Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittles, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience Shirpa on today's Quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Andrew Langer, radio host and president
of the Institute for Liberty. Andrew joins us today to
talk about what free speech would look like under a
Harris Walls administration, fitting that we're addressing this topic on
Halloween and pretty scary stuff. Andrew, thanks so much for
joining us in the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: It is great to be here. There is a letter.
Speaker 1: That is out there, signed by a number of conservatives
that drives home the concerns of a lot of conservatives
in this country in terms of what they have been
burdened by to use the parlance of Kamala Harris thus far,
and what they fear will be deeper restrictions and perhaps
even graver issues with the first Amendment and speech under
the Harris Walls administration should that come to pass. Tell
me a little bit about that letter.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, and so you know, I wear a number
of different hats, and this is an issue that has
when its way through all of the work that I do.
But you know, this is this is free speech is
one of these areas that has certainly come up to
great discussion in this election. You know, as we're talking
about things like protecting democracy.
Speaker 1: JD.
Speaker 2: Vance probably said it best.
Speaker 3: You know that this issue of censorship, which takes many forms,
it takes center stage in so much of this. And
it's ironic that a movement, the progressive movement, which was
built frankly on the backs of protecting the free speech
of every American to say what's on their mind without
fear of a retribution or reprisal, has essentially turned its
back on that principle. Is really evidenced by that moment
during the vice presidential debate where Tim Walls not only
said well, yeah, there are limits to free speech, he
also used a very outdated trope in order to try
to make his incorrect point, which I immediately picked up
on and tweeted out about when can get into that if.
Speaker 2: You want me.
Speaker 3: But the idea is that over the last so twenty
years or so, there has been a real concerted effort
on the part of the left to go after conservative
organizations to try to silence them. And one of the
ways that they want to do it is to go
after the donors to those organizations too, you know.
Speaker 2: And the goal is twofold, right. The goal is to.
Speaker 3: Either dry up the source of money for these organizations
or to get folks to be bullied into not supporting
those organizations. And the reality is that it's a combination
of both those things.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me, and we're going to get a
little bit further into that as we progress in our
conversation today. But it's interesting to me that the left,
the modern left, which of course I need to say,
looks nothing like the classic liberal you know, that we
have seen in this country for many, many years and
just kind of dried up post Viata War into the
seventies and the eighties into what the left wing of
America is now. But just thinking about the tradition of
the classical liberal or liberal politics and the emphasis on
free speech and free expression and those first principles of
our founders and how far they've strayed from those. It's
amazing to see where we are today with the American
left as compared to where it was, say in the
latter nineteen fifties, early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's an excellent jumping off point because a
lot of this is based and rooted in a very
famous nineteen fifty seven Supreme Court case NAACP versus Alabama.
And in that case, you know, the State of Alabama
wanted to get access to the donor lists of the NAACP,
and the Supreme Court recognized the real threat here and
said in the decision, they're really the only good that
could come out of this. The only real reason why
the State of Alabama wanted access to this information was
so that they can harass the donors to the NAACP.
And so you know, the Supreme Court rule, well, yeah,
the NAACP has a fundamental right to this list.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Let me let's take a quick step back here, because
I don't want to I want to make sure we're
all on the same page. So you know, in America,
we've decided that if you're if you have an organization
that is engaged in the effort to elect somebody to office. Well,
then we as a people have decided, well, that needs
to be made public so the public is aware of
who is funding the various campaigns. I think gets obviously
much much more complicated than this, and donations to those
kinds of organizations are not tax deductible.
Speaker 2: But then you get into.
Speaker 3: Organizations that are organized under section five oh one CEE
of the Internal Revenue Code. And again I don't want
to get too deep in the weeds, but there are
primarily three different kinds of organizations. There are trade associations.
We don't need to deal with that today, but there
are both advocacy organizations that are engaged with telling people
about policies and the policies that they're for and against.
And then there are what are called research and education
and other kinds of charitable organizations that are engaged in
just what we're talking about, a research and analysis, and
they can do a little bit of advocacy. Donations to
research and eduction ext deductible, and donors can remain secret.
Donors to the five oh one C four organizations the
advocacy organizations, they too can remain secret, but donations to
them are not tax deductible. Now, the fact is that
the left wants access to the donor information of organizations
that are both research and education and advocacy organizations alike.
And we know the reason is because they want to
harass them. But we can get into the history of
so of that in the modern era. But you know,
and then they try to obfuscate it all by calling
these dark money organizations and they misstate the purpose of
these organizations. But again we can get into that in
greater de tail if you'd like it.
Speaker 1: Indeed, because I find it interesting, I've been reporting on
this subject of free speech, this area of free speech
for a very long time, and I have mentioned this
often on this podcast. I saw one of the worst
abuses of free speech in America in the state of
Wisconsin back in around two thousand and nine ten through
twenty thirteen. It's called the John Go Investigation, and it
was exactly this. We had leftist Democrat district attorneys in
the largest cities in Wisconsin coupling with left leaning bureaucratic
institutions what was known as the Government Accountability Board of
that of course, yes, and you know, they come with
these kinds of names about accountability. But there was no
accountability in these secret Star Chamber investigations, these John Do
investigations that included pre dawn armed raids on the homes
of citizens, Conservative citizens, simply because they were engaging in
their First Amendment right to be involved in policy and
politics in Wisconsin, in America. That investigation was ultimately, after
several years, ruled unconstitutional. But the process was the punishment,
as has has been noted many many times. And what
I found in all of this is the left continued
to talk about the term dark money, dark money and
the rights dark money. Today in twenty twenty four, the
left is dominating the dark money space.
Speaker 2: So is this not.
Speaker 1: What we have seen from the left and trying to
go after so called dark money on the right. Wouldn't
this come back to bite them in the ankles?
Speaker 2: You would?
Speaker 3: You would hope so, But they're not a feared of
this right this. It's interesting because it gets into something
that I'd written and it comes back to mind in
what yeah, early November, right before the election in twenty sixteen,
about Donald Trump. I was a Trump skeptic going into
all of this, but I said, you know, the greatest
threat to American liberty is the expansive use of executive
branch power. But the point is I said, well, maybe,
just maybe we have an opportunity here. If the left
is so concerned about abuse of power, maybe just maybe
we can use this opportunity to rein in that executive power.
Of course, it never came to pass, because in the end,
what the left wants is that power. It's the same
reason why in the wake of the various abuses of
power by the federal government in the nineteen sixties and
into the early nineteen seventies, despite you know, the Church
Committee looking at the abuses of the intelligence community, how
the FBI was targeting legitimate political activity, the left never
took the next step to rein in that power. Know
what they what they did was they wanted to make
sure that that power was going to be reserved to
them when they would take office. And so that was
the seeds of the weaponization of this the seeds of lawfare.
One of my favorite examples, not to the filibuster, here
is what happened, you know, in the last few years
or a few years ago to the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
an organization that I worked for in the early two thousands.
Absolutely an organization that is dealing with, you know, climate
policy and skepticism about climate policy and asking important questions.
Right because even if we were to assume that climate
change was real and it was man made, you know,
how we go about addressing it is open for legitimate
debate and discussion.
Speaker 2: As it should be.
Speaker 3: CEI, you know, found itself and its donors being harassed
by varioustorneys general and and federal prosecutors demanding access to correspondence,
demanding access to donor lists because they wanted to prosecute
CEI for fraud.
Speaker 2: That was it. But you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: The punishment was the process forcing them to spend money
on this, the chilling effect it could have on donors,
all of those things it's bound.
Speaker 1: Up in, and it has. It has a very pronounced
chilling effect on donors. I remember the CEI case. It
was one of the worst, just kitchen sink subpoenas thrown
at the organization simply for asking important questions that a
lot of Americans were asking and continue to ask. And
I think in the same vein. At the same time,
we have to talk about what happened under the Obama
administration against these organizations. You're talking about these five oh one,
C three, and C four organizations that either advocate or
serve as educational entities. They were targeted. Think about Lois
Learner and the targeting that went on. But it seems
to me this current regime is just an extension of
that regime.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. They just build on it. And as
I as you and I I think have both been
in this business long enough for these businesses, long enough
that we know the way it used to be right,
which is when when an agency, when an administration was
caught doing something wrong right, and they were caught and
publicly excoriated, then you know, the person who did it
would be fired, there would be some kind of an apology,
and the White House would take steps to change the
behavior of the agency so that abuse of power couldn't
happen again. But under Obama what happened. Lois Learner didn't
get censured. In fact, she was promoted. The other folks
around her were promoted. There was never any apology. And
this is the most important part of it. Mat the
Obama administration turned around and tried to actually implement the
policy that had led to the harassment of these organizations.
They actually proposed changes to the Internal re Revenue Code
in terms of donor disclosure and how they were going to.
Speaker 2: Go about doing this. And it was not just the
efforts of.
Speaker 3: Conservative organizations, but again the NAACP of the NAACP versus
Alabama case, who came out and said, hey, Obama administration,
if you enact your proposal, it is going to make
our work impossible to do. And remember we're the name
party in this case that we're all talking about here.
And so between the NAACP's comments to the Obama administration
and the fact that this is complicated, stay with me
for a second. More than twice the number of people
who had commented on any IRS rulemaking in the previous
seven years combined filed comments with US that overwhelmed the
IRS's docket. They really were put behind the apall and listen.
As much as like to say it was the numbers,
it really was the NAACP that was able to step
in there and protect these principles.
Speaker 1: It was that case, that famous fifty seven case Alibama
that I think resonated in that particular time period the
John Do investigation, As I mentioned, I remember Hans von
Spakowski of the Heritage Foundation, you know, a former DOJ attorney,
civil rights attorney, election law expert. He constantly cited this
case as the left continued to go after right of
center organizations in this country. Now, I think as we
look at what was happening in twenty twenty, during before
and during that election campaign and what we've seen afterward,
now the scariest stuff is coming out with organizations that
are supposed to be defenders of the First Amendment rights
because they make their money on First Amendment rights now
have been colle voting with the government to take away
First Amendment rights. What a strange Eldest Huxley style brave
New world we we uh inhabit now?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean this listen, this gets into this gets into
the you know, the n DOUBLE, the NAAC people, the
A C l U just sort of turning around and
they've done some good things, They've been on the right
side of certain things at certain points in time, but
you know, sort of repudiating this idea that it's the
most uh uh, it's the speech we most vehemently disagree
with that needs the greatest amount of protection. You know,
they they've essentially thrown up their hands under enormous pressure
from their allied organizations. You used to be able to
count on the end of I keep saying this, mad,
I'm sorry about that. Used to be able to count
on the on the A c l U to turn
around and and sort of defend the right principles at
the right time. And you can't reliably defend or depend
on them anymore. You know, the NAACP was one of
the first organizations out there to sort of demonize the
Tea party groups that were engaging in this rightful speech.
And so this is you know, this is where we are.
It is about the hierarchical nature of the leftist organizations.
They get their marching orders and you know, they have
their ideological goals in mind, and they don't let these
other pretty things like like the First Amendments standing their way.
Speaker 1: Why though, how, I mean, how did this happen? When
did this really take shape? You mentioned the ac LU,
and I think about you noted over and over again,
where we have the kinds of violations that the old
your father's ac LU so to speak, you know, would
have been engaged in pre dawn raids on the homes
of citizens over election law complaints. The ACLU, you know,
decades ago, would have been there. They were absolutely silent.
In fact, they were part of the finger pointing operation
at the time. What happened, When did this happen and why? Well, listen,
I think it was it was gradual over time.
Speaker 2: I listen.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist in this,
but you know, at the end of the day, right,
we all know that there have been outside forces that
have been working diligently to sort of turn the left
into something that it didn't used to be, really, to
take on that more authoritarian Marxist way of looking at
the world where it really is about the consolidation of
power and using that power to punish your enemies as
opposed to a general welfare that it used to be
all about. But you know, listen, some of it has
to do with the advent of the PC movement right
and the idea of political correctness and you have to
say things in the right way and the refinement of
that over time. Sure, And some of it has to
do with right wing organizations getting much better and much
at how they can go out.
Speaker 2: And reach people.
Speaker 3: I think some of it has to do with the
anger that many folks on the left felt in the
wake of the two thousand election and then George W.
Bush winning re election in two thousand and four. So
all of those things together, you know, it led to
this refinement over time. And you know, I would say
that as the right got smarter on communication, the left
got smarter at engaging in you know, the warfare there
and as you push and what they are so smarter
about is being able to push for the ever expansion
of federal power and using that power to reach their
ideological ends. That was certainly you know something you know,
you watched it during the Obama administration, how the effect
of the Obama administration was at expanding the regulatory state
and using their tools creatively to go after the right
that has been refined and expanded on by the Biden administration.
I mean, one of the things we haven't talked about
real quick is something called Operation Chokepoint Sure, which was
an effort in you know, twenty thirteen twenty fourteen timeframe
on the part of the Obama administration to combat what
they were calling fraudulent behavior. That's what they that's what
the pretext was, and they were going to crack down
on fraudulent behavior in a credit card industry, and they
were going to use it to crack down on predatory
lending on the short term high risk lending industry otherwise
known as payday lenders, things like that, but they wound
up using it as an ideological tool to go after
things like a gun and ammunition manufacturers and dealers and
you know.
Speaker 2: And the idea was that they wouldn't do.
Speaker 3: It directly, they would go and pressure credit card payment
processors and banks to shut down the accounts of these
entities in these industries and choke off their cash flow.
Now to that end, you know, one of the things
in Operation Chokepoint was to go after the fraudulent behavior
of small nonprofit organizations. How you define small, I don't know.
But if you can say, for instance, that an organization
that is engaging in asking questions about climate change and
climate skepticism, and your administration has declared that man made
climate change is settled science science, then you turn around
and you declare any questioning of that to be fraudulent activity,
and all of a sudden, you're you know, brought into this.
So you know, that's that's how these things happen. It's
it's a way listen, the lawfare against President Trump and
the cobbling together of legal theory upon legal theory, you know,
to to reach a con That's what the Left has
become much better at.
Speaker 2: Yes it is because we say it is.
Speaker 1: And that's what the left has done taking you know,
the chapter and verse from a Lenski and his variators. Yeah, absolutely,
you know, as a press, as a Loventi barrier, the
head of the secret police in Russia under under Stalin.
Speaker 2: Right, show me the man and I'll show you.
Speaker 3: The crime is exactly rhensive law that really is amorphos
and is defined by whoever is in power. Well can
be used against anybody you want to turn it against.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly what we are talking about. And
the stakes couldn't be higher.
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Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And our guest today is Andrew Langer, radio host, president
of the Institute for Liberty. Andrew joining us to talk
about what free speech just might look like under a
Harris Walls administration. We know in large part because meet
the new boss, same as the old boss.
Speaker 3: As it were, literally getting ready to quote that song tomorrow?
Speaker 2: Am I ready?
Speaker 1: You can't beat a good old fashioned who quote, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk a bit more about the
statement that was put out again, the Statement of Principles
opposing weaponization of nonprofit donor list, and that's really what
this is about. We're talking about this, as you just mentioned,
you know, Operation Choke Point and its aims and its goals,
and you know, I think of it in the same
way that we've seen over the last four years in
this country, Operation choke Point, but brought to bear on
social media. So dealign with the facebooks of the world
and the previous twitters and the Googles and all of
that sort of thing, and it gets into speech. But
you mention here, I want to read just a little
bit of the statement. The freedom to privately join with
like minded Americans in groups that promote shared beliefs has
been vital to the success of the conservative movement. In
today's era of cancel culture, biased media, political violence, and
growing political divides, these rights are even more essential to
safeguard free speech against the political establishment. Every citizen must
be free to privately support ideas and causes they believe in.
How can that be if the largest vehicles for the
espousing of those beliefs are shut down to them.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's exactly it.
Speaker 3: It gets to this principle not enunciated in this statement,
but one that I've talked about quite a bit, which
is we need to be better at enunciating as a people,
the idea that that which the federal government is prohibited
from doing via the constitution, it cannot engage in extra
constitutionally through other means.
Speaker 2: Right, you know.
Speaker 3: But on the on the speech side of it, right,
the idea we know that the federal government can't turn
around and out and out sensor speech without some very
good reason. We know that, you know, the limitations for
free speech are you know, bounded by how any right,
the exercise of any right is bounded by whether your
exercise at that right harms somebody else.
Speaker 2: Right, that's the how just law is born.
Speaker 3: But the point is that the government, we know, the
federal government is prohibited by the First Amendment from directly
silencing you know, political speech. Well, they also can't turn
around and start pressuring platforms to to sensor speech as well,
and then can't turn around and say, well, it wasn't
us doing it.
Speaker 2: We didn't.
Speaker 3: We didn't censor Andrew Langer's you know, Facebook wall. It
was Facebook that censored Andrew Langer's Facebook wall. So, you know,
that's that's one of the great problems that we have here.
I mean, we do have to have a greater conversation
as a people about what it means to be the
public square and how a public square has changed. I'm
not a big fan of getting the federal government in
the business of regulating content platforms, because again, I think
that's a that's a double edged sword. But at the
very least we need to have a conversation about just
what this means and what the federal government is permitted
to do and is prohibited.
Speaker 1: From doing, certainly, And you mentioned it earlier in our
in the conversation, Tim Walls at that debate famously invoking
the you can't yell fire in a.
Speaker 3: Crowded theater line. This bothered me to no end. And
it's because it, you know, it evinces, you know, such
a misunderstanding. And I kind of wish jd Vance had
a better understanding of it as well, because he could
have attacked on that, you know, understanding that case, the
Shank case, which was a nineteen twenty Supreme Court case
in which the federal government was trying to I mean,
this is the irony of all this. I mean, if
Tim Walls knew anything about the case, he would be
he would be would we wouldn't saying this, but you know,
in which an avowed communist was being silenced by the
federal government under the.
Speaker 2: Alien Sedition Act I think was the Alien Sedition Act.
Speaker 3: Or whatever it was, and you know, the Supreme Court
upheld it, you know, on the on the grounds that
it was seditious activity, and then later obviously overturned by
by you know, later Supreme.
Speaker 2: Court case law by the way.
Speaker 3: Also one of the hallmarks of understanding why starry decisis.
Speaker 2: Is not the not the thing that the left really
ought to believe that it is.
Speaker 3: The point is it was bad law in the nineteen
twenties and it was overturned later on. And so you know,
the left needs to understand that, yeah, you can yell
fire in a crowded theater, and even if you couldn't
yell fire in a crowded theater, it's a bad or
even if it's a bad idea to do it, it's
a bad idea to invoke this as case law because
of the fact circumstances surrounding it.
Speaker 2: No, the reality is bad speech or speech you don't
like is more speech.
Speaker 3: Let me give you a really good example here, right,
And this is part of what drives the left up
the wall and part of the reason why they are
so aggressive about this. You know, Joe Biden gets out
there and he calls, you know, the supporters of Donald Trump.
He calls them garbage. Of course, he walks it back, says,
that's not what he meant. The bottom line is he
said what he said, and it's out there, right, And
what does Donald Trump do well? Donald Trump takes it
and holds it up. First of all, you know, he
defends his constituency, but then he holds it up to
ridicule and he exposes it for the bad idea that
it is.
Speaker 2: That's the way free speech is supposed to work.
Speaker 3: You say something I don't like, well, I'm going to
hold it to ridicule and therefore show it has no
power over me.
Speaker 1: Then he uses a big garbage truck to do it. Yes, Yes,
which is classic Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Of course, my favorite right now is the version of
the Gadsden flag where you know, don't put on me
flag that instead of having a snake in the middle,
has a black garbage bag in the middle.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, for sure. Yeah, lots of memes.
Speaker 1: You see, we are we are communicating and we are
allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I see an Oscar the Grouch Sesame street meme, you know,
coming out of the garbage and talking about how Joe
Biden feels about the half of the American electorate. You know,
I laugh at that, but there's a good point to it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I wish hold on now, I wish I'd use the
Oscar the Grouch song I Love Trash on the show yes, out.
Speaker 1: You know, I've long argued that we should have some
you know, some occasional bumper music that that is relevant
to our segments, and that would be perfect for it,
because we'll have to deal with that in production meetings
or post production meetings.
Speaker 2: But no, I bring this up.
Speaker 1: Those the memes and now the argument I've had this
conversation about artificial intelligence. And remember the what we we've
seen in this election cycle. We have a governor the
state of California working with a leftist legislature it wants
to closed down you know, these this phony ad that's
up there using you know, Kamala Harris's voice in a
very humorous way, clearly a humorous way parody, and now
we have a war on parody that's going on in America.
Speaker 2: Free and parody.
Speaker 3: Is such an important element of this. It's so funny
because you know, last night on the Jimmy Kimmel's show,
he went out there and he and he said, well,
I think you know, Trump supporters should vote late. They
should vote on Wednesday or Thursday next week. And somebody
pointed out, you know, if they turned that into a
meme and put it out there, you know, Jimmy Kimmel
would be would be a helld liable under California law
for this, and obviously no, we want Jimmy Kimble to
be protected. This is a wholesale different I will tell
you something. I am having a real hard time. There
is there is some satire out there these days that
is so good that you just don't know if it's serious.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the way it's supposed to be.
I think that's what we want, frankly.
Speaker 3: You know, the other part of the problem here is
that the left has come down and said they they
don't think that their constituency is smart enough to recognize,
you know, what's real and what isn't. Maybe they're more susceptible,
you know though they start talking about QAnon, you know,
and the folks who sort of believe in the conspiracy
theories in QAnon. But the reality is they've got their
bluing on adherents who I don't think are nearly as
sophisticated as other folks who just sort of believe everything
they're given and don't think empirically about it. And then
I'm saying we need to expect more of our citizen ry,
right Michael Douglas and the American President said it best.
Speaker 2: You know, you got to want it. This is hard stuff.
Speaker 1: Here, Yes, yes it is. And doesn't that speak to
kind of the leftist belief system, a top down kind
of system, you know, patriarch or in their case, a
matriarch or however they wanted to find the sexuality the
gender of it these days, but you know that's that's
the old Marxist communist way, the Central Committee kind of
style of thinking. So we've talked a lot about where
speech is today. We face, though, is something I think
we really need to take a look at. Where do
you see a Harris Walls administration on this front? Because
we've heard over and over again about the new and
reinvented Kamala Harris. She's not going to be Joe Biden's
policy keeper. Do you agree or disagree with her change
heart so to speak?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's exactly it, you know, building on
the idea that these ideas get refined over time. And
given what we saw what they did to Donald Trump
over the course of the last three and a half years,
there is every expectation that they will make good on
a whole host of the tactics before, and I think
it starts with this issue of fraud and redefining fraud.
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen over the last three and a half.
Speaker 3: Years what Lena Kahan has done for the most part,
and every once in a while she's she's you know,
what she does is right and well within the mission
of the FTC. But the Federal Trade Commission is engaged
in massive amounts of ideological warfare against its opponents, most
notably going after Elon Musk and going after a Twitter
and standing the way. In fact, I believe it was
the House Judiciary Committee that just released a report on this.
You can expect that, and you can expect the mobilization
of US attorneys on this engaging in not the same
kind of legal you know, lawfairs that have been done
against Donald Trump, but different kinds. Right, So again you
go after folks who are vaccine skeptics, you know, and
who are asking questions about COVID, or who are asking
questions about climate change, or who are asking questions about
what's going on in Central Europe or any place else.
That this administration is having an ideological battle right on
issues having to do with life. And that's how they
sort of create the nexus for the federal government to
go after them. That's the other thing about this administration
that has been astounding to me is what we've called,
and me and Wayne Cruz over at CEI and a
handful of others, the whole of government approach to their
ideological goals, which is they have been incredibly creative in
using multiple agencies, not the usual suspects to go after
organizations and entities and ideas that they have an ideological
animus against. So we can certainly see that. You know, thankfully,
we have a Supreme Court case a couple of years
ago Americans for Prosperity Foundation vi. Banta was originally Americans
for Prosperity Foundation vi. Harris because she was the Attorney
General of California, which dealt with the California law about this.
And the Supreme Court thankfully is on the record recently
upholding the rights of organizations to engage and have you know,
donors give to them anonymously. But under a Harris Waltz administration,
you know, who knows what they will try to do.
And I'm sorry that seems like a cop out answer.
They will go after it. On the issue of fraud.
They will work to expand the courts. They will use
one of my favorites, Matt real quick. You know, nobody
ever thought this was going to happen, but the Obama administration,
this is no joking, go look it up, used the
resources of the National Cancer Institute to produce a report
to attack the Tea Party movement as a movement because
they felt that the Tea Party movement was being funded
by big tobacco, even though the Tea Party movement didn't
take any fans on tobacco use. Nevertheless, right, so you
can expect kind of and I'm going to use this term,
I don't mean it as a compliment. They are going
to be creative as in terms of how they go
about doing this.
Speaker 1: Isn't it interesting that these are the same folks talking
about how our democracy is on the line and the
selection that they proposed to be the defenders and protectors
of democracy from Donald Trump and conservatives. And then you
cite all of the things that you've just mentioned, not
in the things that we didn't really talk about was,
you know, the Banana Republic style weaponization of the Justice
Department to go again to go up against political enemies
but their political enemies are not just Donald Trump, they
are conservatives who don't agree with them. But let me
ask you this, in all fairness, what does Donald Trump JD.
Van's administration look like for the First Amendment, the idea
of free speech, free association?
Speaker 3: Now, listen, I mean, I think jad Vince has made
it very very clear. I mean, do I think Donald
Trump is a First Amendment scholar?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: But I think Donald Trump knows first hand what happens
when you speak out and how the mighty hand of
the establishmentarian elites can reach down and make life miserable
for you. But Jade Vince as someone who recognizes and
has articulated this to the end degree on the debate stage.
So I think we're in We're in great hands here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, recognizing that at the end of the day, all
rights are balanced out.
Speaker 2: The exercise of all rights.
Speaker 3: Are balanced out by how the exercise of that right
impacts other people. So, as always right, my right to
free speech is limited to how is limited by how
it might harm you. So I can't out and out
lie about you. I can't spread rumors about you. I
can't do things that will damage your reputation and you
have to, you know, show me and show a court
where harm has been committed. But that's the point. In
the end, we have the most expansive you of free speech,
and I believe that Trump advance, especially given the fact
that we we've already had four years of a Trump administration.
They didn't attack the First Amendment one I owed, at
least not as clear as I can tell. So I
have no reason to think that there's going to be
any kind of new effort in that regard.
Speaker 1: So a final question for you on all of this,
and we've referenced it over the course of this conversation.
You have It's one thing to have a government in
administration a regime.
Speaker 2: Behave the way it has with basic.
Speaker 1: Rights First Amendment rights and what we've seen with Biben
Harris in this administration.
Speaker 2: But it is altogether different.
Speaker 1: To be in a period of time where you have journalists,
you have a corporate media that is cheering on abuses
against First Amendment rights. So no matter who wins this election,
you still have a what I like to call an
accomplss media that is very much complicit in the sort
of abuses we've been talking about. What happens if Harris wins,
what happens if Trump wins to that complicit media, well, listen.
Speaker 3: I think the you know, the complicit media goes along
with whatever happens under under Harris. They're not curious, they're
not investigating, and it will be a complete upholding of
their value in their own eyes as a as part
of this process, and you know, let's take it even
a step further back, right, it becomes a feather in
the cap of the folks who run journalism institutions around
the country who have abandoned and I'll go in too
far to say abandon ethics, the principles of ethics, but
certainly the principles by which journalists were supposed to operate
in terms of holding the powerful up to being accountable
in all of these things. You know, that goes and continues.
You know, the thing about the Trump and Vance, the
best thing that they can do is make sure that
the various institutions that do serve as being checks on
power are still out there, whether it's AM talk radio
or making sure that the various platforms that are out
there are And let me be really clear about this,
I think one of the most important things that the
Vance or the Trump Vance administration can do is to
peel back exactly how the Biden administration was pressure. The
Biden Harris administration was pressuring various platforms to censor or
otherwise de platform or shadow banner or whatever you want
to call it citizens for speaking their minds out and
holding them accountable, holding the officials accountable in that way,
and telling the story so that we know not to
do it again, whether or not they go and they.
Speaker 2: I get very nervous when.
Speaker 3: We start talking about legislation or regulation to sort of
deal with that. But I think part of it is
telling the story. I think the American people really do,
to a greater extent understand the various biases in what's
going on out there. You know, we're humans. We have
the ability to detect cognitive dissonance, right, we have that
out there. We just need somebody to tell us why
we're feeling that way, you know, to sort of put
a label on it for us. You are one of
the many liberty advocate signers of the Statement of Principles
supposing weaponization of nonprofit donor list Where can our listeners
find this statement? How can we sure it's a protect
protect Conservative Voices dot Com is how you find it.
Speaker 2: It's the easiest way to do it, you know.
Speaker 3: For me, you follow me on Twitter at Andrew Underscore
or x or whatever they call it now because I'm
you know, I do a lot of regulatory work as
well from my work with CPAC. I would love to
have folks find that there too.
Speaker 1: I am the reporter known as the former reporter X's
that's how all of these things are done these days,
I suppose. I want to thank my guest today, Andrew Langer,
radio host and president of the Institute for Liberty. Thanks
so much for joining us on The Federalist Radio Hour.
My absolute pleasure. You've been listening to another edition the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at the Federalist.
We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers
of freedom and anxious for the Fray.