uh welcome everybody here and I will warn you that today I I've been thinking um I hate to say I'm been thinking somewhat deeply today about some things and um and so I'm going to get into that stuff later that may or may not be of interest but it's probably going to be a little more introspective than you are accustomed to me being in these chats so let me get right into it as you know I hate to just sit around for a while and let me hit some of the question some of the questions that you start
ed by asking today first of all why is the radical right going after Taylor Swift and the answer to that is I think somewhat obvious it is that going after Taylor Swift gets them attention end of end of discussion think about how many people are now talking about them and their reaction to Taylor Swift it's what's called earned media which is a term that you use in when you're in the media and it means that you don't have to pay for advertising it means that you have created enough of a story th
at people call you and they want to report on it so one of the reasons that the radical right says these outrageous things and goes after you know creates these crazy things like CRT and Dei and all these attacks they go on is because it gets the media and certainly what they're doing is they're hitching themselves to Taylor Swift's star and and saying outrageous things about her and complaining about her because it gets them headlines and so for today's Republican party there's a couple of thin
gs going on there is partly the attempt to get eyeballs on what you're saying so that you theoretically could get elected but in some case like this it is probably more likely that this is part of what I would consider the right-wing grifter machine that simply wants a lot of clicks because you get money if you get clicks and that's something that I don't us study and I actually keep threatening to to chase down some of my friends who do do deep dives into investigative journalism because I woul
d love to know how much money there is behind some of the grifts that we see around us because you know they you know you look at at some of the real real headline people out there and I guess I I guess it's well I guess I won't say any names but there are certainly people who say outrageous things and then sell supplements or say outrageous things and then you know translate that into huge amounts of money and so I think partly they're going after Taylor Swift for the clickability of it and als
o because she um she is of course much more outspoken now about her dislike for Donald Trump and about her support for Biden and that of course uh is attractive to younger people who follow her and and I don't think just younger people who follow her by the way I I actually happen to think that she's a really interesting cultural phenomenon as well as a music phenomenon in that she has created over the course of the last summer a multicultural multi-racial and multi-generational movement and and
those movements don't necessarily have to be explicitly articulated to be behind a certain kind of politics so much as to remind people of the values that the people who are attending them gra grap grapple so you know when you're out at a concert with your mom and your sister and your best friend you're thinking about Community you're thinking about friendships you're thinking about kinship ties you're thinking about the sorts of values that currently support the Democratic party and um and if
you're going to a you know unite the right rally you're thinking about hatred and those sorts of emotions that you that unite that particular um group of people and so to have uh just to have the kind of tool that she had enforcing those sorts of values even if she was singing about you know haters for example or um the many things she sings about I think is an existential threat to those people who oppose those values that's just kind of my thought about what um about what uh that kind of organ
izing does and about why for example people turn out to to music concerts and what's behind those there's a longer story there that's sort of interesting but that's prob not why you're here so I won't go into that all right oh you're by the pool in PTO viota oh man anyway um so um so that was the first question you asked and I think a fairly easy one another one you asked was what was what is going on with the request that we learned about yesterday in which the Department of Justice asked the H
ouse of Representatives for documents and the answer to that straight up is we don't know but is there always a but we don't know but there are rumors from uh or Scoops from a a wellestablished journalist who does get good Scoops that the Department of Justice and by that I mean a grand jury this was a grand jury subpoena um is looking into security arrangements made by representative Corey Bush of Missouri a Democrat that could be wrong they could be looking to a bunch of things we don't really
know um the the fact that they been so little outcry about it among the radical right suggests that it is um probably something fairly routine as in not the kind of bombshell things you saw on social media so we don't know what that is but those people who think that it is somehow related to the Congress Critters who were trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election I'm guessing probably not um but but certainly I could be wrong because we don't know yet there you know one of the things th
at I do is I actually try and find the documents and and and the things on which people are basing their statements and and we just don't have the documents yet in that what we have is the notification from the the department uh House of Representatives that it had received this request and it was going to respond to the request and and that happened yesterday so we don't know we don't know what that looks like um but uh but for those people who think that we're at the this great end um of the C
ongress Critters there I I I would expect that there's a lot going on with that but not that seems to have anything to do with that request from the Department of Justice to the House of Representatives okay um um I'm sorry I didn't by the way I people give me credit for naming the the people in Congress Congress crits um that was actually Molly Ivans I'm almost certain I don't think I'm creative enough to have done that and it doesn't sound like Molly Ians and I read a lot of Molly Ivans in the
past so um so don't give me credit for that one I love it but um but I don't think it's mine all right so another question you asked about um that's easy and easy to get away from get rid of here oh so one of the things one of the big stories that is only now getting picked up by the mainstream media is the release of an inspector General's report about the distribution of medicine from the White House during the Trump Administration and that's interesting for a couple of reasons now remember I
am not a doctor and um have virtually zero experience with any drugs at all um illicit or ilicit so um so you know I'm just looking at what I read what I read and the inspector General's report says that operating out of the Trump White House was a distribution of drugs that were um unregulated and seemingly extraordinary the dist distribution of fentanyl for example and a number of heavy duty drugs opiates and and things like that that are um people say is is really bad news and that um that t
he inspector General's report itself says is highly unusual because they were looking at a whole bunch of different distribution places and um and uh and said this is really an outlier and the the trick to that is this was an inspector General's report so that's from within the the organization itself and they said they located that there was a real issue right here in that so one of the things you're seeing on social media is people saying oh every White House is like that and the answer is sim
ply no it's not and the the issue though is that that's all we know right now we do not have a a deeper dive into where those drugs were going or who was Distributing them there were a lot of irregularities in that um in that particular office and it is seemingly a huge Scandal but right now the not enough threads have been pulled that I have seen anyway to know um to know who is behind that I mean I think we probably all have some guesses but who is behind that and what was happening to those d
rugs and we just don't know yet it would be a little hard for me to imagine that nothing is going to come of that inspector General's report because it was pretty eye popping you should take a look at it if you haven't I haven't written about it yet because I wanted to fit it in the right place you know one of the things that is an issue for me right now when I write at night is that there's so many stories that I don't want to just be somebody who says this happened this happened this happened
this happened because then you can't make sense of it so I'm trying to group them in ways that make sense and if I had written as I did last night about the the um the pending um uh immigration deal the pending um deal for hostages versus a pause and fighting not a ceasefire a pause and fighting in um in um Israel Gaza um and if I just suddenly thrown the drugs in there you'd all been like what's this doing here so that will appear in in the letters I don't know when um probably not tonight beca
use I'm working on something else so that's another story to be to be watching all right turn to look at my list here you have asked and I'll probably come back to this but you have asked about whether Nikki Haley actually has a shot at getting the Republic um nomination for president in 2024 and the answer to that is something that's a little unusual and that is we do not know how this year is going to go in terms of uh the Republican nomination and what I mean by that is we have never before d
ealt with uh presidential candidate who is under um under under these criminal indictments and has been found liable for sexual assault rape and fraud and you know is hemorrhaging monies had um so far uh about 83 and five is 88 about 88 million judgments against him and of course judge angeron from um Manhattan who was doing the other case about how uh Trump in which Trump has already been found guilt Trump and the Trump organization have already been found been found liable for fraud um and and
Trump's two sons and two members of the Trump Administration um he's supposed to hand down what he considers un suitable um not just punishment for having done that but also what's called the the disgorgement of illegitimately um gotten properties and he's supposed he said he would be done by the end of the month which is tomorrow and the the Manhattan has asked for uh I think it's $270 million in that case and for Trump not being able to do business in Manhattan any longer or I'm sorry in New
York any longer and of course that's just going to rip the bottom out from under his Finance in as well as his Finance is so um so in terms of this nomination process nobody knows how it's going to go and it is very clear that Trump is also kind of losing it mentally and that we could unpack more if you're interested but also um uh he is not in very good health so one of the the and certainly is mentally not in a very good State and and he's also saying a lot of things that are deeply troubling
anyway all that to say and I'll talk more about this in just a second the Trump organization not not the financial one but the Trump political organization has managed to um uh engraft itself into State Republican parties in such a way that it's going to be almost impossible for anybody else to get the Republican nomination as we are currently going but I think what Haley is doing is recognizing that there are 10 months between now and the election and in those 10 months you have a c a front run
ning candidate who is already in hot water uh both financially and legally for cases that have already been decided or are decided in the next few days but then we also have these larger cases out there as well and the and and the more he gets shown in public the more people are going to recognize that mentally he's not okay which is one of the reasons that Haley keeps hammering on the idea of him doing a a debate with her she keeps saying what are you afraid of you got to come out you got to de
bate me and you think about the two of them um Haley gets um I think unfairly uh considered a lightweight and he's certainly trying to to to feed that by calling her bird brain and all that but you know she is the last person standing um and you don't get one of the things I always talk about I certainly tell my students is that you don't get to be in a place like that by accident you know you don't get to be I mean one of the things you used to hear sometimes was that uh first lady Melania Trum
p was stupid or whatever I'm like no I'm sorry you do not get to be the first lady of the United States because you played your cards badly that's somebody who plays their cards very well now it may be that we don't look and see how those cards are being played so it doesn't look like that to those of us on the outside but I promise you you don't get in is a it's a person of that background you don't get to that position without knowing how to play certain cards and in this case I think it's a m
istake to dismiss Haley and to say she doesn't know what she's doing because you know where's Ron Ron to santis right so I think what she is doing is trying to weaken Trump uh trying to needle him trying to make him angrier and angrier because that shows his mental um instability and by doing that if in fact something happens to him if in fact you know he's convicted or um or he drops out or he his health takes a turn or whatever she will be the only logical place to go so I'm I'm really tired o
f hearing these stories about people saying oh she should drop out because he's won it the reason that that uh the Republican National committee chair Ron McDaniel for example is trying to make that argument and the reason people are trying and and Trump himself are trying to get her to go away is because they recognize that she is badly weakening him and weakening him in a way that will add fuel to the idea that he needs to drop out at some point and so she doesn't need to win she needs to stay
vertical is what she needs to do and and I as I say I I suspect she knows that and that that's what she's doing that's certainly what I would be doing in her position so that is um is um what I think is up with Haley which you asked about now a couple other things that let me get into this and then I can to cut into some of the other things that you have asked about so um so oh let me do the 14th Amendment again um the 14th Amendment and whether or not Trump is disqualified into the third secti
on of the 13th Amendment there there are people flooding the Supreme courtt right now with amikas briefs that is Friends of the Court briefs to um that don't have a stake and aren't representing somebody but they have opinions about what should happen in that particular case and and one of the ones you've asked about is the amas brief that came from a number of historians last yesterday I think it was 25 of them and they're terrific terrific Scholars um they have really run down the history of e
xactly whether or not people at the time of reconstruction when the 14th amendment was written it was written in ' 66 it was put into the Constitution in' 68 1866 and 1868 um what they were up to and it's interesting reading and if you do decide to read them you they're very easy to find just Google amikas brief's 14th Amendment and you will a whole bunch will come up because there's a whole lot of them and you can just go to that particular one I think the first writer is uh goes by his name is
Orville Vernon Burton he goes by Vernon Burton he's a very dear friend of um and I think that's how you can find the historians and what they've literally done is they've gone through the Congressional Record and they've looked at every time that somebody in the debates over the 14th and in the leadup to the 14th um talked about what it meant to be an officer of the courts and all that and that's actually really interesting but at the end of the day what they're saying is pretty obvious to anyb
ody who studies that period and that is that of course when the people who wrote the 14th Amendment who are Republicans by the way for the most part when the they wrote that of course they intended to keep people like Donald Trump from being um able to to uh to hold office under the United States and of course they considered the presidency in office which is another argument that some people on the radical right are making they're saying well a president isn't an office under the under under th
e Constitution and that's I mean I I listen to me I'm stammering because that's just stupid I mean I'm sorry it's just stupid um so that the idea that that at the time they wanted to exclude people like Trump that's you know you don't hear me swear much but you know when I was a kid growing up we would have called that that one something like no Sherlock what's your next clue right but the the the next step to that is how does that happen like so one of the reasons it's very important that um ju
dge Michael ludig conservative lawyer conservative judge I'm sorry has gotten um on board and has gotten so much attention for this is he said it is self executed that is you don't have to be convicted of um having engaged an Insurrection you don't have to have a law passed do you don't have to do anything it just is what it is so in the same way that I can't I mean I could never mind but my kid can't go and say I'm running for president because they're too young um and the the person would just
say you can't Too Young in this case they're saying that that is self-executing and a lot of the fighting is over whether or not that is self-executing and and if not who decides how do you make that happen and these are one of the the questions that are going through so um so to my mind uh as a historian and I am also a historian of that period um this is just an absolute no-brainer and we can look at instances where indeed um when it came time for people to run for office Republicans at the t
ime said no you can't and that the it was just upheld that know you couldn't because it was demonstrated that you had um had participated in the Confederacy so that's what's going on with that and it's going to be interesting because um you know the the the Supreme Court does not want to have to deal with this and it's gonna have to and I I don't want to get in that now because I actually thinking about something else that I um that that I'm I'm very interested in and and I'm I I want to just be
clear that I'm thinking about this but it's maybe a different way to think about all the things that are happening in the country right now that you may find useful and you may not find useful and you may think I'm wrong and that's fine um if you do by all means tell me um be nice if you don't mind but these are ideas that I'm playing with for a a different reason and I'm actually trying them out here first so there you go so one of the other things that um that you all asked about is um is wha
t's happening with Greg Abbott on the border and Greg Abbot is the uh governor of Florida I'm sorry governor of Texas interesting I always thought of him in DeSantis in the same breath sort of although they're very different in some ways um and and this idea that you are reading in the papers that he has defying the federal government and I'm not sure that's what's happening because what Greg Aid has done is after the Supreme Court by a 54 decision and I think it was last week you know I lose tr
ack of time said that the federal government could cut the razor wire that the Tex state of Texas had put in place to get access to the um the uh Park that processes immigrants uh which I'm sorry not immigrants they're migrants because they're applying for rep for um for refugees for Asylum um where the the people were died in the river a week or so ago um he hasn't done anything and that I think is really important um in a number of ways because what what he did was he made a statement in which
he said that the state of Texas has the constitutional right to defend itself from an invasion it has the constitutional right to do that and what he is saying is he is trying to take away from the federal government control over borders and control over immigration which has been well established as being part of the purview of the federal government really since the founding of the Constitution one of the reasons we get the Constitution is because a number of states are starting to make their
own deals with foreign countries and the uh pretty quickly the smaller states recognize that if New York can make its own treaties with other countries because they've got new the port of New York that everybody else is going to end up being a tributary to New York and if they actually want to be independent states they got to have somebody working together for all of them and not everybody from for themselves so that's pretty well established so what's going on what is Abbott doing and and I t
hink that there a larger question here about somebody just asked something let me write that down um uh hold on um I think that the that what we are looking at is a much larger question in American history and that issue is the the ongoing conflict between the states and the federal government and one of the things that people during Reconstruction study but honestly it's it's a it's a constant in our history is that when you have a minority that wants to govern and that Minority is almost alway
s white men of wealth and I say almost always because they might there might be an exception I can't think of one but there might be it's an all Trick In writing you never say I know the one thing because human nature automatically says wait wait I know another thing right so when you get a minority that wants to rule over a majority they almost no they always focus on the states and on state government why do they focus on the states and on state government because it's way easier to control a
state than it is to control a federal government because if you if you're in a state a small state and I'm going to pick on I'm going to pick on um Kentucky in in 1790 nah 1798 as one does right um if you're trying to get power over the government and you're in Kentucky in 1798 it is way easier to make friends with the judges and to you know to maybe buy a few drinks for the voters and to do the you know to to get in good with people and to get your people in the legislature and and they're pret
ty soon going to start to write laws that you like rather than trying to get control over the federal government because people in Maine might look at the guy Massachusetts at the time I'm sorry people in Massachusetts might look at people from Kentucky and be like you guys are weenies we don't want to do what you want we want to do it our way so historically in America it has always been easier to take control of the states and by a small minority and the reason I say that is also the fact that
states get to deci because of our weird system States get to decide who can vote in in them so if you start to take power and then as happened in New Jersey in the same period um a bunch of women said well no we don't like you what do you do you say oh women can't vote in New Jersey any longer which is exactly what happened in the in The Early Republic women had been able to vote New Jersey they started to vote against the party that was in power in New Jersey and the P party in power tossed th
em all out women didn't get to vote in New Jersey again for more than 100 years so by keeping your power in the state by getting to determine who can vote in that state a minority can say hey um we're going to arrange the state the way we want it to be so we are going to um not make you not let you have abortions or U not allow lgbtq people to have driver's licenses or or we're going to make sure we have human enslavement if you have that in the state it's much easier than trying to do it at the
national level all right so I hope you're with me so far on this and the reason that I um I am am focusing on this is again to go back to what Greg Abbott is doing because I think what's happening in Texas is not really about Texas weirdly in the sense that Greg Abbott has had this operation Lone Star going on now for years I don't know if you paid attention to it hasn't really done much it's cost a huge amount of money I think it's over10 billion but they're they're really just out there kind
of uh cosplaying you know I'm sorry not the the military people you know I'm I'm a fan of the military um they're they're not they're just there they're pulling down paychecks many of them are very angry that they've been pulled away from their actual lives in order to to run around you know doing whatever it is avat says they should be doing but why is he doing that and I think what we are looking at is the use of this idea that the states are in real p in real trouble from migrants to try to i
nsist that the federal government is not doing its job and the states need to be the Locust of power in our system again now why am I saying that so I could run you through the history of how we have increasingly since the 1980s devolved power to the states after the federal government took control for example over civil rights for African-Americans and women and you know and and other other marginalized peoples we got the backlash that gave us the rise of the Republican Party in the 1980s to to
take over and cut back on those things but remember the other thing that the federal government began to do in the 1930s and continued to do and continued to expand its authority over until the 1970s was overregulation of business and that's really really popular but it is not popular among a very few wealthy people who do not want regulation of business okay so I hope you're with me so far as I say I'm kind of thinking this through as I go but if you look at what Abbott is doing in Florida so
far what he has done is on paper that is he's got the Lone Star people out there he shut off that that um uh the Shelby Park in Eagle Pass but he hasn't done anything new since the Supreme Court said to him the federal government can cut a razor wire um and and he hasn't stopped the federal government from cutting the razor wire when they wanted to you know what I am seeing and again there may be more out there but what I am seeing is an advancing of this argument that the states have more power
than the federal government has ever Accord Ed them for something as extraordinary as border security which Texas doesn't want to have to deal with border security it's expensive it's very hard they don't want to do it and they're the only state right now that's got real issues even though there's a bunch of border states all over this country right so I wonder if what he's really doing is taking a look back at the fact that that vote in the Supreme Court was 5 to4 it was not unanimous it was n
ot the entire Supreme Court saying you're a weenie we 've done it this way forever this is the way it's going to be it was four justices saying hey you know we're willing to think about whether or not the states should have more power it's really kind of astonishing that was a 5-4 decision so what else might be going on there and one of the other things that's before The Supreme Court right now is an attack on what's known as the Chevron decision or it's not the Chevron Doctrine and that is a mu
ch larger assault on the regulatory state so what that means is that the federal government has regulated business really all along but it really started to regulate it in a big way in 1933 with the Advent of the new deal and when it did that the the what happened is Congress would say hey we need an an agency that that um looks after the stock market for example or Communications or um the EPA is going to be much later but let me throw the EPA in that we need these agencies that take care of th
ese things on a broader level and we just know we need I'm going to pick on the EPA again which is which is established under Nixon under Republican president um we need this agency that's going to to to make sure that people don't pour their um their poison into lakes and and rivers and into the ground and all that but you know we're Congress Critters we don't have the time or the energy to to to determine what that looks like so we're going to set up an EPA an Environmental Protection Agency a
nd we're going to give them a budget and we're going to tell them you do it you make the the the regulations for how this is going to work and the the idea behind what's known as I say the Chevron Doctrine is that so long as they are making good faith interpretations of what Congress set up it's hard to challenge those regulations now what this new case in front of the Supreme Court which is an artificial case they're not supposed to take artificial cases but it is one there isn't really a a a r
ub any longer the initial case was resolved but they're still going to take it on anyway this is an attack on that Chevron Doctrine to say wait a minute the the legislative branch Congress cannot give that kind of authority to the executive branch which is where the the government agencies live that in fact you can't go ahead and have agencies make their own decisions those things have to be determined by Congress and most of the observers of this say oh boy this is really going to destroy the f
ederal administrative State because all of a sudden you've got to have Congress doing all this if that happens regulation devolves back to the states which is what in fact um the originalist doctrines that are behind these attacks are trying to do is trying to throw regulation back to the States the same way the dobs versus Jackson Women's Health decision of J June 2022 which overturned Ro versus Wade if you remember that decision it says hey this this decision really belongs to the States but w
hat that meant was once you got into the states very quickly everybody discovered that the states even red states were really really in favor of having abortion rights and so what happened then well the state legislators which had taken control of those States through Jerry mandering and voter suppression said hey we don't actually care what you want we're going to go ahead and restrict the right to abortion anyway so as I'm looking at what Abbott is doing I am not seeing him declaring war like
let's all March and and fight with guns it honestly looks to me like he's trying to set up a stronger case to put in front of the Supreme Court to give more power to the states so where does that lead us um you know everyone's talking about the Civil War and you know the the um the um the President should um send in should should nationalize the guard and send in the Air Force and I mean sorry the 101st Airborne and all that I'm not sure and I'm not sure for this reason I think in part that woul
d absolutely add more power to Abbott's um Abbott's uh position I'm not I I'm not saying it's not either I'm thinking this one through um but also um I'm not entirely sure what the Airborne would do right now because I don't think yet anyway that ab's done anything other than saying something on paper now wait a minute though before you're like oh she doesn't care at all about the fact that it might be a civil war there's something else also that this is a part I mean it all worries me but this
idea that the federal government is not protecting the states and that you know that there's this Invasion there's not an invasion and if you want I'll walk you through that there's certainly a problem with the systems we have in place to handle migrants at the border and here's a news flash Biden's been talking about that since literally the first week he was in office he presented legislation the first week he was in office to have more um people to H to process immigrants uh more border secur
ity and more protection against the influx of illegal illicit drugs across that border even though most of them come through ports of entry and come in handled by US citizens just FYI anyway there's certainly that problem but what is happening I think is this attempt to get a lot of lowi information voters to Rally around this idea that they have to back power in the states and to create a crisis that makes it look like they have to back power in the states and if you think about who will win at
the end of the day if power devolves away from the federal government into the states it's the same people who always win whenever that happens it's wealthy people white wealthy white men and if you look at Abbott's background and the people he works for and you know seems to be working alongside I'm afraid it looks like that's the case doesn't it so when people are talking about you know this is this crisis I think it's a crisis but I think it's maybe a different crisis than people are identif
ying when they're like oh we got to go in with the 101st Airborne but here's the other piece of it and this is the one that that kind of makes my hair catch on fire and that is that those people who follow Abbott and all the disantis and all the people who are trying to whip this up into an issue they don't know it's not a real issue they are hearing the rhetoric that these people are spouting and they're buying it and they have guns and they are angry for a number of reasons and that worries me
a lot because if you go back now to the Civil War which I said that you know I'm not entirely sure this is a civil war thing um uh if you go back to that that's really pretty much what caused a civil war is the the a few Elite leaders got determined that they wanted to impose their minority will on the nation the nation said sorry ain't happening we elected somebody else they kept saying you people are going to destroy us you're going to attack us we've got this this huge danger of black Americ
ans around us and they're all going to kill us and it's all your fault you know they had all very similar rhetoric so that when in fact push came to shove the leaders of that group kept saying oh it's not going to be a big deal there's not going to be a war one of them actually said I'm going to drink all the blood that could be could be it's going to be shed during the Civil War when actually the the government went to resupply Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor in April of 1861 those leaders kn
ew that if they didn't do something that their followers would turn against them and that don't mean they would you know shoot them down the streets but they would lose political power because their leaders would their their followers would be like you guys suck you told us that we were going to fight this war and everybody was going to be full of glory and we were going to save our states and we were all going to be safe and all that and instead now you're saying oh never mind no no no no that'
s not going to happen so in fact the firing on Fort Sumpter by the um the Confederacy is in part because they need to stay out in front of that movement they really can't get pushed into that movement and so you look at what's happening on with this whole border thing and you see the fact that um Mike Johnson is the Speaker of the House kept you know said way back in November well I want to give money to Ukraine but I can't give money to Ukraine unless you put in a border deal the Border deal is
so important we got to have this we got to give that and fully expecting I think that nothing was going to happen um because it been had been elusive for so long and here you had um the the Democrats and Biden saying listen we want to fund Ukraine so badly we'll give you anything you want basically and I paraphrase I'm sure they didn't give them everything they wanted but it's by far the most uh in favor of the Republican position of any deal that they've had go through in the past and and now
they got caught you know once again the dog is caught the car and they're like oh we didn't mean that no now in fact it's such a disaster it's such a bad thing that that only the president can deal with it and and you know and then uh Trump will put in place something that will truly be horrific and um and I'm not entirely sure that there will come a point when they can back down like where is where's the off ramp here and that's the thing that I'm wondering about is where is the off-ramp for th
ose people who have insisted that IM the immigration crisis is so huge that the US can't do anything else until it gets taken care of and now they're saying oh but wait for a year because we can't do and until them what do they do with their supporters like like literally what do you do with their supporters so another piece of this is that um um I mean somebody just said um um Texas should seced once again they talk about that all the Texas does not want to seced I mean you can talk about that
all you want think of you can manage your own borders the US is having trouble managing that border do you think that's going to change they don't want to deal with that what are they going to do with with Transit across across Texas what are they going to do with foreign affairs what are they going to do with you know all the pieces of a nation that the US government currently handles the the leaders do not want to seced they they talk about that a lot but there's absolutely no way they actuall
y want to seced Texas can't make it on its own for all that they're talking about they can make it inide no they can't in fact what you're really seeing is um agit largely from from Russian Bots for example trying to to feed that Texas is going to suceed Texas can't suceed I mean it could but but boy are they're going to find that would be a mistake in a hurry that's that's again just posturing that makes it sound really good until you actually try and do it I always think of when I hear things
like that I always think of toddlers you know how two-year-olds and three-year-olds are you know will pitch a contian fit in front of their parents because they know their parents are not you know going to take them out and feed them to the Wolves but they behave in front of strangers because strangers might take them out feed them to the W wolves and that's one of the things I feel like we see with this radical right A lot of the time is they keep pitching fits because they know that at the end
of the day that the Democrats are not going to allow whatever it is they want to happen but but one of the kickers is they have weakened so many guard rails I don't think they recognize that some of these things really could happen so but so the other the other piece of that is will the the voters turn out for this crap and the answer I think to that is no and the reason I think that and I hope this is somewhat useful um the reason I think that is because of the number of people who have in fac
t been held to account under the Biden Administration so the people who participated in January 6th I I think we're up to I know we're well over a thousand people who have been charged I think we're up to a thousand people who have been convicted um or pled guilty and they're paying for it you know spending months if not years in jail Trump promised to protect them and he didn't now you have Peter Navaro has just been sentenced to four months in jail one of Trump's ring leaders Trump can't prote
ct him Trump and the and Ron McDaniel told a lot of people they would get lawyers for them if they participated in the false elector scheme they didn't get lawyers um I think there is a sense that you know this was great until you until push came to shove but once it did you were hung out to dry so I suspect a lot of people who thought they were real heroes in in 2020 are rethinking their position on that you know a couple other examples of that you know I don't know if you followed the the stor
y The Saga of um is it Ammon Bundy I can I I never know how to pronounce that I always called them Aman and that's not right maybe it's Ammon Bundy in uh you know one of the the militia leaders who had a real standoff the federal government and you know he was always in front of one chis for another standing off the federal government and he got away with it for a long time and then during um during Co he and his supporters took on a hospital in it's a really was a really sad way for everybody u
m but this Hospital sued the hospital had very deep pockets in it suit and he lost he lost in a really big way like a settlement for a huge sum of money I don't remember how much how much it was and um tried to get out from it underne that couldn't get out from under it and he's he's run he's on the land and you think about how powerful that man was but once he was held accountable he skipped town and I wonder if you're hearing again for example about this Convoy That was supposed to go from Flo
rida down to Eagle Pass and they talked again about having all these um truckers and you they were going to shut down the whole border and shut down the whole country and the whole thing and when they left Florida they had 19 trucks and none of them were semis they were pickups and you know I wonder if it's you can always find 19 people to to join into something but I wonder if people are saying I'm not going to participate in this because I don't want to face the the courts which is of course w
hy um a number of people who were involved in bad behavior want Trump back in office because they know that the courts won't won't pursue them under him so anyway that was a very long way um of getting around was actually happening on the border with Abbott I think that the people who are doing that who are insisting that that migrants are this terrible crisis are trying to cement their power within their states let me say a little bit more about that in a second and I also think they're playing
with fire I think they they certainly are creating something that they cannot control and we know that from the past of the Republican party but I will say the other piece of this that worries me terribly and that's um that that by taking over the states which I think is what they're doing there is is the expectation like the Confederates had before they left that they could that they can take over the nation and what that looks to me the reason I say that and the reason that it what it looks l
ike to me is that if you think about the way that former president Trump is handling this election you know if you're trying to win a national election you try and broaden support you try and reach out to people Trump's not doing that Trump is actually getting rid of people saying you know I don't want Haley voters I don't want I want I want just the purest people and that says to me logically that he's not trying to win the election in any normal way he doesn't care if he wins the right numbers
or not and remember he lost the popular vote in 2016 he lost it by even more in 2020 he has not broadened that support since so I think it's pretty logical to assume he's going to lose the popular vote in 2024 and expects to he's already talking about how the election's going to be rigged because he knows he's not going to win a popular vote so how can he end up in office which he desperately needs to do if he's going to get out from under all this legal stuff and mind you I still maintain and
I think I think Jack Smith has turned out to have a lot more stuff than I expected him to but I still maintain that the case that's going to hang him out to dry is the the classified documents I mean he he had them he wasn't supposed to he said he didn't have them he signed things saying he didn't have them or he had his lawyers sign them and then um and it turned out he did and and that's that's a huge problem I mean again think of how compromised there's there's a bunch of things that have hap
pened since all those papers W missing that in our Foreign Affairs that seem deeply troubling to me I'm not going to mention specifics because of course I don't know what was in those but watch you'll see things that look funny um anyway um so he needs to get out from under that because that's not something where you get a slap on the wrist you steal our national secrets and you know did you just see some guy who leaked Trump's um and other people's tax returns has just gotten a fiveyear jail se
ntence and that was for you know tax returns you take stuff that was so classified you couldn't even know it all and different people had different pieces of it and you you take them that's that's more than than you know let giving you you know a $250 fine so if he's not trying to win the election how's he going to end up in office and that goes back to the States and if the states end up throwing their electoral votes to Trump for whatever reason voter suppression um Jerry mandering maybe he wi
ns but I think what they're really trying to do is gain the states and if the states put forward a enough electoral votes to elect him that would be ducky for him but I think there's real concerns about whether or not that will happen even in States like Texas I think this one of the reasons Texas is pushing immigration as hard as it is is because Texas women are pissed off about that Draconian Texas law that has put their lives into U into real Jeopardy and they're angry at um Texas governor Gr
eg Abbott's attempt to force through um the voucher system in Texas because it would have destroyed public schools in Texas and they recognize that that's you know Texas public schools are a way of life right with football and with all that so I think I think even in Texas they recognize that they're walking uphill um and that they need to to be certain that they find some way to make sure they get the Texas vote and they're trying to do that by by insisting that there is this Invasion and every
body has to get behind the invasion you know behind the state to get rid of this Invasion but but the other piece that really worries me is that um that if there is enough confusion around this election that it gets thrown into the House of Representatives which is part of our 12th Amendment to the Constitution each state gets a single vote so if there are enough Republican states that they outweigh the Democratic states Trump could be put in office even legally even though he loses the popular
vote and that was of course what John Eastman who was one of the architects of the 2020 plan wanted to do he want you know he had a number of layers and one of it was okay we'll just say that enough of these electoral votes are too confusing so it we can't count them and that will throw the the the answer the the the the vote the presidential election into the into the House of Representatives so anyway that's a long way to go around about um about what's happening on the border because I keep p
eople keep writing to me and saying oh just like the Civil War and on on and I think it is but only in the sense that it's a way for a minority to gain the system so that they can put pressure on the Supreme Court so the supreme Supreme Court might very well and it actually looks like they will tear apart the Chevron Doctrine and and tear apart Federal Regulation of the businesses of those people who are supporting the Republican governments in the states and that's that's of course exactly what
we saw in the period from the 18 well in the 1880s 1890s and 19 a when the states got taken over by big business and became um and became really tools of big business and that's of course where we get the popular election of senators in in the early 20th century so I think it looks like the the the Civil War but not in the way people are thinking that you're going to have you know the state's rights on one hand and the federal government's rights on the other I actually think that that what Abb
ott is trying to do is set up a court case I guess is what I'm saying and that he is doing it using this language and these Republican state Governors are getting on board for that same reason that they would like more power too and they will be able to continue to control their states if they the power devolves to the state so that the federal government can't say hey wait a minute you have to redistrict you have to do the sorts of things it's saying on occasion now and and that seems to me to
be a much bigger story than just what's happening on the Texas border so um so um that's what I was saying I was musing about I hope that that's useful and I hope that's um that's giv you some bigger ways to think about what's happening because I find these days that I um that I uh I there's just so much coming at you all the time that it's very hard to to figure out what's really going on and and the other piece of that of course is that if indeed MC uh I keep on call Johnson uh Mike Johnson Sp
eaker of the House manages to kill the deal to give more money to Ukraine and and and we don't actually give money to Ukraine what we do is we uh we appropriate funding for Ukraine and then we send them Munitions that we have that's why it's so important that the United States continue to be involved in the Coalition because lots of other countries are are are shoveling money in that direction but it's for humanitarian Aid it's for con military contracts but because of the fact they don't have b
ig militaries they don't have the they don't have extra military um Munitions or anything so we're the ones who've been supplying that and if we stop doing that um that which is what's at stake here that of course means that Ukraine which you know everybody keeps saying Ukraine isn't advancing fast enough and I don't quite know what that means if you follow the institute for the study of War which you can find online it's a nonpartisan group out of uh the UK which every day takes a look at what'
s happening in war zones across the the globe um you know they'll point out that Ukraine has taken back half the land that um Vladimir Putin took in his initial advance and they've regained control over the Black Sea and they've opened up corridors to get grain out to Africa which was a huge deal because it meant that um that you know Africa was at real the real mercy of the war and they've managed to get around that um but that will all be lost and if that is lost Vladimir Putin who's actually
really in trouble financially right now because of the sanctions and he's essentially had to become a bit of a client state to China at this point um he he will be be able to take over Ukraine and of course they're really hoping that Trump will be back in power because Trump's going to break up NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is currently standing against the expansion of Russia and trying to support uh Ukraine without getting involved itself because once NATO gets involved it'
s a war against NATO and everybody has to get involved who's a NATO signatory including the US and that's something that the US would like to avoid so um so in addition to what's going on uh over the the border with this attempt I think to Center power in the states part of that also means that the US is walking away from its Global responsibilities because of the Radical Republicans and and that's um that's a um it is a game Cher and it's a game Cher that I've said before um I do have opinions
about this stuff I I don't think that would be a good idea I think that the United States provides stability around the globe but I I will say that I don't know what the future is maybe it' be a good thing for the United States not to be outfront any longer and and taking on everything it has taken on in the past I think we would find that that would turn into a real problem really quickly but one of the things it would definitely do is once the United States leaves that table it will never go b
ack it will never be welcomed back again because all those countries that trusted us for all the things that we promised them would say screw you we don't ever want to work with you again because we don't trust you and you can already see the EU for example starting to talk about the fact they can't trust the United States these days because they never know who's going to be in power next and that's something that people I think should think about do you think that's a good thing or do you think
that's a bad thing and um and and why because it's certainly not the world that we've known since World War II and like I say maybe it'd be good I don't think it would be but maybe you think that would be a better plan it's worth thinking through what that would look like anyway somebody said they needed you needed to be to be left on a happy note which I always do and and the letters have not been happy somebody said lately and maybe that's true I think maybe May it's true not because the worl
d has gotten darker or even that I've gotten darker but because I've gotten enough time to actually think again which I didn't for a long time because I was so tired and I was just reacting to the news I hope that things seem smarter these days maybe not because maybe sometimes when you're thinking things go fallow for a while but it's not that I am less enthusiastic about the country I actually think that the reason you're seeing such hysteria on the right is because it recognizes that it's on
the ropes I think if you look at the scandals that are starting to come out on the right if you look at the extraordinary number of Americans who are working together to say we don't want any part of the authoritarianism that Donald Trump is openly embracing I think if you look at the increasing degree that um Legacy Media is starting to call him out they're not doing it fully but they're starting to call him out I think if you look at the new tone that the Biden Administration has taken really
calling him out and I think if you take a look at the increasing amount of attention that vice president KLA Harris is getting somebody said to me the other day a young person said to me the other day why do people say she's not popular that that you know she's like we love her and I think if you actually look you will see that KLA Harris has a huge following among Young Americans among women among uh people of color who are proud of the fact that she is championing the idea of equality before t
he law I think there're are many many signs that American democracy is reasserting itself what is worrying is that we have this very small minority right now of Republicans in the House of Representatives who are simply unable to govern and who are trying to get around that by screaming no by impeaching um trying to impeach um this homing secretary um mayorcas they wrote a articles of impeachment before they ever heard hearings you know they are they are all performance but unfortunately people
voted them into positions of power where they are able to put the brakes on everything not just on Aid to Ukraine Aid to Israel Aid to Taiwan the Border crisis but even our Appropriations bills and I think that is really dangerous because they've got at least a another year in power and people have asked what they can do and the answer is what I always say take up oxygen um you know call and say you want the Border deal or you want Aid to Ukraine or you want whatever it is you want but now is th
e moment I think the next 10 months are the moment to make sure your voice is heard and one of the things that um that and heard not just in in in in in advocacy but also in saying things you know what is true and what is not and Google is your friend by the way maybe I should do a session on how to know what's true and what's not but somebody sent me something today saying you know there's all this misinformation about about these three soldiers who were killed and and and I was like no that's
disinformation not you know I didn't get it wrong they got it wrong and you can see here the the sources because we're going to get swamped with this going forward we already know that Russia and China and Iran are very active in in social media but the trick is that if they can reach people through social media so can we and we can also reach people our neighbors our friends the people in our communities by talking and as you know um one of the one of my colleagues and friends on my Facebook pa
ge has just started um uh the a series of cards that you can leave places that give you talking points um now is now and for the next 10 months this is really about regular Americans like you and me taking our country back from that very small group of people who are trying to impose their will on us and remember one of the great pieces about this is that you are not trying to convince somebody of something that only 3% of Americans hold if you are in favor of Common Sense gun safety regulations
you have more than 80% of Americans behind you this is not this is not a controversial position similarly abortion rights 69% of Americans want to see roow reinstated these are not Fringe positions these are the positions of the vast majority of Americans who need to be able to make their voices heard in a system that has increasingly been taken over by a very small group of radicals so I'm actually continuing to be a a a bull on American democracy a bull tosses things up with its horns a bear
claws them down but it's going to take all of us working together and that's the fun of it it's a creative fun time that we meet new people and we do new stuff and we um we with luck get the the country that we want and maybe deserve all right I'm off I will talk to you later thank you for being here
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