your tat. And
Speaker 2: the other thing that I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: are thinking is that they are absolutely indifferent to whatever
Speaker 2: legal niceties may or may not have been respected because
Speaker 2: they believe that the previous administration led in twenty million people,
Speaker 2: just a lot of men, didn't care, and X number
Speaker 2: of those committed Dan his crimes, small crimes, big crowd whatever.
Speaker 2: They don't They don't care. Now we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about here why they should. But would you agree that
Speaker 2: a lot of the indifference to this comes from the
Speaker 2: way the previous administration may have acted and how people
Speaker 2: are just indifferent really to the means by which those
Speaker 2: consequences are tidied up.
Speaker 3: I think that's right, except I don't think that you're
Speaker 3: going to tidy up. You're not going to remove a
Speaker 3: huge number of illegal immigrants in this way. I mean
Speaker 3: this Salvador in prison. They've sent three hundred people there.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a symbolic and a deterrent measure. It's
Speaker 3: not that, you know, we're going to send millions of
Speaker 3: people here. I guess if you really want to make
Speaker 3: the point we don't need to respect court orders when
Speaker 3: it comes to deporting people's that's fine, I guess. But
Speaker 3: you know, it just seems kind of like a teenage
Speaker 3: antic because you can easily deport this guy. You know,
Speaker 3: you can easily deport he was deportable well to a
Speaker 3: country that was not El Salvador, and the courts that
Speaker 3: you know, the government could change it, probably through the
Speaker 3: administrative legal process, so that he can be deported to
Speaker 3: El Salvador.
Speaker 4: It's almost like they just.
Speaker 3: Want to make a symbolic point that we don't have
Speaker 3: to respect the court orders on this. But okay, you
Speaker 3: know you're making your point, you're not actually that's not
Speaker 3: actually going to get you any closer to deporting, However,
Speaker 3: many hundreds of thousands or millions of people you want
Speaker 3: to deport.
Speaker 2: Jason and Steve Hayward out in California.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you a slightly whimsical question
Speaker 1: before I pick up on the main thread, and that's
Speaker 1: from your column yesterday. Where are you opened by quoting
Speaker 1: Peter Virek? And I thought, Wow, that's a name that's
Speaker 1: like unknown even to a lot of conservatives, right, And
Speaker 1: so are you trying to put George Will out of
Speaker 1: a job? I mean, the broader question there is not
Speaker 1: just via narrowly, but it looks like you know, you're
Speaker 1: sort of well read in through the broader spectrum of
Speaker 1: conservative thinkers going back, you know, in Bireck's case, sixty years.
Speaker 3: Ago, I wrote an essay about Peter Viereck in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen and National Affairs. So I read all of his
Speaker 3: stuff for that, and that was one of one of
Speaker 3: my favorite quotes in his Conservatism revisited, and I believe
Speaker 3: that if I'm not misremembering, you know that as a
Speaker 3: younger writer. Then I got a note from George Will
Speaker 3: about that essay and.
Speaker 1: I was over the moon, So okay, so the circle
Speaker 1: of causation is complete. By the way, for listeners, the
Speaker 1: quote the Jason's referring to is the lead the article.
Speaker 1: So from Viereck, he said, the lynching of the guilty
Speaker 1: is a subtler, but no less deadly blow to civilization
Speaker 1: than the lynching of the innocent. Eminently sensible. I mean,
Speaker 1: we could The older variation is the you know, the
Speaker 1: quote from the Man for all seasons, what happens when
Speaker 1: there's no.
Speaker 2: Law left to protect you?
Speaker 1: Right, so you know, to pick up on where James
Speaker 1: was driving us is yeah. The way I put it
Speaker 1: is that the Trump people are saying, as a political
Speaker 1: more than legal matter, think that, look, we didn't we
Speaker 1: haven't been enforcing our immigration laws. Where's been the due
Speaker 1: process for the American people of the last several years,
Speaker 1: just letting people in willy nilly, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: why should we be bound by a certain punptiliousness about
Speaker 1: the law now that our country has not been following
Speaker 1: for the last twenty thirty years. I think that's a
Speaker 1: bad legal argument, but it's a pretty strong political argument,
Speaker 1: and the polls seem to bear this out.
Speaker 3: I think I think you're right, But I think if
Speaker 3: your goal was to deport people at a faster clip
Speaker 3: instead of your goal was to sort of thumb your
Speaker 3: nose at the system and really emphasize how bad Biden
Speaker 3: was and all the things you should be able to
Speaker 3: do because Biden was so bad, you would do something different.
Speaker 3: You would have to reform the asylum laws. You would
Speaker 3: hire more immigration judges, you know, you would go to
Speaker 3: Congress and change the immigration system so you can deport
Speaker 3: at a faster clip. And also, I think it's important
Speaker 3: to remember it's not like Trump has been stymied this regard.
Speaker 3: He has had an extraordinary impact already. He has stopped
Speaker 3: you know, the illegal immigration basically in an extraordinary way.
Speaker 3: So he has had success in doing it. Now, now
Speaker 3: if your question is, well, how many illegal immigrants can
Speaker 3: be removed? And you know, I still don't think everybody
Speaker 3: wants to remove everybody anybody, you know, but you want
Speaker 3: to remove them at a faster clip. Fine, you know,
Speaker 3: I think that that's something that you know, the Trump
Speaker 3: people like to do stunts sometimes instead of achieved their objectives.
Speaker 3: So now they're doing a stunt and in the process,
Speaker 3: you know, as sort of a collateral result of this stunt,
Speaker 3: they may be diminishing the Supreme Court's place in our
Speaker 3: constitutional order, which is a damaging thing in the long term.
Speaker 3: After you know, Democrats tried to do the same thing,
Speaker 3: and there is a conservative Supreme Court majority, probably the
Speaker 3: most conservative in one hundred years. And if the Trump people,
Speaker 3: in the course of their stunt, end up sort of
Speaker 3: making following Supreme Court rulings optional, that's going to be
Speaker 3: bad in the long run.
Speaker 1: Well, so, I mean, I think it's well understood that
Speaker 1: Chief Justice Roberts, for his whole twenty plus years on
Speaker 1: the Court, has worried about, you say, the public status
Speaker 1: of the court. He likes to rule narrowly and cautiously,
Speaker 1: as we've seen. And so I thought a couple of things.
Speaker 2: One is, by.
Speaker 1: Choosing to use the word facilitate rather than effectuate, rather
Speaker 1: than issuing a rid of mandamus like Marbury sawt way
Speaker 1: back in eighteen oh three, they're allowing some wiggle room
Speaker 1: because the Court can't enforce a rid of mandamus against
Speaker 1: the executive branch. And that does cause a big political
Speaker 1: and maybe constitutional crisis as well. And so yeah, they're
Speaker 1: flooding the zone they're pushing a lot of stuff up
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court, you know, in other areas, like
Speaker 1: you know, Humphrey's executor on presidential control of the executive
Speaker 1: branch and so forth, and so I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think that's part.
Speaker 2: Of what's behind it. I do.
Speaker 1: I was in a tangle last week with a very
Speaker 1: left leaning lawyer who said, you know, we've never seen
Speaker 1: a president defly a court like this, except maybe Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson in that famous, maybe apocryphal remark that Marshall's made
Speaker 1: his opinion, let him enforce it. And I gently reminded
Speaker 1: that Thomas Jefferson, in the Marbury case more than two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, was going to defy the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: It's a Supreme Court issued a riddaman damus ordering that
Speaker 1: William Marbury.
Speaker 2: Get his job.
Speaker 1: So this kind of clash with the court is not unprecedented,
Speaker 1: and it's been a gray area or a difficult spot
Speaker 1: I think, really since eighteen oh three. Right, and so
Speaker 1: that's a speech, and I don't know if you want
Speaker 1: to grab hold of that and add to it.
Speaker 3: Woman, No, it's like it's like mutual deterrence and mutually
Speaker 3: assured destruction. I mean, people try to get out of
Speaker 3: it because you're going to hurt both parties. You're going
Speaker 3: to hurt the presidency and you're going to hurt the
Speaker 3: Court if you do that. So there's maneuvering, right like,
Speaker 3: the court, if it thinks the executive is really going
Speaker 3: to defy it and have political support to do so,
Speaker 3: it might back off. And if the president thinks he's
Speaker 3: going to get adverse court ruling, he might over in
Speaker 3: a different way. And you know, as a historical nerd
Speaker 3: point on the Andrew Jackson thing, people often use that example,
Speaker 3: but he was not a party to the Indian removal ruling.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court was ordering Georgia to do something, and
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson just didn't enforce the ruling on Georgia. In
Speaker 3: this case, you've got the Trump administration as a party
Speaker 3: being told you've got to facilitate the release of this guy,
Speaker 3: and they're essentially saying, I mean, no, we don't.
Speaker 4: We don't really need to do anything. So anyway, it
Speaker 4: is a.
Speaker 3: Part of the separation of powers, for sure. We haven't
Speaker 3: though the brinkmanship, insofar as it's happened, has not led
Speaker 3: to a full on rupture, and the Trump people seem
Speaker 3: determined to push it pretty close.
Speaker 1: I want to change gears a little bit before I
Speaker 1: throw you back to James and ask you a couple
Speaker 1: of questions about journalism. So the first one is you're
Speaker 1: there at the Washington Post, at the editorial page. I'm
Speaker 1: not clear these days. It looks like you're home today
Speaker 1: from what I see on the screen. I'm not clear
Speaker 1: if people actually go into the building anymore, the old
Speaker 1: fashioned way you went to newsrooms. I know James still does.
Speaker 1: But so the first question I want to ask, and
Speaker 1: maybe you can't say too much about it, which I understand,
Speaker 1: is you know, Jeff Bezos, the owner, made this great
Speaker 1: announcement six weeks ago or so that he wants the
Speaker 1: editorial page to defend free markets and individual liberty, and
Speaker 1: it's caused a great deal of fuss. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about where that stands. I haven't heard of
Speaker 1: any new editors being hired. I've heard of some resignations.
Speaker 1: What can you say about the mood of your colleagues
Speaker 1: is this? I'll just stop there and you say what
Speaker 1: you want or can say about that.
Speaker 3: I can't say that much except the Post has been
Speaker 3: fantastic to me, and they hired me a few years ago,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two. I think to build up a
Speaker 3: little bit their conservative stable of writers. And I'm very
Speaker 3: thrilled for where things are going. And you know, keep
Speaker 3: an eye out for the for the new opinion editor
Speaker 3: being hired. I understand that they're that they're looking.
Speaker 2: I am in a newsroom right now, and I'm alone
Speaker 2: on Friday. Often enough, I am alone, and I fear
Speaker 2: that there's going to be some calamity in town. I mean,
Speaker 2: I look out the window and if I see, you know,
Speaker 2: a small plane heading towards the skyscrape, right, I think, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to write that I'm the last
Speaker 2: person in the world's cancer. Right. No, we do have
Speaker 2: a few other people minding the wires and the rest
Speaker 2: of it. But do you miss newsrooms as they were
Speaker 2: previously constituted, Jason, Because when I entered this business one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty six years ago, in the Jurassic period,
Speaker 2: they were vital clamors. You know, wonderful places with a
Speaker 2: wreath of cigarette smoke and the clatterative typewriters, and you know,
Speaker 2: the occasional nip from the office bottle I mean, all
Speaker 2: those front page cliches I had them. Do you is
Speaker 2: that culture still evident? Were in the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: I think it's coming back. I mean, I think, what
Speaker 3: are we twenty twenty five now? I mean the DC
Speaker 3: traffic has just dramatically increased in just the last few
Speaker 3: months as part of I think, you know, people going
Speaker 3: back to the office in a big way, and the
Speaker 3: Washington Posts were under a you know, they're sending us
Speaker 3: back to the office. I go in often. I mean
Speaker 3: I was at the Wall Street Journal in the editorial
Speaker 3: page and it was fantastic starting in I guess twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and then COVID. COVID hit and then you had sort
Speaker 3: of this gradual dribble back. And the old norms haven't
Speaker 3: been totally restored, but I think maybe they will be
Speaker 3: within you know, maybe a decade of COVID, because there's
Speaker 3: there's a lot going.
Speaker 4: I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I like to be you know, I talk a lot
Speaker 3: to my colleagues, and I think it's that intellectual experience
Speaker 3: is really important.
Speaker 2: One more journalism question. It is a more general one.
Speaker 1: There's a story out here today or at least online
Speaker 1: at the Wall Street Journal, and it's I won't say
Speaker 1: it's taking a victory lap for the journals reporting a
Speaker 1: year ago on Biden's infirmities, but it kind of is.
Speaker 1: And it's a very brutal story whose subtext is more
Speaker 1: people in the media should have known there was a
Speaker 1: cover up going on about Biden's condition, and so I
Speaker 1: mean that should be as big a scandal as the
Speaker 1: cover up itself, because I thought journalism was all about
Speaker 1: uncovering cover ups. Do you see is there any second
Speaker 1: thoughts going on at the poster anywhere that you're aware
Speaker 1: of that? Boy, we really fell down on our duty
Speaker 1: in reporting what was really happening right in front of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really is extraordinary in retrospect, you know, that
Speaker 3: failure because of journalism, you know, on the president. And
Speaker 3: that's a piece by Annie Lensky. She's fantastic and she
Speaker 3: wrote some pieces in the Journal about it, and I
Speaker 3: think her point is, now now books are coming out
Speaker 3: about it, about the Biden age and infirmity, because yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not like an optional thing for the press. You're
Speaker 3: talking about the president. The American people pay for the
Speaker 3: press to be here and get exposure and talk to
Speaker 3: the people around the president. So that was a terrible
Speaker 3: I think blow to the publics, to the public's trust,
Speaker 3: you know, up there with Frankly, you know, weapons of
Speaker 3: mass destruction or some of the post COVID obfuscations in
Speaker 3: terms of just FIBs that were not scrutinized enough. And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, will the press, I don't know,
Speaker 3: We'll see what We'll see what the Trump, what happens,
Speaker 3: what Trump sort of does to the press.
Speaker 4: I mean, he is in he is in no mood.
Speaker 3: To sort of He faced you know, a universally hostile
Speaker 3: press in his first term and he seems in no
Speaker 3: mood to be you know John Roberts like in terms
Speaker 3: of creating a climb down situation on that front. So
Speaker 3: I think the press is going to be very hostile
Speaker 3: again to to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Can they do that?
Speaker 3: You know, they've lost a lot of credibility from some
Speaker 3: of their failures before. So will that hostile coverage carry
Speaker 3: the same weight as it otherwise could have? Probably not,
Speaker 3: But it's still important because you know, when the if
Speaker 3: it's Biden or if it's Trump, the American people need
Speaker 3: to know about what their president's doing because he's very powerful.
Speaker 2: Let me be a lone voice of craziness out here
Speaker 2: in the middle of the continent, and just say, then,
Speaker 2: I think that saudom Mussein shipped massive quantities of his
Speaker 2: WMDs across the border to Syria, and we did find
Speaker 2: in a lot of stuff, and we did a very
Speaker 2: poor job of publicizing it. I will say that until
Speaker 2: the day I die, and people can laugh and point
Speaker 2: and hoot all they liked.
Speaker 3: But well, I was in fourth grade, so I didn't
Speaker 3: follow as that closely.
Speaker 2: Teach bag right the mago Judge Bozburg, who is the
Speaker 2: bugaboo now of a lot of people. We've got a
Speaker 2: article two in an article three cage fight, constitutional crisis looming.
Speaker 2: I hear this every single day, that there's a constitutional
Speaker 2: crisis coming threatened, you know, open contempt investigations against the
Speaker 2: administration alleged a willful disregard of the March fifteenth. I
Speaker 2: think it was a temporary restraining order. You've had a
Speaker 2: chance to read what he did and and how this
Speaker 2: is forming and shaping, and maybe you could cut through
Speaker 2: the bs and tell us exactly what is going on
Speaker 2: with Bosberg here. I have read it, and you know,
Speaker 2: you realize, of course that reading it disqualifies you from
Speaker 2: telling us about exactly.
Speaker 3: I Look, he's really pissed off because the administration had
Speaker 3: this idea, we're gonna proclaim the Alien Enemies Act, and
Speaker 3: we're going to immediately, you know, we're gonna proclaim it
Speaker 3: late Friday night or maybe early Saturday morning, and then
Speaker 3: that same day we're going to load these people on
Speaker 3: planes under the Alien Enemies Act and put them in
Speaker 3: this prison in El Salvador. The lawyers for these plaintiffs,
Speaker 3: for some of the people the Venezuelan's got into it,
Speaker 3: filed a lawsuit. The government knew it was coming, but
Speaker 3: you know, hustled them onto the planes anyway. And you know,
Speaker 3: it actually removed from the planes some of the specific
Speaker 3: plaintiffs in the case because it knew that they were
Speaker 3: blocked from being deported. But then the judge said, you know,
Speaker 3: he enjoyed the use of it that same day.
Speaker 4: This is all happening in.
Speaker 3: A few hours on a Saturday, right, But he then orders,
Speaker 3: you can't remove anyone pursue it to the Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 3: But the government has had people on planes already. They're
Speaker 3: out of US airspace, so they have them keep going
Speaker 3: and they you know, despite being under an order to
Speaker 3: not remove anybody, they hand them over to the Salvadorans
Speaker 3: a few hours later, and so he's saying, you violated
Speaker 3: the order because I said you couldn't remove anybody. They said, wow,
Speaker 3: they were already out of US airspace. He's saying, well,
Speaker 3: removing them is really changing custody. You're in custody of them,
Speaker 3: and you're giving them custody of another country. Also, I said,
Speaker 3: you might have to turn the planes around or not
Speaker 3: disembark people from the planes. So it's a you know, frankly,
Speaker 3: I mean contempt in the ordinary sense, the government is
Speaker 3: treating the courts contemptuously in this case. They're like, who
Speaker 3: the heck do you think you are interfering with this?
Speaker 3: You know, we're sending them off, and you know, by
Speaker 3: the way you're biased. We should have a new judge
Speaker 3: on this case. And you know, we don't need to
Speaker 3: bring back this guy Garcia. That's technically a separate case.
Speaker 3: But still, so, you know, contempt in the colloquial sense.
Speaker 3: I do think the government is treating the courts contemptuously.
Speaker 3: You know, whether Boseburg should be doing this is a
Speaker 3: different question, because, of course, the Supreme Court five to
Speaker 3: four basically agreed with his substantive ruling, which is, you
Speaker 3: can't send somebody with the Alien Enemies Act out of
Speaker 3: the country without any opportunity for due process. But the
Speaker 3: jurisdiction should really be in a different district court, so
Speaker 3: the government can say, what's this guy doing who's been
Speaker 3: stripped of jurisdiction trying to prosecute us for contempt? And so,
Speaker 3: you know, is it wise for Boseburg to try to
Speaker 3: push this contempt thing forward? I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: not if you're trying to de escalate. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: I'm simple authetic because they were thumbing their nose at
Speaker 3: a federal court and they just didn't really care what
Speaker 3: he was saying.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so all that's very cogent. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I get back to what I know bothers a lot
Speaker 1: of people I know on the left, which is the
Speaker 1: ruling of the Supreme Court last year about the immunity
Speaker 1: of presidential acts in connection with official duties. And of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of the problem there is what's an official
Speaker 1: duty and so forth, and so we again we get
Speaker 1: into one of those lacunae in the constitution, where when
Speaker 1: a judge finds someone in contempt of court, they then
Speaker 1: need who to enforce it and actually arrest somebody and
Speaker 1: put them in the jail cell. When you're found in contempt, well,
Speaker 1: that's something that you rely on the executive branch, whether
Speaker 1: it's the state level or at the federal level. In
Speaker 1: other words, Judge Bozburg can say, I find you Donald
Speaker 1: Trump or your officers in contempt of court, and now
Speaker 1: I want federal marshals to go pick you up.
Speaker 2: Well that's not going to work. I mean, we just
Speaker 2: know that's not going to happen. And Trump could pardon.
Speaker 3: Trump could pardon somebody under restigation for contempt of court exactly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, go ahead, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, fundamentally, I at first saw this administration
Speaker 3: and it's lawsuits and executive actions, and I said, okay,
Speaker 3: they want to take an aggressive posture toward the courts politically,
Speaker 3: and they want to uh provoke the Supreme Court to
Speaker 3: come in and side with them against the federal these
Speaker 3: lower federal court judges usually appointed by Democrats. My calculus
Speaker 3: started to change after that Oval Office meeting with Bukela,
Speaker 3: where it's where it's like huh. Maybe they're not really
Speaker 3: interested in just getting stuff in front of the conservative
Speaker 3: leaning Supreme Court and sort of doing politics, and they're
Speaker 3: really just interested in, you know, going as far as
Speaker 3: they can possibly go. So my old calculus would be,
Speaker 3: you know, judges have to lower the temperature, and I
Speaker 3: still think that they should do that where possible, But
Speaker 3: it may be that, you know, your thanks you get
Speaker 3: from lowering the temperature, as the Supreme Court tried to do,
Speaker 3: and the facilitate versus effectuate is even you know, more contempt.
Speaker 3: So that's sort of the question here. I think you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right. I mean, you're getting to the constitutional no
Speaker 3: man's land. I mean, the president can pardon somebody for contempt.
Speaker 3: That's settled. So courts can't really enforce contempt against the
Speaker 3: executive branch if the president doesn't want them to. So
Speaker 3: it's really becomes a political question. What does the public
Speaker 3: think of these contempt findings and what does the public
Speaker 3: think if the president pardons somebody and so on? And
Speaker 3: I'm not sure Boseberg, you know, and is going to
Speaker 3: help the political case against Trump. I think that's pretty
Speaker 3: easy for the administration to spin as here's an Obama
Speaker 3: pointed judge appointing a prosecutor to go after our people.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Courts have to be very judicious and you know about
Speaker 3: what kind of political terrain they want to defend.
Speaker 4: Not sure if this is the wisest.
Speaker 3: Thing, even though, as I said, quite sympathetic here because
Speaker 3: I'm frankly quite angry at the way that the administ
Speaker 3: I don't think there's a basis for the Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 3: I think that's you know, protextual. I don't think Venezuela
Speaker 3: is at war with the United States. I don't think
Speaker 3: that the gang. Normally, the Alien Enemies Act is against
Speaker 3: like citizens of Germany, not members of a gang. I
Speaker 3: think the whole thing is legally flawed and flimsy and protextual.
Speaker 3: And I think that the way that they implemented it
Speaker 3: to circumvent judicial review is outrageous.
Speaker 2: Let's change itself before we let you go in one
Speaker 2: more question, because you also know, no, I mean, really,
Speaker 2: we can talk about it. It's fascinating, but we eventually
Speaker 2: come down to that. Jason's right, and that's a completely
Speaker 2: defensible set of positions. But as far as how it's
Speaker 2: going to change the calculus, of it. The people who
Speaker 2: hate Trump will still think that he's being likely to stop,
Speaker 2: and the people will love Trump will be indifferent to
Speaker 2: it because and I you know, that's unfortunate, because one
Speaker 2: of the things that distinguishes us is a rule of law,
Speaker 2: and a rule of good law, and a rule of
Speaker 2: law intended to produce moral outcome as opposed to you know,
Speaker 2: like the Soviet Union and Russia with the lodges simply
Speaker 2: exists to grind people between the gears. Anyway, foreign policy
Speaker 2: is something you also write about briefly before you go,
Speaker 2: tell us give us some good news and foreign policy
Speaker 2: and some and some and some less good news so
Speaker 2: we can balance things out here.
Speaker 3: And really quickly, I just say something more on the law,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, Donald Trump that everyone in DC,
Speaker 3: in the press, prosecutors wanted him prosecuted and convicted for
Speaker 3: January sixth, by the election to hurt his election. Odds
Speaker 3: it was going to happen, except the Supreme Court intervened
Speaker 3: to the surprise of many, and prevented it from happening.
Speaker 3: So just be quite an irony if the administration turns
Speaker 3: around in malls the Supreme Court. You know this early
Speaker 3: in a term that it might not might not have
Speaker 3: but for that that immunity decision foreign policy, good news.
Speaker 2: Something comes trippingly to the tongue. I see, you're, you're,
Speaker 2: you're weighing so many good stories. Which one do we
Speaker 2: give me?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll start with bad news, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: I was actually kind of hopeful that Trump's Ukraine gambit
Speaker 3: of sort of as one of his advisors call it,
Speaker 3: hitting Zelensky with a two by four, you know, forcing
Speaker 3: the Ukrainians to come to the table, that that would
Speaker 3: start to yield to some kind of productive peace process
Speaker 3: does not seem.
Speaker 4: To be happening at all.
Speaker 3: I was, you know, open to it happening because we
Speaker 3: had such an attitude that you can't have any negotiation
Speaker 3: between Russia and Ukraine. And maybe that attitude was right,
Speaker 3: you know, but we'll see. But I'm I might have
Speaker 3: thought that the Trump people could have gotten some progress
Speaker 3: on that front.
Speaker 4: They really just have not.
Speaker 2: Because of what, because of Russian you know, disinclination to
Speaker 2: talk or Russian desire to spin it out as long
Speaker 2: as possible while they continue to grind away and you know,
Speaker 2: lose ten thousand soldiers for every square kilometer. I mean,
Speaker 2: Russia knows and Ukraine has to know that the eastern
Speaker 2: part is not going to be relinquished. And that's I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the sad, gut wrenching reality where we are today.
Speaker 2: I would love to see Ukraine whole, but I mean,
Speaker 2: is that a reality that has to be acknowledged by
Speaker 2: Ukraine and the United States before they go forward.
Speaker 3: And I mean, but that's the thing. Trump seems willing
Speaker 3: to more or less acknowledge it, but the Russians seemed
Speaker 3: to be wanting to push, push for more, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe their terms are still what they were when
Speaker 3: they were threatening the invasion, which is, you know, a
Speaker 3: total reconfiguration of US and NATO troop presence in Eastern Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems to me we more or less
Speaker 3: know what the endgame is going to look like. But
Speaker 3: as always with these things, the details of the peacekeeping force,
Speaker 3: the time horizon, what's officially recognized, what's informal.
Speaker 4: Whatever it is.
Speaker 3: It's hard, it's hard to say, but Witcoff and you know,
Speaker 3: Ribio and Trump, and they don't have much to show
Speaker 3: for it. In the first one hundred days or ninety
Speaker 3: something days. Of his of his office. So I think
Speaker 3: that's bad news because I I was open to to
Speaker 3: there being a at least temporary agreement that was within reach.
Speaker 3: I think good news is you know, Israel is There
Speaker 3: was just that news story leak about how the you know,
Speaker 3: Trump decided against going along with an Israeli strike on
Speaker 3: a round. But I think nonetheless, Israel has basically, you know,
Speaker 3: in the last couple of years and the last year,
Speaker 3: really uh turned the tide in this war and really
Speaker 3: beaten the you know, weakend Iran degraded, has bela There's
Speaker 3: an article in the journal about how Hamas is running
Speaker 3: out of an ability to pay fighters. So I think Israel,
Speaker 3: you know, is going to have emerged victorious in its
Speaker 3: October seventh war.
Speaker 2: It's it's looking like somewhere else in the world that
Speaker 2: there has to be something that's going to just pop
Speaker 2: up in two three months or so, and everybody is
Speaker 2: going to be scrambling for their maps and their lobes
Speaker 2: to figure out where that is and why it matters.
Speaker 2: And then we'll have you back on and you can
Speaker 2: tell us about about it. Jason Willoking at the Washington Post,
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us today. Fascinating conversation, lots of stuff
Speaker 2: that our readers are going to love and listeners are
Speaker 2: going to to pick a bone with or to applaud.
Speaker 2: And it's that's that's why we got you here.
Speaker 3: You know, the the Washington Post comments the AI summary,
Speaker 3: They now do an AI summary of the comments, and
Speaker 3: it's like, well, it's like readers express strong disagreement with
Speaker 3: the columns author Jason Willock.
Speaker 2: So I wel, congratulations, good for you, right there you go,
Speaker 2: All right, Jason, regards to DC and and all that,
Speaker 2: and thank you for being on the show today.
Speaker 4: Thanks great to be here.
Speaker 2: I hate those AI summaries. I get them all the time.
Speaker 2: I get them from Google loun and I don't trust
Speaker 2: any Google responses that I get because instead of giving
Speaker 2: me a link to go where I want to go,
Speaker 2: it gives me the AI summary, which then has a
Speaker 2: little paper clip at the bottom of it that I
Speaker 2: can click if I want to. And if I click
Speaker 2: on that, then something on the right side bar shows up,
Speaker 2: and it's the Wick pay thing that I want to
Speaker 2: go to. And maybe I don't want to go to
Speaker 2: Wikipedia at all because it's a story about a contemporary
Speaker 2: character and we all know those are shot through with
Speaker 2: all sorts of poisonous politics. Possibly I just want to
Speaker 2: learn about a guy who's an architect in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 2: But no, I got to go to this other I
Speaker 2: hate Google search right now. I just do. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing. If you want wait a minute, Jason, you're
Speaker 2: still here. I'm doing a commercial.
Speaker 4: No, I'm listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're gonna be like Rob Long. Rob Long at
Speaker 2: this point my shoulder his way into the conversation and
Speaker 2: completely destroy the segue that I was attempting to build.
Speaker 2: But I'm more than happy from somebody who's from an
Speaker 2: august publication is the Washington Post to to come in
Speaker 2: and do so. Anyway, I have to get back to
Speaker 2: my commercial to keep the lights on. So thank you, Jason,
Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan, so good to talk to you.
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Speaker 2: minutes left you what's a funny lot? Well?
Speaker 1: Well, I was wondering how when you began that segue
Speaker 1: you were going to get to because it's all about
Speaker 1: searches and the Internet at AI and how are.
Speaker 2: You going to get But that was okay?
Speaker 1: Can I just say two quick observations on a couple
Speaker 1: of things. Jason said that I didn't want to protract
Speaker 1: the conversation argue because I'm not really arguing, but you
Speaker 1: mix the point that you know we're not at war
Speaker 1: with Venezuela, and so how does the Alien Enemies Act apply?
Speaker 1: And I think that's true, although remember that we have
Speaker 1: had a formal declaration of war for any hostilities now
Speaker 1: since World War Two. We have, as the Obama people
Speaker 1: put it, with our Libya bombing kinetic activity, right, we
Speaker 1: use these euphemisms. I do think it is correct, though,
Speaker 1: to understand that Venezuela, if they're not at war with us,
Speaker 1: they're at least hostile to us. And you know, one
Speaker 1: piece of information many listeners may not know is there
Speaker 1: have been direct flights with a refueling stop between Tehran
Speaker 1: and Caracas for fifteen years now. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's about coordinating their oil strategies, for opek, I think
Speaker 1: it's about a lot more mischievous things than that. So
Speaker 1: and I think, by the way, determining whether a country
Speaker 1: is hostile to us in actable ways is an executive determination.
Speaker 1: That's just my opinion. And you know, Jason's views on
Speaker 1: this are certainly credible. Then the second one is, and
Speaker 1: here again I get back to my historian role in life.
Speaker 1: It's true that Trump is taking a big risk if
Speaker 1: he attacks the Supreme Court and defies the Quarter or
Speaker 1: otherwise causes a controversy or crisis over that. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, let's keep it mind that you go back
Speaker 1: to FDR and everyone knows about his court packing scheme,
Speaker 1: and that's all you read about in the history books.
Speaker 1: Thought to be a great failure. But people really ought
Speaker 1: to go back and read his speeches and his fireside
Speaker 1: addresses that he gave in nineteen thirty seven. His attacks,
Speaker 1: direct attacks on the Supreme Court were borderline violent. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was trying to delegitimize the Supreme Court and force
Speaker 1: them to bend to his will, which they did. So
Speaker 1: you know, again, I don't think what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: anywhere close to the assault on the Court that Roosevelt conducted.
Speaker 1: And you know, I wish more people were aware of
Speaker 1: those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: What you're saying, Stephen, is that actually there are nuances here,
Speaker 2: and I agree with you. I mean, I just want
Speaker 2: to I want to reiterate that when I make the
Speaker 2: point that I mean I'm a great believer in the
Speaker 2: rule of law and applied to all. Not find me
Speaker 2: the man and I'll show you the crime, but find
Speaker 2: me the crime and show you the man. I hate
Speaker 2: law fare. But at the same time two things. One,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that I agree with this, because I
Speaker 2: think it is a dangerous down which to go. But
Speaker 2: a lot of the indifference that people have to this
Speaker 2: comes from the lawlessness of the previous administration. And even
Speaker 2: though that may itself have been fortified by code or
Speaker 2: programs or the rest of it, everybody knows that it
Speaker 2: was open season come across. And the Americans who themselves
Speaker 2: would say, yes, I believe in bringing people into this
Speaker 2: country to replenish us, to bring new acid, you know,
Speaker 2: to do jobs here, to provide certain I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: we believe in immigration. We just want the legality and
Speaker 2: the process and the vetting and the idea that there
Speaker 2: wasn't any of that. That people got in They got
Speaker 2: a little date, show up in court in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six and released in the middle of nowhere. When you
Speaker 2: combine that with the occasional high profile crime, it combines
Speaker 2: to form an era of an absolute indifference to what
Speaker 2: may be less than legal means to solve the problem.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying I like it. I don't like it,
Speaker 2: but I understand why a lot of people this is
Speaker 2: their sole intellectual contact with the arguments. Just shrug and
Speaker 2: say they didn't care then and I don't care now.
Speaker 2: So let's like Jason was saying, let us be careful
Speaker 2: to cross teas and dot I is because we don't
Speaker 2: want to lose our eventual fallback and are to the
Speaker 2: position of the galley because it's a good thing. But
Speaker 2: again again, I you know, I brought up the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union in Russia. People keep observers keep pointing out that
Speaker 2: Russia is an extremely legal nation and will do things
Speaker 2: and you know, they follow codes and procedures just down
Speaker 2: to the atomic level. It's not because they're interested in
Speaker 2: doing what's right, because they're interested in doing what the
Speaker 2: system requires them to do. Just because something is legal
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's right anyway. Second point, and it had
Speaker 2: to do with the what were you what was what
Speaker 2: was the last point that you were making there? I
Speaker 2: can't remember well.
Speaker 1: That that FDR's assaulted on the court was way beyond
Speaker 1: anything that any of the Trump people have.
Speaker 2: Said so far, at least, right. Yeah, I go back
Speaker 2: and I look at the newspapers of the thirties and
Speaker 2: it's quite remarkable the the the zestiness of the dialogue.
Speaker 2: We sink back and forth. Yeah, oh it's you know, Yes,
Speaker 2: history helps, it really does. There's there are many many
Speaker 2: antecedents for what we are seeing today in the twentieth
Speaker 2: century of American culture. And sometimes it's amusing to find
Speaker 2: those echoes. And sometimes it's heartening too to see that
Speaker 2: we have faced this before and we've gotten through it,
Speaker 2: and we've remained a country that is still the last
Speaker 2: best hope for mankind. Well, you know us and I
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Speaker 2: the member site. Oh you can't, that's right, you're not
Speaker 2: a member. Sorry, but that's easily corrected with just a
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Speaker 2: for listening, and we'll see you all in the comment
Speaker 2: at Ricochet four point oho. Bye bye,