Well whiskey coming take.
Don't From Powerline blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot com. This is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Got you gotta giving let that whiskey flat where you're feeling.
In love down in Loon.
Good morning everyone. I hate to tell you it's good morning, but I have to tell you why we're not drinking whiskey, not even Steve, at least as far as I can tell. And it's Steve's fault because even though Steve pretends to be a major tech guy, because what his internet quit on him in the middle of trying to start a podcast last night.
So it's always hardful smart as.
As your fault. My internet was working, even John got his internet working.
Yeah, I'm in the middle of I'm in the middle of Indiana. I didn't know they had internet. I thought this was all startling country.
Yeah, I thought it was all They were still using telephones there. But you know the kind on the wall with a really long string, the really long windy the house with.
But but look at the upside. John got to have a second new, brand new chicken big Mac, at least from the photographic evidence I've seen.
So, oh no, this is this is the best gift I've ever had at any kind of academic talk. So I was giving a talk at Notre Dame debating law fair with a very good liberal friend of mine who's a calmnists at La Times. And afterwards we had a reception and Phil Murno is our friend who's a director here, surprised me with a big Mac and fries. Oh isn't that the best gift you ever got? You got like, you know, coffee mugs something. It's a nice time, but
no one's ever done better than a big Mac. So the students are like watching me to see what I would do with it.
So you know I did with it. I hate it, they were.
I was like, you're not gonna let this get cold. I was like, after I bit it, I was like, anybody want seconds?
But no.
I thought maybe they'd had a reception because the picture shows your fries inside of a warmer tray, and I thought maybe they'd done like a Donald Trump thing and brought big Max and fries for everybody. But no, it was probably just.
Usually I would have I would have had two big max then. So the funny thing, there's another picture. I'll send it to the shows where the fries took a while to eat. So the whole time I spoke, I had a large fry hand to container my hands.
That's an academic You speak your speech.
So this is right after, This is right The Neudar Day's really the way they do things. Really, so you give a talk and then you meet with students and supporters of the program after for a smaller group setting when they really ask you what they wanted to ask you. And we had one We even had one crazy person interrupt the speech because she didn't like that I was saying that someone had said Trump lies, and I say politicians always lie.
She flipped out. It had to be removed by the police. But this was news apparently only shows. John, you still got it going, you know, I know. I started arguing with her.
I was like, did you ever read I was like, Steve Hayward, I was like, did you ever read the Caro three volume biography of Lindon Johnson? Now there was a liar?
Yeah, No, you know, facts and things, John, That's okay, that's crazy.
Yeah, she got really upset and had to be removed by the Notre Dame police. It wasn't like they're not like the Berkeley police. They don't tolerate any kind of you.
I was about to say, well, okay.
Okay, well all right, gentlemen, we have a lot to get to this morning.
We're in trouble. John, I'll just say you want.
In trouble because I'm on a roll. I'm on a roll. But first of all, actually, you know our little gadfly John, who goes everywhere and talks to everybody all the time and is the most popular guy even on Outnumbered because he was there like two weeks in a row. Practically the women love him there and he can't get away from them.
But I know, why did this happen to me when I was seventeen? It right, it's.
Right, you know, John, You chick magnet was not on my Bengo car to have site.
You just don't get it, Steve, you don't get that, okay anyway, So actually, John, the other gadfly, was probably not nearly as exciting as either Outnumbered Chicks, Fox News Chicks or mc or McDonald's Notre Dame. It was heritage what Heritage when he went to speak to Heritage or went to a conference at Heritage and learned all about election fraud.
Well, remember, I mean remind people Lucretia that we ended last week's episode he was saying, Okay, I'm.
Going to I am the boss. Don't you ever forget.
Its Lucretia's getting the seventy year old listeners really excited now.
And all of those men who like strong women that are going to vote for Kamala right. Anyway, we'll come back to that one.
No.
Last week, I wanted to discuss a little bit about what I had barely heard supposedly Republicans were doing, both at the federal level but most importantly at the state level, to try to push back on Democratic attempts to shall we say, tweak the rules a bit or stretch the boundaries. I'm going to be nice about it. Everybody out there who's my fan knows what I really mean by that,
But I'm trying not to offend John before he starts talking. Anyway, for the first time in really in my lifetime, we are discussing in very serious terms that the difference in this election might be the difference between a fair election and an election where we'll keep it at one side right now, because I have more to say about that, where one side the Democrats will cheat or do anything they can to keep Donald Trump from getting into office.
And if you remember one last really quick side note on that I said last week, they can't afford to assassinate him now because they'll get Jade Vance, who as much as they hate Trump, they'd really be sorry if they got jd Vance instead. In my opinion. Anyway, John, tell us what you talked about at Heritage.
It was interesting. It was a conference about election law, election integrity, and they actually asked me to come talk about law fair but almost all, I think every other speaker spoke about what to do to prevent what They're all they're all fans of Lucretia. We should create a club like fans of Bill, fans of Hillary. They should be friends of Lucretia. And they were convinced that the
Democrats had played dirty tricks four years ago. And each of the speakers got many of them were from the States or from different national groups, saying what they were doing this year to make sure that what happened four years ago didn't happen. So we had a small debate about whether they'd actually cheated or they had you know, as Molly Hemingway says, as Lucretia's point out, that they just used COVID as an excuse to change the rules in a way that benefited them, and they took advantage
of it. That was my observation. I thought that they had changed the rules based on COVID, gotten the courts to approve it or state legislatures to approve it, and then took full advantage of it, where our side was just totally taken by surprise. So one thing I came in with this this time the Trump campaign and the Republican Party in the States is not going to be
taken by surprise. They described this very comprehensive effort where in all of the states, even states where we're gonna get killed, like California, for example, or New York, where they have teams of lawyers who are ready to challenge any effort by the Democrats to go in and say, oh, you have to change your rules. You have to allow ballots to be counted that weren't signed, or you have to allow ballots to be counted that weren't sealed.
Properly.
So they're gonna, unlike last time, they're gonna be ready to go to court in every state, and they have a lot of I mean, it was described to me a lot of a more systematic campaign of people going to the polls to make sure there's no shin in against go to the counting centers to say we want to be able to observe. So I think what happened
last time is the Trump campaign was overly confident. They thought they were going to win by ten million votes, and so they didn't actually roll out any kind of infrastructure. So that's why I think what we saw reported was anecdotal people here, people there, some connect a campaign, a lot of people not part of a campaign, no collection of all the data what was going on, and no systematic effort to go to court with good lawyers all at once to try to stop the Democrats from changing
the rules. So I was actually came away really impressed. I was like, God, I was telling people, you want to meet my friend Lucretia. She would be so happy if she were here, she'd be handing out gold and blue ribbons to all of you.
Well, well, let me I want to hear what you have to say, Steve, I just have an editorial comment in there, or again, my fans would never forgive me for this. One of the one one thing that you described I have to take issue with, and that's when you say they changed the rules and got the courts to agree to it. But remember Trump for Texas versus whichever, that Supreme Court case that was dismissed for lack of standing where the States brought.
Texas versus pennsylvaniaas suspensilvania.
Thank you that that they were denied for lack of standing. But remember the argument was a very legitimate argument, which is that the United States Constitution says only legislators can change. Basically, I'm ad libbing forgive me because it right. And so the fact that the Supreme Court did not issue a decision based on the merits, but on standing. But of course you know that doesn't matter when it gets out in the in the in the media and the public.
But there really was a legitimate argument that many of these changes that were supposedly done because of COVID were in fact violations of the Constitution, which by definition makes them unlawful. The rules, I get it.
But can I throw an example of something I learned about which has gotten almost no tension, is that you might remember last time the Pennsylvania what my home state, was the big battleground, and it had to do if you remember, with more the ballots signed where they properly signed, where they properly dained right, and properly dated. And so the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said, well, there's something in our constitution that says you have to have free and fair elections.
So because of the pressures of COVID, it would be unfair to not count these ballots because everything else seems to be correct. And you might remember that there were like ten thousand ballots that fit this category, and Justice Alito issued an injunction saying don't count those votes. Yet it didn't matter then because Biden's margin there was over one hundred thousand votes. But at this Heritage conference, so
there's an example. These lawyers went to court early. They've already gone to court to demand that that not happened again, and they actually won. So they won at the intermediate Pennsylvania Appeals Court, and they've won a preliminary motion at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to say this time you have to sign the ballots. That's like a big deal like that, Like if they had done that four years ago, they
had made a lot of progress. So that's an example of how, you know, conservatives are sort of acting preemptively rather than waiting for the Democrats to go first. And they've been describing, you know, who the Democrat lawyers are and what they've been up to, so they're really on top of the ball this time.
Yeah, and that ought. I mean, I know, Lucretia, you want to bring up the sinister market Ellias at some point, but I'll just make the observation here that, you know, John mentioned that the Trump campaign was kind of caught flat footed four years ago and lost a lot of cases they shouldn't have lost. I agree with you on that. But if you think back to the two thousand election in Florida and John, maybe you can add some details to this, because you might have been part of that story.
I don't know, But what happened was is that every Republican lawyer in the country who knew something about election law was in Florida practically by noon the next day, I mean overnight. James Baker, who was the person that the Bushes brought in to run their drill. They brought lawyers down and they were fairly successful at hand to hand. I mean, it took thirty six days, as we know and all that ness. But that was a case of where they you know, they found and assembled a team
really fast and flooded the zone. I'd like to think, and it sounds John like I'm right in thinking this, that the Republicans have got teams in place ready to flood the zone if there's any funny business in Wisconsin or Michigan, or Pennsylvania and or Arizona and other places. By the way, did you go to Florida in two thousand, John, or you?
I did so to one public and one I guess I could talk about it now that wasn't really public then, but I think has known now if you were really watching things. So I testified before the Florida legislature, ah, and I urged the theory that Lucretia just urged. Although I didn't know Lucretia then, even then she was pulling my strings, and.
I said from Germany, no less.
I always knew Lucretia worked for the intelligence services. She just got busted. She got busted, so I actually went down to the Florida Legislature and testified that if the disorder had kept going on, that the Florida Legislature could constitutionally take the power back and allocate the electoral votes, because otherwise Florida would have no electoral votes and that would actually violate federal law. Then this is the interesting thing.
About a week later, during the recount, I got asked to come see Jeb Bush, who was the governor, right, and to basically say, well, if the Florida Legislature doesn't do its constitutional duty, then the governor should at least try to send in some electoral votes for the state of Florida, because otherwise you won't be counted and this would be an issue of Florida constitutional law. Guess who I So the campaign sent somebody to yeah along with
me because I wasn't working. I wasn't working for the campaign at the time. I was just an outside commentator. So I went and then get who went with Lucretia. Guess who the Republican Party sent with me?
I have no idea.
It was John Roberts.
I never would have guessed that.
Never, And let me tell you, during the whole meeting. He didn't say a single word, not a single thing, just let.
You drop one of the smartest things he's probably ever done. That's awesome. Yeah, But with you guys, I was kind of out of the loop on that one because I really was living in Germany at the time and only watching it on air Force Network News, you know, three in the morning, trying to keep up with things as they were happening. But anyway, anyway, that's a great story.
John still remember like we met at them. I still remember like we met at some I didn't know this, but Florida is covered with pancake houses, or at least it was back you know, in two thousand, So I remember meeting a pancake a pancake house. Like then, there's not a chain there like Little Mabel's pancake House. Fred's
pink all over the place. So we met some pancake house right near the governor's office, and I talked with him about you know, this theory about the article to and taking the electoral votes and voting them for the state. Seems to be nodding his head into agreement, you know. John Rbert was just you know, a Pellot lawyer Washington, at the time I knew who he was. He was a great advocatory then, so I thought he was all on board. You know, I felt like I who knew
I had the same feeling. I guess Thomas and Alito do. Now. I thought he was all on board, be marching right with me. We go to the meeting, not a peep, not a peep.
But you know, on this election law business, Roberts has always been good all the way through.
So he wrote, he wrote, Shelby County, which is the biggest the rejection of the liberal theory of voting rights in our lifetime.
Well, he's the one.
Who pulled over Cavanaugh and Amy Cooney Barrett on the whole Texas versus Pennsylvania standing issue. He didn't, I get it. He didn't want the onus to fall on the Supreme Court for interfering in the election. Again, after having been there with John and watching how how incredibly acrimonious it all was, it probably scarred him for life listening to John's powerful and passionate please And so when it came time to having to make an important decision like Texas
versus Pennsylvania, he just punted. That's my opinion. About it. But now I recognize whose fault that is. It's John's fault for just outfinding him so much.
Ah, it's always our fault. I take full blame. I take full blame. I'm like Steve. I've learned to take full blame when Lucretia accuses me of something.
I never accuse you guys of anything. Uh So I have an interesting deeper discussion than to take you guys into I hope that you'll indulge me on this. And so I remember again out of the country for some time after the two thousand election, actually, so a little bit less on getting the pulse of how that all, how that all came about or came down, I guess is the best way to put it. You know. I read stuff about people who are still still to this day and shock about it and sad and all those
other things. But what I would my impression of it is that as many people who thought it was a stolen election, you know, people went to Halloween parties with hanging chads as hanging chads and things like that, it didn't seem to tear the country apart in quite the same way that the twenty twenty election did. Now, you can tell me I'm wrong, but and I'll let you do. So that's a sub point to my larger pipe. Go ahead, Steve, I can see you picking your lips.
Yeah. Actually, I think it was a ratchet and liberal Democratic Party derangement. I mean I think they didn't get over it, and they still think it was told. Actually, there's the broader thesis here. If you look closely, Democrats think that every Republican president since Nixon was illegitimate, and
they have always cheating theories. You know, Nixon interfered with the Vietnam talks, and you know Reagan in nineteen eighty got the Iranians to hold the hostage and stuff that there's no evidence for it and in fact falls apart on any closer look, right, And then of course Bush in two thousand stealing the election of Florida. You know, something that is always forgotten is that there were I think at least two consortiums of news organizations, you know
USA Today, New York Times. They went and did their own full recount of the state, and they did it under every standard, you know, hanging chads, dimple chads, all the rest, and Bush won every single time, sometimes by an even wider margin. I mean, it was what finally six hundred and thirty six votes. But the point is that all disappeared down a memory hole that never got big headlines. You can imagine what would happen if the media had found the other results. We'd have never heard
the end of it. But Democrats are dug in on that, and I do think that that's what you know Bush de arrangement syndrome. We called it twenty years ago, right.
Yeah, but no, But okay, so twenty is worse.
I agree with your observation. At twenty twenties, that's so much worse.
I think it's qualitatively, qualitatively worse, although I would probably agree with you with the idea that that began Trump de arrangement syndrome. The difference, of course, is that Bush it wasn't really that much of an existential threat to the Democratic Party because he really may as well have been a Democrat when it all came down. But my real anyway, wasn't there.
To the bushwisi as I call that world.
But that's not the word I used, as you call either.
John. I object I objected, least in the grounds of good taste. Just being a Bush administration.
Right, I know, but but you were. You were the shining star of the Bush Administration's.
Getting worse and worse, and.
Not really not trying to make fun of George W. Bush. What I'm trying to say is I was doing a little bit of research for a piece I'm trying to write for Steve's Political Question Substack, and every single article that I pulled up with a certain search engine, it's a certain search word was Trump cannot win because he is he is, in fact, an existential threat to democracy.
And if he won, even if he got enough votes to win, which I think there is plenty of evidence that he probably will do, so, he cannot win anyway because of his insistence in the big lie. You know that he won the twenty twenty election, it will destroy our republic. We are now at a point where, on the one hand, to only twenty seven percent of Republicans pull to believe that this election will be fair, that it will you know that there won't be cheating, et cetera,
et cetera. Eighty four percent of Democrats believe it's going to be fair. Now. That was taken a few weeks ago before Kamalama ding Dong was, you know, crashing in the polls. Come back to that later, But we are now at a point where it's not even about who
wins or loses the election. The fact that Trump had the audacity to question all of the cheating, fair and square, whatever you want to call it, that happened in twenty twenty, and the Left realizes now that they probably can never win with the broader general public on their policies, on their people. I mean, how could you have come up with two worse candidates than Kamalama Ding Dong and mister
new masculinity. I really I don't get it. So my point is that there's no bench in the Democratic Party, there's no policies that a majority of Americans support, so that the only way they can win is to call to call Trump an illegitimate president, even if he wins a huge by a huge margin, because he challenged the last election and that makes him unsuitable for ruling in a democracy trademark.
Can I let me respond to that by talking about what happened in our debate yesterday at Notre Dame. That was exactly the argument argument that my opponent made. He said, so I said to you know, the leftist done all kinds of unprecedented things in this election, prosecuting former president, current opposition candidate. And he said, it's all justified. This is an essential argument. It's all justified because he's a unique threat to democra. He repeated that phrase several times,
unique threat to democracy. And I said, first of all, I said, have you ever read the biography of LBJ? Have you ever read Bigermy Andrew Jackson? I mean, these are you know, you want to talk about people who were really outrageous and fighting the political establishment. They were
far worse than Trump. But then but my point was the second thing I said to him was you may think he's a unique threat to democracy, but once you do these things, you have opened up a Pandora's box where it now becomes part of regular election year politics. And then you can't say anything if a Western Texas state DA prosecutes Kamala Harrison prosecutes Doug em Hoff for beating up his ex girlfriend, right, so that's one thing
they can't They don't. Their explanation answer to everything is Trump is unique threat democracy, so that justifies anything we do. And their promise is it's one time only he it was weird, he would then. And then once Trump loses, he will be purged from the Republican Party. Everything will be back to normal and you guys will be glad that we did this for you.
Oh well, aren't they aren't they nice to us? Right?
But that's I'm not surprised and interesting perspective. It doesn't surprise me at all. But again they don't. It's usually centered on Trump and the big lie, right, Trump and the big lie. And if you think about everything they did, not just to Trump, but to anybody else, our friend John Eastman, everything they did to stop anybody ever from
questioning a democratic victory. The same thing happened in Arizona, by the way, in twenty twenty two, when that twit Katie, that that that valley girl Katie has but the most you've ever ever and she won by cheating, no doubt about it. Anybody who challenged it her her attorney un Erroll prosecuted. They prosecuted several of the county supervisors in Mike County for refusing to certify the vote.
Well, three quick observations on this general scene, John, you left out the contradiction that's obvious and clerics in the face. How can you be a threat to democracy if he's democratically elected by not just the electors.
Well, I mean, Harriet Hageman was because lost.
Yeah, okay, look, I mean again, you know, double standards, hypocrisy. But you may have noticed the news this week that Jamie Rescue and a few other Democrats said We're not necessarily going to certify Trump's victory in the Electoral College on January sixth, twenty twenty five, or whatever the date is, if we think there's foreign interference. They're getting ready to
rerun that whole business. But then, finally, what I think you're going to see happen is if Trump wins, as I expect he will, the left will not be able to help themselves. And you remember two thousand and four, John, you know Bush is reelected. They thought Carry was going to win even on election day, and I remember flipping out all the articles of the time. This is William Jennings, Bryan's Revan. Just these crazy, fundamentalist, evangelical, stupid Americans who
went for Bush instead of the enlightened John Kerry. They're going to do that on steroids. They're going to say the American people, and by the way, their ideology is already there and things like black Lives Matter and all the rest of it. American people are racist, they're stupid, they're ignorant, they turned the blind eye to crime. They're
easily manipulated by foreign actors. And that is going to be, you know, the repeated message in the New York Times every day for a month, and therefore Trump's an illegitimate president and democracy.
This is one thing that some of the speakers at Heritage said, which I couldn't believe but now you're persuading me, was they said, don't count on Democrats being consistent if Trump wins the vote. They said, they will turn right around and make the same arguments that Trump has been making. And they said they're the ones who and they point out what Steve pointed out about two and four, these are the guys who first invented the arguments about attacking
the system. The people who first invented the idea of the vice president, you know, rejecting electoral votes. Was actually the Democrats who were working on the campaign. So they said, don't expect them to make these arguments if their election results are the opposite of what they're expecting.
Right, Well, call Harris will be the presiding officer for that. Isn't that going to be interesting?
Yes? Yes, the Vice President.
Steve mentioned earlier about Mark Olias, the vile, despicable Mark Olias. He currently, I mean, he's working in the same way that John talked about that the Republicans are doing across the country. Mark Elias has already filed more than sixty lawsuits to stop what he's saying is a Republican voter suppression. And why is it voter suppression? Because they're asking for IDs,
They're they're suing to ask for IDs. They're there, you know, I mean, I know that in your guys' state, your pathetic governor has now made it but illegal to ask for voter I d I think it's like that. Yeah, who knows. But the challenge to Trump from Mark Elias is going to be that all of the things that Republicans are doing to assure of free and fair vote
are actually voter suppression, to suppress the minority vote. And he's going to sue based on I don't know what is it a fourteenth Amendment argument, Steve John.
I don't really know voting right, tech I'm not sure either. I think this is mostly bluster. I mean, he means it, and he may get some traction in some places. But I think remember John, if I recall this, right, hasn't Elias been kicked out of his fancy K Street law firm in Washington for essentially being such a hack?
Well, you know, basically he's It's really interesting. I think what he's done is we have no and we have no counterpart in the Republican Party. So what he did is he basically set up a law firm under the guise of presenting you know, fair elections, but really representing the interests of the Democratic Party in state after state.
And yeah, I think he had to leave Perkins Cooy, which was his law right national firm based in Seattle, of course, but he had to even set up basically his own operation because right, no law firm's going to want to be just a wholly owned subsidiary of either of the political parties.
But that's what he was doing.
He invented it. So this is one thing at the Heritage conference again, you know, I'm talking to all these people who are basically fighting him, and they're you know, they're keeping an eye on him. But this time they said, four years ago, he and his firm went into every state basically and filed the exact same argument COVID is such an emergency waive the election rules and got no resistance and a lot of the states the Republican Party of the Trump campaign didn't even show up, wasn't present.
But this time they said they're all over.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, I mean, one of the problems with and we've had we've gone through some of these arguments on this podcast before, although it's been a while. But let's assume large scale cheating by Democrats succeeded in getting votes counted in twenty twenty, they still barely beat Trump, right, I mean, it was you know, it took all that effort to be forty thousand votes in three states. That's really was the margin for the
electoral college purposes. Right. And so here's maybe I'm pivoting of sooner that you want to lucretia. But the threats out there right now are not so much dead people voting necessarily, or we can talk about some of other aspects of you know, commandeering ballots and nursing homes and stuff like that. Doesn't add up to that much. I don't think it adds up to the margin, and I think Trump is going to get however, a few facts.
I think the figure I've read recently is that there are two point five million new citizens sworn in in the last four years. Who are they? Who are they going to be voting for? And it's been reported that, you know, in rare a bout of government efficiency, the process of making people full citizens and therefore legal voters has been accelerated by the Biden administration in the last several months.
Any any more, any deeper dive into who those people are? I mean, actually, in the last couple of years, I know a couple of people who got their citizenship. Good people, you know, no worries there. But I'm just wondering if there's been any kind of nefarious behind the scenes push for say, Haitian immigrants, or yeah, it's just that they've speeded up the system good.
I have no idea. That's probably a hard question to know about. I mean, I think it's hard to say. I do wonder, though, just idly that if I'm a recent a recent arrival, whatever neologism Democrats are using, uh and even a Haitian immigrant. Do you want more coming in or is your interest in pulling up the ladder behind you?
It's not all the evidence says the ladder.
Yeah. See, it's not automatic to me that all these new citizens are necessarily Democratic voters. But that leads us to the second possible pool, which is how many illegal aliens are being registered to vote and are going to have their ballots cast for them or nudged that. You know, it's hard to rule that out.
It's very hard to rule it out because I'm if I'm a Democrat, if I'm a Democratic politician, and I know that half of the country believes that the last election was suspect, and I want the appearance of a fair and free election, not just the lip service given to it. I would have a allowed more actual investigations into what happened in twenty twenty. But b how to pass the Save Act? If there's no illegals voting, why on earth didn't they pass the Save Act? There's really impossible.
There's no good argument that I've ever heard of Democrat make about why other than it could be voter suppression. And of course it's not voter suppression. Anybody who let them get away with that because the word stupid ass Republicans and voted for it too.
I mean, I don't find it persuasive. I mean, I think having voter ideas obvious, and I think nothing like seventy percent of Americans support it. More than that, I think, I can tell you what I mean. Justice Ginsberg and her you know, dissented in some of these cases. I can tell you what her argument was, which is that, yes, you may think voter idea is neutral and it looks like the way in face, but in effect it does suppress minority voting. That's her claim that.
It'll have a.
Look I I you know, she just made this claim, she didn't.
You know.
What she then said is then you look at states where you have unequal voting participation, you know, and then you know between blacks and whites and southern states, and she would say that's explained in part by these voter idea requirements. Although that's interesting, John Roberts, you know, Lucretia's friend said in response. He said, in the most recent elections in these southern states, actually black registration and voter
turn out is higher than whites. Now, yeah, so he said, like where's your proof?
And by the way, the low participation rates, especially among Hispanics, is very notable in California where it has all these pro Maybe that's if you let me lucreatia pivot a little bit too.
Can I just throw in one response on Steve's points, you know, love your two points. I actually don't find the two million new citizens a problem because that's over four years. You're only talking about six hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand new citizens a year in a country of three hundred and fifty million people. I mean, like we're right, like this is, you know, zero point two percent of the population. I and as he said, I actually, you know,
I was first generation immigrant. I don't think they naturally vote Democrat. You know, there's in fact, there are a lot of these new immigrant voters don't like what's going on at the border. If that's what right I think, If I remember, the majority of them don't like the large searge of illegal immigration.
All.
So the second thing, the second thing, though, I think is the harder problem. Because of our federal system, we allow states to run elections. We basically rely on the states to police the voting rules. We rely on the states to decide how to prevent aliens from voting. Right, it's their job unless Congress steps and override it. So one question I have for you both is do you really want to create like a federal agency authorized by Congress to be policing elections like this to the extent
that they would? Right say, it's just automatic.
That if the Staate Act had passed, that there had to be a federal agency to information.
I'm saying, that's I think that's what you're calling for. In the end.
States aren't. But how else would you do it?
If you have some states that care and then some states that really don't care.
Well, it's not just states. I mean, let's remember that, you know, states run elections, but elections are run in three thousand individual counties with three thousand registrars of voters. We have over one hundred thousand precincts in the country. And you know, some of those registrars are right, conscientious and do a good job, and some are likely hacks, and some may be crooks and throuped and partisan.
And yeah, let me just add to that though for a second we have I mean, yes, you're absolutely right under the original Constitution, and it was entirely left up to the states to decide voter qualifications for federal elections,
for national elections, for congressman for president. However, we've seen now one, two, three, four constitutional amendments that have in fact told the states, you still get to do what you want to do, However, you cannot do so if it denies people the right to vote on account of the color of their skin race unfortunately, on the account of their sex. That's called the nineteenth Amendment. And Steve's looking at me like he doesn't know what I'm talking about.
And then you've got the twenty fourth Amendment right, the poll tax, and the twenty sixth Amendment. You have eighteen. It didn't require are a whole new agency to put those federal constitutional guarantees in place at the state level. I mean, it probably didn't happen the way it should have. It certainly did in the South with respect to the
fifteenth Amendment. But just having federal a constitutional amendment or federal law that makes it a crime, the Justice Department could won't not under Garland, but could you know, just be empowered like they are now to make sure that there's not racial discrimination in voting laws and voting practices
in states and counties and precincts. So I don't know that you'd need a whole new agency to say you can only vote have a federal law that says you can only vote in federal elections if you are a citizen. I mean, I'm not sure I'm actually throwing that out there for debate.
Thought, can I unless you want to jump in on that, John, I was going to propose bringing up the two thousand and five commission, the bar the Harder Baker Commission on the Securing America's Elections.
Right, What I actually want to hear from you, Steve, first, about what the polls are showing, because this only matters if the election is close. Oh, that's kind of how our system has worked, is we never had to have these precise procedures because we weren't deciding elections by forty thousand votes in a country three hundred and fifty million before.
Right, well except two yeah, six votes, yeah right.
And the system didn't work so well.
But that's what it was like. I hope that whoever.
Wins wins by a significant margin so that we don't have to worry about this.
That would be nice, Yes, but we live in the fifty to fifty country and it shows no signs of breaking out from that. Unfortunately. Look, I think Trump is all right. I'll comment on that. I think Trump is certain. Tell us how the polls me Well, I I read a little about this. We see the public polls, and
there's a wide variance among them. They tend to when you average them together, show Harris with like a two point lead nationally and dead even, and almost all the seven battleground states up down from uh, you know, two three point lead she had in a lot of those states.
What you're hearing in the last week, well reported by people like Mark Halpern, is the private cracking polls the two campaigns, which are better than public polls for reasons I can explain, are all showing Trump surging and Harris sinking, and it's causing panic among Democrats and confidence among Republicans in the Trump campaign.
Briefly, why tracking polls more reliable than even the public polls?
They want to know the truth.
Yeah, The Times just came out with a poll showing Trump ahead nationwide, which is unbelievable.
Yeah, right in Quinnipiac apparently, which is always that Twinnipiac had one of the largest margins of air in the twenty twenty election. They were off by like nine points. It's from the result. Well, the point is, is a public poll, what are they doing those for? They want to make news, and you know they try to do a serious job. But tracking polls, by the campaigns, they have to be right, and so they're more detailed. They
ask fourth fifth order questions. They target voters who they know that they're more serious about screening for true likely voters and not just adults and registered voters. And their incentive is, look, they're going to be the campaigns are going to be deciding where to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that are scarce resources, and where they're going to spend it, what messages on which voting groups to
try and get their majorities. And if you're bad at your tracking polls, your business drives up pretty fast because no one hires you for future election cycles. Most of the tracking polls are done by posters you've never heard of, because that's their specialty. They're not the people who go on CNN or Fox News. And you know, I think there's some good public polls of conservatives like like Rasmussen Introfalker, which have been closer to the result all the last
several cycles. But generally it's the no name people. I've learned this in California years ago for a story I won't go through. But most of the tracking poll posters are people you've never heard of, and that's their specialty and that's why they're better.
So when those kind of showing, yeah, what are they showing?
Well, what they're showing is Trump moving up to a solid lead in I think six of the seven battleground stage no two three points or more. I think he's only trailing in Nevada or Arizona. I forget which one in the tracking polls of the two campaigns, they don't, by the way, release their actual numbers. They just tell you and leak in general terms.
How do we know? One is, how do we know what they actually say? But then two they really showed Trump ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, because yeah, that's true, then the game is up right.
Here's how we know. And again it's a whole lot more about how the operatives, especially the Democratic operatives, but even Trump's people, how they react, so just total anecdote. If you go to the front page Real Clear Politics, which you know, does conservative articles, it does liberal articles, progressive articles, and it does people that are kind of middle of the road, And there is not a single article this morning that talks in positive terms about Harris's
chances for winning this election. Even our good friend Robert Kuttner from The American Prospect, who's the biggest ideological progressive hack you ever met in your life, is making excuses
for why Kamalama ding Dong is gonna lose. That's how I think, you know, you know, by the way they react, you know, by some of the things that the Kamalama ding Dong Harris campaigns have been doing, like trying to put her out in a media blitz, I mean, so incredibly misguided and stupid, But they think, I mean, I don't know, does she just have a bunch of dumb gen z Ers working for her? I don't understand.
I think they've been running a brilliant campaign given the material they're working with.
Well, well, I know this. If she does contrive to win, I'm buying stock and teleprompter manufacturers because that's what.
But does that make sense, John, you don't necessarily know what those internals are unless you know somebody else tell you.
Like I hear like political operative types saying momentum is everything, and they're saying all even the public polls show that her momentum is petered out. Trump seems to have the momentum. But I was hoping Steve was going to explain where we see the proof for this, But tracking polls we don't actually have access to, so we don't really know what they're telling us, right.
That, Well, question before you go on, question quick, do the betting the betting Well, we'll have access to those polls.
Well, I don't know if they do. We're not, but the betting markets swung wildly in Trump's favor this week. And those betting markets are not universally right, but they're right and awful lot of the time. That's right. I mean, you remember, I mean this is not brand new. If you go back to nineteen eighty, the public polls gallup Paris the others, they had a race between Carter and Reagan dead even even Carter a couple of them a slight lead, you know, half a point or a point.
The private polls for both campaigns showed the race breaking wide open for Reagan over the weekend. The Carter campaign knew by Sunday that he was going to lose, and lose huge, but nobody in the public knew that, and so I, you know, I could see that happening again depending this time.
I was gonna just one last question about polling. I find this really interesting, is that public polls are just so Your point is they're not as good because they're not investing any money and resources. You could actually do this if you wanted to, by investing a kind of resources that are being put into tracking polls.
It would just public, right, it would cost a lot more.
And like the New York Times and so on, they don't feel like, yeah, what's the point for them of getting that kind of really detailed information, as your point, But campaigns they really need it because it they have to spend money based on that.
Yeah, and they win. They spend a lot more on their polling than the New York Times stats. And this is unknown to the wider public. But what's the New York Times care? They want? They do these polls to make news, right, we need data. Well, let's make up some data and and that they.
Just have an interest in showing showing changes. Right, So the New York Time like they actually want to have, actually, in a weird way, an insensitive poll that just shows wild swings because that's what makes the story.
Oh, I get it.
That makes total sense.
Now, can I just bring up one quick one, Steve about Michigan. Just a poll just asking Muslim voters who they're going to vote for. So the vast majority of them are going to vote for Jill Stein. Oh Trump is beating Kamalama ding Dong in the Muslim vote in Michigan.
Yeah, come on, seriously.
It's true. It's like sent for Trump and twelve percent for Kamalam Edingdong. I forget something like that, right, Steve, did you see that?
I didn't see that, but doesn't surprise me. I mean, I can speculate on some reasons, several reasons for that, but.
Well, let me just say. Can I just say Steve has done a great public You guys have both done a great public service on polling.
Because one thing.
I did at Notre Dame is we had dinner afterwards with a bunch of political scientists and a very prominent Notre Dame supporter who's a big success in real estate and he thinks Trump's gonna win. He lives in Florida, he feels it. And I was telling you about the polls, and he started asking me all these, you know, very sharp questions about polling, and I was like, so, I actually told him tomorrow, Steve Hayward and Lucretia are going to answer all your questions because I don't know the answer.
None of the political scientists in the room knew the answer to his questions.
No, no, the political scientists, they skip polling and survey methodology and go straight to regression analyses. And you know, all right, that's it, right, Yeah, But can I get back from creation to your about you know, how would you enforce the Save Act? Or you know how what's the remedy for this? I just want to draw everybody's attention back, partly because Lucreati you sent her an email a couple of days ago. What about a bipartisan commission to investigate voter fraud election security?
Well, I think, I said a bipartisan commission. I said, a bipartisan effort. Oh well, all right, and those are different things because those commissions are.
Well, I was going to bring up when this was kind of done, and it was you know, Jimmy Carter and James Baker got together in two thousand and five and they did a commission on you know, securing election integrity. By the way, they were looking at the statute passed after Florida two thousand to have a Help America Vote Act, and they were going through, well, this thing hasn't really worked. It's kind of hard to implement. It's up and down.
But that reports now again, you know, Jimmy Carter and James Baker, you don't get any more establishment than those guys. That report that came out in two thousand and five said voting by mail. They raised a lot of red flags on vote by mail. Here's three quick excerpts from the final report. Rooting by mail raises concerns about privacy as citizens voting at home may come under pressure to vote for certain candidates, and it increases the risk of fraud.
By the way, we know that there were nursing homes in Wisconsin where they had one hundred percent voter turnout. That doesn't happen organically or naturally. Somebody's gone to harvested the votes from those people. Doesn't mean it's they're fraudulent, they're legal voters and so forth. But that's part of the funny business of the twenty twenty election rules changes. Here's another one. Oh, They, by the way, cite a
lot of academic literature saying vote by mail. There's no evidence and this is true in the political science technical literature that increases a minority doesn't increase voter turnout at all, and it doesn't increase minority voter turnout. That was part of the argument that John reference between Roberts and Ginsburg.
And they say, by the way, the drawback is here all quote again, it allows a significant portion of voters to cast their ballots for they have all of the information that will become available to the rest of the electorate. Crucial information about candidates may emerge in the final weeks or even days of an election campaign. I'll add here
as a brief aside, and have won more. You know, Carl Row was convinced that the late hit of Thursday before the election in two thousand that George W. Bush had the long ago d y arrest cost him the popular vote. Who knows if that's true, but it's not implausible and that was a late piece of information, right.
Bruce Hurshinson way back in Califora.
Right, yes, well, yeah, he went.
To a strip club with his wife girlfriend.
I think, yeah, yeah, that was a dumb thing to do, but he was being tailed and I actually thought that might put him over the top to win.
The election in California.
Right.
Finally he got the San Francisco prostitute vote, that's for sure.
Right, One more excerpt from the Baker of the Carter Baker Commission report. Vote by mail is likely to increase the risks of fraud and of contested elections in other states where the population is more mobile, where there is some history of troubled elections, or where the safeguards for a bout integrity are weaker. All right, that's everything we've been saying, although it sort of nicer than Lucretia would
put it. So what did they want? They said, And by the way, they convened again some of the members Carter's too old, and Baker probably moved on is he's still around. But some of the recommendations that they revisited here in twenty twenty one was, Okay, we need to have a national system to connect state and local voter registration lists, two others, and then the key one, and then we'll vote back to Lucretia to see where she wants to follow up. Stronger efforts to combat fraud, especially
in absentee voting. Another one, auditible paper backups for all voting technology. Democrats are against all these things, right, But finally they say, what we need to do on a federal level is we need to have a voter identify based on a universally available real ID card. Now, the interesting thing is if you propose a national ight D card, it's been around a long time that you will have people on the right and on the left opposing it.
The left because they don't want it because it would make it harder to do vote fraud or whatever, and the right because do we want the government doing an ID card for all of us? And at that point, I will stop and say that even the Baker Carter Commission said there's something wrong with our elections when they're this loose, And I'll just stop there and say there's some powerful establishment backup for things like you know, in
person voting on election days. Lucretia's favorite reform idea I think I'll stop there.
I just wonder what you guys think about this. You know I always tease I gave you that little anecdote about the little twit who's tried to register me to vote last week. I mentioned it right, But I honestly think that somehow we have to turn however you want to say, is turn the conversation around to the point where where a vote in and of itself is nearly meaningless,
or in many cases, worse than meaningless. What we need is to return the mindset of the American people to the fact that your vote is your sacred responsibility, not just a rite. It's a sacred responsibility, and it should be. It's I'm not in favor of a day off for voting, a federal holiday for voting. I'm not in favor of loose mail in votes, not just because it's fraudulent. I don't think you should make it easier for people to vote.
I really don't why, because I want the people and on both sides, I want the people voting who have at least paid enough attention to what's happening in an election and vote their own absolute self interest. I'm okay with that. That's fine, but I don't want idiots out there voting because somebody handed them a mail in ballot and said just fill anything out and give it back.
And I worry less even out the fraud than I do about going to a bunch of dumb eighteen year olds in a college you don't know, you know what from there, you know what, friendly show and having them vote. It used to be. I had a discussion with somebody who said the founding fathers created that system where everybody gets to vote. I said, they most certainly did not. What are you talking about, No, they did not. You way back in the day, you had property qualifications. Why
property qualifications. It's not because they like rich white men. It's because somebody who owns property has a stake in their community and cares about it. I mean, there's all of these things that come back to the idea that if you vote, it should be because you care about what happens to your country.
By the way, can I can I just interject briefly because a lot of I think listeners will be curious about this. I studied these ones very closely. Those property qualifications in the early Republic were very easy to satisfy. It didn't mean you needed to order own a farm. If you were a blacksmith and you're a tradesman and you own some tools, that satisfied the voting requirement.
In most cases cases. Yep.
Anyway, So wasn't it a way of trying to just like that? How would you They didn't construct voter rolls right property lists to figure out who was there?
Yeah. Yeah.
One of my best example of that is, you know, I went to school at Davis. I didn't live in Davis, but when they decided that it was perfectly appropriate for students to be able to vote, even though that was not their permanent address, it destroyed the town of Davis because you had all those dumb lefty uh you know, ideological hacked students who took over the city council and just absolutely destroyed the place. I don't know if they've turned it around. That's the way it was when I
was there. Yeah, just as an example of someone who who can you know, who can play experiments, ideological experiments with political power because they have no stake in the community I needs, you know, So if you.
Did to say it though, isn't it rational though for any one individual not to vote because right, you would think rationally your one vote isn't going to make a difference. And you could say, oh, I depend on all the other people like Steven Lucretia who are fully informed to choose, and I'll just rely on them. I don't need to vote,
And that's why you have very low voter participation. Half Otherwise I could take two hours and work and make like, you know, forty bucks a McDonald's again, free pig mac.
There you go. My only half joking argument about the Nineteenth Amendment, John, is that the idea that a family has a vote. Believe it or not, a family has a vote. Do I care about the child a scott ladies, No, I don't you know? If you want to vote, get a husband.
No.
I'm only I'm joking about that, But I'm using it as an example to say I'm perfectly okay with somebody deciding. Look, I don't know enough about what's happening. How often? How often do I go to some local election and I haven't had the time to look up what's really happening with this judge or that this or this corporate commissioner, and I don't vote in that election, and then the thing goes back. Are you sure you didn't mean to? But I don't vote, or I write somebody in, you know, like Steve.
I summarize your point. I can't. I can't quite make an acronym out of this. It works, but your slogan or your cause is make citizenship meaningful again m C M A or make uh make a citizenship great again, which is uh. Now it doesn't work.
Last anecdote, I'm on a commission at the university. We have no requirement for American government, American history, or American civics. And enough of the governing board was appointed when Doug Doosey was governor of Arizona that care about those things that they've now demanded that the universities add that. So I'm on the commission at my university to come up with first the standards, then the rubric to impose the standards, and then the course or courses that will fulfill it.
So I get the rubric in an email the other day, and everywhere in the rubric is something something our US constitutional democracy. So I write in because I can't make the meeting, of course, and I say, we cannot use the term US constitutional democracy. We don't have a democracy. We have a republic. And the answer I get back from the person in charge of doing this for the entire state of Arizona is well, that's what we decided and it's going to stay that way.
Oh see, this is we have to do a whole separate show on civic education, partly because all three of us are involved in it in ways we can disclose later. But the point is everybody, including you know, these establishment liberals like the person you're dealing with, I'm guessing Lucretia. Oh, civic education is terrible from K twelve all the way through.
We need to fix this. How are you going to fix it when the dominant ideology of K twelve education, not to mention universities, is you know, we're racist, oppressive country. Our constitution is terrible and it stinks. That's what civic education is going to mean if you try and ramp it up. So I'm up two minds of this. I'm going to do a series on our political questions, substack.
I'm going to draw you into it, and I have a lot to say about this, because well a lot to say about this, but I won't say it now, Okay, I now.
Either, I do want one quick thing, John, because I'm here with two of my favorite genuinely masculine role models.
We entered the room.
Yes, right, you're looking at people behind John there wherever the heck, he is a notre dame.
Okay, I actually have I been watching that whole That whole thing fold out with a lot of amusement. So this is kind of how it went. We were told that Walsh, Walls, sorry, Walls, and Doug Emhoff were the new men, the new masculinity, the unthreatening. The women love this kind of softer, more effeminate masculinity. Right, and after years of being talked about toxic masculinity and all those things,
wasn't all that well received. Perhaps maybe I see it differently because I don't travel in all the circles out there. But you know, everybody I saw made fun of walts Waltz. You can't see that listeners, but I'm doing my very best bird cage imitation about Walls. However, they're so invested in that that the Kamlama Ding Dong campaign put out an ad did you see the oh yeah, oh.
My god, oh John? Well, people think that they weren't showing these in Pennsylvania, I think because I want to win the state.
Well, the ad is John Hinderrocker posted on Powerline. It's a preposterous ad about real men who are for Kamala har It's just it's and.
That would be fine in and of itself, but it's their their twisted views of what made you a real man? Like I eat carburetors for breakfast rborators.
What I mean this?
Yeah, yeah, I mean the.
Carburetors sold thirty years ago.
At least I'm not afraid of bears. That's what bear hugs are for.
You know.
People said this looks like the Trump campaign infiltrated the Harris campaign and put this ad out as a satire. But no, apparently it's real.
It's anyway, yes, and so anyway this I think.
That this Does it say anything about punching your girlfriend?
No? Yeah, this is that one.
And your girlfriend.
Boy. The Harris vetting operations seems to be pretty bad. I mean with Waltz and then well, of course she married the guy, so there's no choice there. You can't kick him off the spousal ticket as second gentleman. OK.
Yeah, but you know what I've last comment on that before we go to Babylon Be's. It has been my absolute experience knowing people over the years, never personally in this case, that men who hit women are in fact the least kind of masculine men out there, because I've never known a truly masculine man who thought it was appropriate under any circumstances, no matter how drunk you were,
to physically harm a woman. I've never known it. And I've known a lot of great men in my life, like you two, and you know, it would never worry me to be slapped or spunched by either one of you or so there's something really wrong with that new definition of masculine that they're trying to shove down our throats so tried really hard to do so. By the way, I say, we rise up in arms and say no to it. That's what I say.
All right.
Back to the Babylon Bee Uh, terrorists added to the list on the Statue of Liberty plaque. You have to kind of that one. But experts say Kamala can still win if she doesn't appear in public again between now an election day.
True, well, yes, that's a true statement. Yeah, maybe I know.
Isn't that awful? Democrats perplexed why candidate nobody ever voted for is slipping in the polls be true again, Genius Kamala announces plan to tell Hurricane Milton don't and we didn't even we didn't even get to this. I mean, what a some time, we'll have to do an entire show,
guys on the fall of journalism. I know we talk about it in you know, anecdotally frequently, but CBS reveals they interviewed Kamala for seven hundred and twenty out one hours in order to compile sixty minutes of usable footage.
Yeah, well that's also true almost, Yeah right, just.
A couple more Democrats clarify that black lives will only matter until November.
Who that also cuts pretty close to the truth, right, Yeah?
Yeah, Opinion concerns about FBI raids have been overblown and there's no need to hang on there's a knock at my door.
Uh oh that was the joke.
Oh I thought that was true.
Yeah, if you're not on an FBI watch list, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Yeah nowadays, Okay, I'm through Steve.
Yeah, you have to say for us, Well, John's gonna write, don't.
We know whiskey. Always drink your whiskey. Need let's go Brandon and Steve. What's our new signf I.
You know, I I got nothing. I don't I got nothing. I can't keep up. The latest one that's on Twitter is Campbell is saying there's a lot going on out there right now. Ha ha ha ha he cackle, cackle, And I know, yeah, I'll work on that. I'll work on that and all the rest. Anyway, I'm gonna end this thing. I'm gonna improvise though, John and say, go Stanford beat Notre Dame and we'll be thinking of you with the game today.
Wait wait, can I can I do? Can I break protocol? And just somehow I missed this one because you guys heard that what's his name in Colorado finally won his his suit the Colorado Supreme Court. What's his name?
Jack Phillips? Yeah, Jack Phillips, right.
Yeah, probably one of the best of all time Bebylon Bees. Millions of gay people will die of hunger as one bakery in Colorado no longer forced to bake them wedding cakes.
Yeah. By the way, I don't understand why no one whether there's not a second bakery in the state of Coloradoer seems to be this one.
It's amazing, one one wonderful. Well, Notre Dame's gonna crush them.
Yeah, we're all gonna be together in person next weekend, which raises possibilities for what we do.
So oh yeah, oh yeah, we're all going to be together broadcasting from my office probably right, okay, all right, bye bye everybody, see everybody.
Bye.
Well, we got a lot a lot of hard work today. We gotta rock at the government center to make the secretaries feel better.
One, they put the stamps on the letter. They got a lot a lot of great desks and chairs now at the governments where they put the stamps on the letter, and then they write it down in the ledger.
Two, we gotta rock the lock, the lock, and don't stop tonight about that the government save where they put the stamps on the letter, write it down.
In the ledger. We won't stop until we see secret Ricochet join the conversation.