Well whiskey coming thing, pay oh don't you? 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. Thank you gotta giving let that whiskey clone when you're feeling low down and load. Welcome everyone to the three Whiskey Happy Hour. This is your host, Lucretia, the International Woman of Mystery, happy to welcome my co
host John You and Steve Hayward. How are you, gentlemen. I'm good, guys. I'm trying to show John how you have this energetic opening to three Whiskey Happy Hour because John always starts off like he's bored to be there. You know, have you noticed that? You know that's funny. I know, because somebody does other people's podcasts. He comes in like Gangbusters. You know it's that's because that's because of the other podcasts. I'm not afraid
of the hosts. Yes, by the way, I should tell you I was just on this National Review speaking trip in Orange County and Silicon Valley and it was mobbed by Lucretia admirers. Or many people. I would say at least five people came up to me and asked me for her secret identity? Did you give it away? You know who? Of course not. I was like, you're what you're reading National Review and you're too stupid to figure it out yourself. Well, one could argue that those two actually go together,
but I won't. You just set me up for it. How could I not? I know he walked into that one. Well, so, so John has a very important squash game, probably with members of the Supreme Court and the Ukrainian military. I'm guessing somebody you beat me to it. I was gonna say, with the members of the American military industrial complex. I actually had to find we're looking at new countries to invade to make money. I had dinner the other night with the general, the commanding General of
the Mexican Army. Was it interesting? Aha, Well, we should be careful how much I talk about it. But it was a genuinely nice man. Turns out I didn't know this. I said, your propaganda machine is not very good, because what we hear about you is just you know, all of your corruption, et cetera, et cetera at the cartels. But it turns out that they do a lot of things like the National Guard does in the United States. They go to horrible emergencies, hurricanes, that sort
of thing all over the world. Well, look, one, the Mexican Army has no natural enemies and so they don't really have to plan for fighting wars. But b do you want your generals to actually be nice people? Like? Do you think that after people met George Patten, they're like, he was such a nice Well, you want generals to be mean bullet chomping jerks. He so, so, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean he had to be that way with everybody, but he was nice with me.
But there was also a translator, so maybe the translator was making him sound nicer than he was. That's always a fun project conversation. But the translators, doing their job, they censored half the things Lucretia said, so they never made it into Spanish. Maybe. Actually, my Spanish isn't terrible, so I could I could tell a part of what he was saying. But he talked very fast, and then I could tell what the translators, if
they were accurate. It's I'm just not good enough to formulate it. Myself. Anyway, we have a lot to cover today because it's been a crazy week. I am going to call this episode Steve will put it in the as the title of the episode, the old Nixon adage, never murder a man committing suicide. And is that from Nixon himself? Yeah, that's what Nixon said, And I don't remember the context. Steve probably does, well,
I don't know. Well, I think it might have been well, I think there earlier versions of that from like Napoleon, But in Nixon's case, I think when he might have said that was, you know, he stayed up and watching the Democratic National Convention in nineteen seventy two when George McGovern, because of the disruptions of the student left, which right remained subject today right at that convention, did not give his acceptance speech until three in the
morning, and Nixon wrote his diary it was like some college skit that got out of control. But he realized the Democratic Party was melting down in front of him and that this was going to be an easy reelection. So you're going to hate this though, because when I ask, you know, the all powerful Wikipedia, they actually attribute the quote to Woodrow Wilson. Oh No, well, they don't mention Nixon saying this even a blind squirrel. John,
That's okay. But at the same time, what we now know about Wikipedia when that twit from NPR was in charge of it, that everything she did was censored, everything Wikipedia produced was censored. So I'm not sure I trusted anyway. I actually will fail students if they use Wikipedia, I warn them, But I will fail them if they try to use Wikipedia on a as a source on a paper. But anyway, that's a different story before
we get to committing never murder a man committing suicide. I do want to ask John, if you had any opportunity to watch your friend Hope Picks today. Yes, Well, so first I should mention that Hope's a friend of mine. I think she's one of the few people who emerged from the pre Trump White House and the Trump White House with her reputation fairly intact, if not somewhat improved. So she testified today in interest. It doesn't hurt that
she's gorgeous, by the way. That's I know, it's I don't you're not. I think I'd be committing some kind of University of California regulation if I commented on her appearance speech that we're going to get to that as we are, so so she it was interesting because what she said, first of all, this is the prosecution's witnesses we're going through now. So these are the best people for the government for Alvin Bragg, which is turning out to
be such a disaster for them. She was under subpoena. She didn't want to show up. Yeah, she didn't want to show up, but you have to. And this is not even this is not even under cross examination
yet. This is just the prosecutions asking questions. And one thing she said, which was it really undermines the prosecution's case, is that when news was breaking about President Trump potentially possibly having affairs with the Stormy Daniels and then Harry McDougal I think is the name of the other one, President Trump's reaction was to try to make sure that his wife Milania didn't know about it. And so he said, she said, he asked that none of the newspapers he'd
be delivered to the residence of Trump Power. And you can ask why is this important, And the reason it's important is because that's not illegal, I mean if and in fact, it points to the idea that this is not anything having to do with a campaign, because the DA has built his whole case, which I think is unconstitutional anyway. But he's built this whole case that what Trump did was violate the federal election laws by giving himself an illegal
campaign contribution when he allegedly paid off these women. Now it's unconstitutional, I think, because I don't Alvin Bragg's not allowed to, you know, regulate federal campaigns. It's not his job to worry about how the election is going. His only job is to enforce New York law within the borough of Manhattan, which he says he's doing because of the business practice, the fraudulent business entries. But again, who does that hurt? Why doesn't hurt anybody?
And also the time to bring those cases past long ago, So he has to plug it into something bigger and more important, a felony, and so he's trying to plug it into the campaign finance laws. But this is the interesting thing. I don't see how Trump could have done anything but what he did, because if he had tried to pay these women off and use campaign funds, that would be a violation. The Justice Department essentially prosecuted John Edwards
for doing exactly that, and I'd wish he was admitted. Yeah he was hung jury, he got a hung jury, but he's got he got lucky, and the Justice Department decided not to prosecute him, And then right he's being Trump's being prosecuted for doing what you're supposed to do, which is not to book it as a campaign contribution, but to pull it out of your
own accounts, your own money. So I think actually Hope's testimony today, even though the prosecution was trying to you know, illicit information favorable to itself, actually undermines Yet again, it's the legal theory of the case. Steve your muted. Yeah, I was coughing because I'm still rich. Lowry had a great column about this a few days ago that I can't believe I didn't
think of this. And essentially the argument, boy, is down to what kind of case could Alvin Bragg have bought if he had or if anybody had investigated the bimbo eruption squad that was flanking Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety two. How many people did they pay off? How many witnesses did they intimidate? Right? I mean, I mean this is ludicrous right. I mean, I think that once we decided in the nineteen nineties that well some I mean,
never mind whether the story of Stormy Daniels was true or not. The point is is the nineteen nineties, the nation made a decision we don't actually care about this. Remember Joe Klein's cover story Time magazine, A character doesn't matter, We only want results in America said yes. So now we're back
to the pre Clinton standard. Apparently the applies only to Trump. But isn't there also a question John that these entries in the ledgers that were made were made in twenty seventeen, which means that they couldn't possibly have had an impact
on the twenty sixteen election. I mean, the farther you dig into this, the more you realize this is just the worst kind of law fair with no backing, and the only thing that allows it to move forward is the fact that they've got a corrupt judge and a jury made up of a bunch of leftist idiots. I mean, I don't know any other explanation for it. I mean, I have the same worries that you do. I don't think the judge is corrupt. I'm not sure about the jury being leftist idiots.
They might just be leftists, but well, I think Lucretia treats those of what yeah, I know, as if there's a difference Lucretia and Lucretia's house you don't want, you don't war. Until later on that leftist idiots was actually two words. But you're rightly cretient in this sense that some of the activities before twenty sixteen, but it continues into twenty seventeen. If it really was about influencing the election, then why doesn't it just stop after Trump
selected? And this is the other thing that came out earlier this week that I thought was pretty extraordinary. Again under the prosecution's witness, the head of National Acchoirer. He described doing this for Trump, but he also described doing it for lots of other people who are just celebrities, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example. So apparently what's been going on is that. I mean, I'm sure I wonder what's going on in that household now. So apparently this guy,
the interestingly named David Pecker. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. But where's tom him? Right? I know? And so he goes out and when there's a story that's negative about celebrity, he goes and buys the rights to the story, and then he effectively kills it. He refuses to publish rather than publish, and he kind of does this as a favor. It sounds like to different celebrities that he wants to have a good
relationship with. Now, again, this goes to lucrecious point to the extent he's doing this before the election and after the election and doesn't have to seem to do with the timing the election. Again, that undermines the idea that this has anything to do with the twenty sixteen election, which Bragg is not allowed to regulate anyway, right, right, So I have a deeper reflection.
I'm interested to think what both of you think about it, and that is that one of the things that has become more and more clear to me is the tendency in all of these cases, the state cases and the Jack Smith case, to flip our system of criminal justice constitutional protections on its head, and where prosecutors are somehow arguing for the government the government's constitutional rights to a speedy trial, for instance, and the government, I mean the idea
of putting a gag order on the defendant in the brag case. You put gag orders on people so that they don't undermine the case against the defendant. And it leads me to By the way, so I'm thinking about this as I'm driving to work, and so I pick up my iPhone and turn it on to so I can record into it, and I say that this makes
me think of that idiotic statement again by the leftist idiot Justice Kaitanji. But when I actually say her name in a kind of normal voice, believe it or not, to my iPhone, and it comes up as cat Angie. So from now on she is kat And but remember kat Angie said that, uh, that that the First Amendment might hamstring the government's ability to do what
it needs to do. So my argument, John, you're looking at me like I'm a little nut, so but you always look at me that like that, so I shouldn't make much of it, is that this whole lawfair thing has had an even more insidious effect to miseducate the general public about the idea that somehow it's the government that needs protection from the constitution. It's the
government who has rights in a criminal trial. It's the government who needs to be have its its powers insulated from those horrible restrictions of the First Amendment. Do you do you understand what I'm saying by that, guys? And do you agree you stump us? Not really, I've got some fus. I well, I well, let me try first. I don't think that this is an issue which only runs in one direction, because there are also conservatives
here who have suddenly found new appreciation for the constitutional rights defendants. So if you were the stereotype it, you know, conservatives are generally generally pro police and generally want to get rid of things like Miranda and the exclusionary rule. And so this is the one thing I have found. I don't think it's intentional, but I do think it's striking a court out there. One thing that Trump has done in his travails is he has revealed how much power prosecutors
have, which most people in the public did not understand. Now I think they do, and how much the potential for abuse there is amongst prosecutors. And the main limit has always been prosecutors self restraint. There the courts have you know, long said we're not going to police the most of what prosecutors do. And you know, Robert Jackson, one of the great attorney generals, FDR's main legal visor, became a Supreme Court justice. You know.
He cautioned us that because prosecutors can destroy a man's reputation and his wealth and his property and his family before ever going into a courtroom, just by all the things he does to you before you get to court, prosecutors have to be especially vigilant on themselves. And he said, so the it's interesting, and he has this famous speech about the federal prosecutor and he said, the worst thing you could do in our system. It's almost like he anticipated Trump,
is to pursue a man because you don't like him. And the worst thing you can do is to investigate the man, not the crime. And that's I think what's going on. So I wouldn't say it's I mean, I always enjoy it when the left always call for someone to be prosecuted or you know, but I think it's also thee. There's a revelation going on amongst conservatives that may not have been there before. Well, I don't know. I've been saying for years that the police are bureaucrats in uniform, doesn't
mean they're bad people. But let's remember their units of the government, and I think and I actually blamed liberalism for them my next sentence, which is they became bureaucratized because of liberalism. And maybe some of the professionals of the police that as evolved in the last fifty years are a good thing. You can say more about that, but I'll skip over for now. But on the prosecutor business, this will seemed like a digression, but not really of
all the unlikely people who have blown up the narrative as we is. Al Sharpton, who on MSNBC a couple of mornings ago, said, I don't see how we go on talking about January sixth when you have these kinds of things going on at college campuses, at which point Mika Brazinski blew up and said, you can't say that, you can't compare this to January sixth. You can see the panic about this. Now, my point on prosecution is this, apparently it is true that an awful lot of the people rested are
not students at Colombia and some of the other places. In those places, right and unquestionably some of them must have crossed state lines. I think that
gives the justice Department jurisdiction to investigate and bring charges. By the way, I think they might have had jurisdiction anyway, through civil rights laws and so forth, But never mind, here's U And so I think a great question to watch is are they going to pursue any of these people with the kind of vigor that they did from some of the you know, January sixth defendants
to that who they chase down for the most marginal offenses. It seems to be in this is going too far, though I know it's like, I mean, there were these campus protests are a problem, but do you really want the Justice Department investigating them? And this is actually this is where I thought the speaker went too far. I can see why politically it makes sense, but I really don't think this is the time that we need to call the National Guard out to suppress the protests. Oh my goodness, a bit
of an overreaction. I mean, so there's like I'm all for. I think what we can easily do to squash the protests as just say, automatic expulsions for everyone who refuses to disperse, starting like now, and you get a notice and then if you're still there, you're automatically. You know. Look, I mean maybe not. It's not it's not a right, it's a privilege. And you send them home, give them a refund to the parents, say now they're back, and they're they're your problem again. We
don't. Well no, what Look, maybe not for pas of people take their space, but the FBI and the Justice Department, the National Guard, that seems well, look at sauce for the goose. I just want consistent law enforcement. That's my point. And okay, uh, there's I gonna go to all that. I was just going to mention one thing, Well, you're thinking about what you couldn't remember, Steve, and that is that I agree with John. Oh, I know. Sorry, let me tell
me. There was a poll, so how far out of sink you are? John? A poll was taken the last couple of days. The result was the question was do you believe the police and or the National Guards to be called out to the campuses to quell these demonstrations. The spread was seventy six percent yes, seventeen percent No. So there you are, John, you're with the seventeen police. No. Police are fine, I mean like local police, campus police. But I mean I don't think you want to
militarize it. I think that's playing into the hands of the protesters. I do. I want to go back to what John said about uh. Isn't it interesting that the table seem to be switching to some extent where Republicans, conservatives, et cetera, are all of a sudden screaming about the rights of the criminally accused, and the it's the leftists that want to prosecute January sixth protesters, you know, Trump election deniers, et cetera, et cetera.
I think that there's some truth to that. For sure. I have more and more of my conservative friends who aren't intellectuals and academics who are becoming more and more anti police every day, seriously, and I never would have expected that. And to some extent I'm the same, especially when I get pulled over. But that's a different story. I mean, I live in a
store's tesla. Actually, wait, love this story. It was actually my son driving, but we were driving the Tesla and he was behind a dump truck and the speed limit went down from sixty five to fifty five and he didn't slow down. He stayed at the speed that the dump truck was being passed on the left by other people, gets pulled over by this, shall we say hefty I'm not supposed to engage in lookism, but so you get what I mean. When I pick sheriff in an onmark car, he doesn't
pull anybody else over. He pulls over, you know, this really fancy car and gets and acts like he's doing this huge favor by not giving a speeding ticket. He gives a ticket for guess what, wasting finite resources. Yeah, because when you remember, back in the old days of fifty five, that was supposedly the optimal right and all that crap back John's too young to remember, but anyway, that's what the ticket was. But you know,
to my son's credit, he didn't argue about it. But of course, you know, here's what we're sitting there thinking, First of all, you didn't you didn't pull over people going faster than us because they didn't have probably have cars that looked like they could pay the stupid fine. And second of all, you can't be in a tesla speeding wasting finite finite resources when you charge it from your own solar system. It was a total digression,
total digression. Anyway, My point is that you're right about that to some extent. However, John, I don't know that Republicans or conservatives, whatever, people on the right are necessarily opposed to the idea of rights for the crimly accused. And I will use the examples you use, which were exclusionary rule and miranda rights, if you will recall you cannot show me anywhere in the Constitution where either of those exist. On the other hand, right to
a speedy trial right that's a guarantee in the sixth Amendment. So I think that you know, it's a little bit a little bit disingenuous to say that conservatives who argued against those things because the Supreme Court enforced them upon us, and you know, seeing that, seeing genuine lack of objectivity, a genuine partiality in the way that the law is being prosecuted across the board, I
think those are two different things. Although I do agree with your premise that you know, conservatives are starting to say, Wow, I'm worried about how much power the government has, and I'm not so sure I like it, And I'd really like to make sure that those constitutional protections we have against governmental tyranny stay in place. Anyway, that's just my thought, but I don't
know what you think about that. Well, for part of it is the worst abuses are going on here and with regard to Trump or by state and local prosecutors. Right, so, uh, you know this is like you know, brag Fanny willis right, the real prosecutors of Atlanta woman, This is so you know. The thing I've noticed is that, yeah, I know the same thing as you, Lucretia, My conservative friends have become much more uh you know, not as fully supportive of the police and prosecutors as
they used to be, and particularly local Now. I mean I think that what this is all revealed to people is local politics, which I you know, Conservs also generally tend to trust local solutions and federals, but they're also seeing now the seemy underside of local government. Well, we do know there's been corrupting influences on that. I mean there's millions and millions put by George Soros into you know, electing corrupt left leftist idiot same word John prosecutors like
your San Francisco friends, and you know los the Alvin Bragg. I don't know if he's a Sorows plant, but I think Lutitia James was anyway. I mean, there is there is some perfidy going on there. We might say, yeah, so you know that makes it well, you know what it's like. Okay, they beat us fair and square, though, like they were open about what they were doing. They ran these outrageously left wing candidates, and not only did they get elected, they've been re elected.
I mean Philadelphia is a good example. Maybe the worst of the progressive das is sky Krasner. He got re elected after the murder went way up, after they didn't bring prosecutions they should have. But I think, like maybe we should maybe conservatives shouldn't be so in love with local solutions all the time. In local government. You know, there's there Jeffersonian ideal because they're also you know, what we're seeing is the local government can be more easily corrupted
than the federal government. I think, yeah, but I'm sorry, go ahead, Steve, I'm just going to say that, I mean, there is a broad problem, and I think we're slow to figure out that law enforcement was included in the broad problem, which is the culture of the administrative state. It's like the old story of turtles all the way down. It may arise from the centralized impulse, but it has infected the lowest reaches of
government. And my story about that is the forty cases I traced about a decade ago, a little kid's lemonade stance being shut down by local government for not having a business license for some other pretext. Right, and now that's not very many in the big country, except the real number should be zero. No little kids lemonade stand should ever be shut down. What's the impulse
behind that? Pure bureaucratic mendacity. And that's not something Washington caused. That is now self generated at every level of government, and we shouldn't be It is true, though, John, I mean, you know, Das you know, I'm will enough to remember in California, when the most boring Republican would win the local DA and the state attorney general races people now long forgotten, like well, not Vincent Buliosi because he of course prosecuted Manson, but
evil younger George Duke Magen, nobody who'd set the house on fire with his charisma, but was a you know, attorney general and then governor and good in both of those jobs. And now we don't seem to be able to do that anymore. John's right too that they beat us at our own game in that respect. And the Progressives, I mean the Progressives in California and Arizona, from the very beginning of our constitutions targeted local governments and said,
how can how can we take over local governments? And they couched it in terms of getting rid of corruption, the corruption of the party's at local governments, and of course it has allowed in ways I'm sure they imagined. I'd love, you know that corruption at a level unheard of or at least reform reform government. Yeah, at a level unheard of, you know. So all right, if we're going to get John out in time for his squash game the next one, so you guys may continue after I after I go,
well, we need you for this. John. Don't murder a man committing suicide. What is up with idiot Republicans? That's gonna be one and their stupid bill restricting trying to define what anti Semitic speech is. I know that the reach of the bill is not that great. I get all of the details of it, but look, the left is imploding on itself.
That people are watching what the left is doing, you know, Biden's going like this in the polls, and what do Republicans do the stupidest thing they possibly could and talk about having an unconstitutional infringement upon free speech enforced by the government. Am I being too Yeah? I mean, look, I think they are too clever by half. I'll sort of meet you halfway on this.
So, I mean there are two clever aspects of this bill. One is you're going to get Democrats. Well, first of all, they said, let us adopt I forget the Internet group, let's adopt the international definition of Semitism. Is that? And you know that's a in my cynical way, is that's a brilliant political move because the left is all about international institutions and the international community. So uh, and the globalists like the left.
Well okay, But then the next point is you're gonna get a bunch of Democrats voting against that, and that makes them look bad. This is an attempt at it's an attempt at a wedge issue to fracture the Democratic coalition. I agree with you on them miserably. No, it passes the House by a big majority. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It was it didn't fracture and it was ninety one Republicans who voted against it and a few of the squad people. Right, well, I think there's seventy Democrats, but
I don't remember the numbers. Now it's it's going to die in the Senate. But that's going to caust them some heartburn, and look, it's a dumb idea. On the other hand, I do remember it's six or seven years ago. Now maybe no, it's not that far back because the Santos
was governor. But Florida passed UH sometime around two thousand or twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, a bill target any anti semitism on campuses and in the schools in Florida, and people raised some of the same objections, which is, I think this is an infringement on free speech and it's unconstitutional, and I think maybe it was challenged. I lost track of it, but there was a lot of the same issue came up. Right, So there's already was done once in Florida, and like I say, we ought to see
where that landed. I think, I don't think this is going to get any legs one way or the other. It's it's going to die in the Senate. And I don't know there was a gimmick. That's I don't know who thought of it. It's you know, typical John the idea, but I didn't think of it. Of it from my favorite absolutist on the First Amendment, I'm coming more to your side these days. Well, First, I worry about the Department of Education being given the power to write, do
anything. But it's a lot probes into whether certain kind of speech is being favored or disfavored on college campuses. Although I'm very suspicious of college administrators, I think you just compound whatever problems there are by having the bureaucracy of Washington, DC's education departments starting to, you know, make censorship decisions or what's allowed. Look, I abhore this anti Semitic speech that's going on, these
anti Semitic protests going on on campus. On the onther hand, I'm glad the American people can see it. Right, I'd rather have these protesting students out there with their openly anti Semitic speech and their anti Semitic encampments, and the American people can see it. And I think the American buple discussed by
it. And that's why you're getting these kinds of poll results. Steve's talking about where you got seventy whatever, seventy nine percent of the American people want the police or the military sentence to squash these protests because they they are abhorred by it. That's the way I think that the free you know three marketplace of ideas should work, and actually is working. So I I I agree
with you. I think there, you know, I what our guys should be doing is saying, let's have the Department Education Speech Mission hold back even farther because it's obviously failed. Right, It's obviously failed, So let's get them out of the business of policing viewpoint, discrimination, speech, unsafe. You know, people were about you know, unsafe environments on campus. Right,
That's what this all stems from. So the thing, the last thing I'll say, the the problem with the law is that it buys into in the end this idea, oh, you know, you can suppress viewpoints or speech because you want to have a safe college campus. Right. That's what's really going on here. Every every time I hear someone in all of this say the words safe, I feel unsafe or saying that that that that waves a warning flag for me, because safe is just now the new word that's
used to justify the infringement. Blond be that said the you know the I think it was Harvard. The students at Harvard almost missed their their seminar on microaggressions because they were out protesting kill the Jews. Yeah, yeah, right, no, that's what That's my comment is. I always thought safety school meant to college that was easy to get into. I didn't realize it. Now, man, every college. And remember our friend Ben Sassy was very
clear about it that we are not daycare here. Yeah, that's why, you know, let's remember I mean, never mind the Charlottesville business. We've mentioned a couple of times. Remember what the fuss was at Yale six seven years ago, eight years ago. It was about Halloween costumes. Oh my god, you were thought they had to shut down the campus for teachings because someone might wear a sombrero. And right, faculty got fired. I don't think they didn't. That's not quite right. It was the christ they got.
They got kicked out, as noted from headmasters. The headmasters at at the residential colleges, they did. You know, I don't know if you follow this, John, They made Nick Christokus, who's a you know, well known figure in social psychology I think who has swung waved the right from
that experience of being yelled at by crazy kids. They made him a sterling professor about two years later, which I thought was a makeup because that's one of the highest honors at Yale, right, And I thought that was their makeup call by the administration, who was embarrassed about how shabbily he was treated. Even though Peter Salivey totally capitulated to all the crazy students. I wish he'd turned it down. He should have turned it now. That would have
been fun. But and you know, I know it sounds stupid, but I always wanted to say to those people, you know what we learned when we were little kids. Did you learn this in your nice Korean household? John, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. No, didn't learn that one a lot. By the way, I can connect with your first story. You see Lucretia and you said,
you know, don't don't murder a man who's committing suicide. I thought you were going to talk about the and maybe you are the wider campus scene. Could I tie together the first story. In this one, you mentioned the almost Tom Wolf quality of the first witness of the Trump trial, David Pecker. Did you see the video of the woman demanding the Columbia send food into the protesters who are occupying Hamilton Hall. Her name, she want to see. I want to see what you'll make of her name. Her name was
Joanna king Slutsky. Yes you know hyphen name king Slutsky. And what she said was she wanted She said that they were did they? The last of it was, do you really want students to be dehydrated, hungary and possibly become ill because you don't agree with our views? Can't we at least get a glass of water? Yeah? It was. It was unbelievable. But she also is doing her dissert I don't think it's their dissertation. I think it's what she her. Her Her research is in a Marxist perspective. I
have a poetry right, I have it right here. It's not too long. Let me read it to you because it's too fun to not share with listeners. It is. My dissertation is on the fantasies of limitless energy in the Transatlantic Romantic Imagination from seventeen sixty to eighteen sixty. My goal is to write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marxi's term for the disruption of energy circuits
caused by industrialization under capitalism. I'm particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens, in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the romanticy. Yeah, that was that's not even a fake yawn. I really just yned down. Well, there's more about how she was a progressive activist and all that. No, and that's
Joanna King Slutsky. Don't murder a man when they're committed committing suicide. That thing went so viral. And on the other side of it, I don't know, John, I never know what you're up up with them. The the you know, the news. The real news was what happens inside your hallowed halls at Berkeley the so at u NC some frat boys, frat boys fraternity. The protesters had pulled down the American flag and oh yeah, and put up a Palestinian flag. So it wasn't boys who they I think it
was the campus police, but I forget. But so the American flag goes back up and the Palestinian protesters try to take it back down, and this huge group of frat boys surround the flagpole and the protesters are pelting things at him and spinning on them. They're just standing there and they start singing the national anthem, and they and they keep the flag up and the protesters finally
give up and go away. Well so somebody just you know, this goes viral on social media, and then somebody starts to go fund me to throw the bros a rager, a party, right you know, to celebrate them, thank them for doing this. So they started gofund me. As of last night they shut it down, it was over half a million dollars right and Ros and the biggest their biggest contribution was ten thousand dollars from Bill Ackman, who has really got religion over this. No, they wanted to raise
like one hundred and fifty thousand bucks and they raised five hundred thousand. This is fantastic. They're going to get most of it to charity, but a bunch of a bunch of right wing celebrities have said they'll play John Rich is going to write a song and play a free concert for their rager and others. Yeah, so Christopher Scalia tweeted out that he's working on a country song called Don't Try This at a State University. So again, what I want,
I want to have a little bit deeper conversation about this. We've had a discussion for several years at least now, about what do we do about this rot at at our universities, and especially our elite universities. And they've you know, the gay and the other person who testified before Congress obviously did great harm to the reputation of elite universities, and it's been going downhill for some time. Anyway, higher education in general does not get anywhere near the
respect it used to. And you know, there's all people who have jobs instead of academic degrees are looked on more favorably than they used to be. Okay, is this going to signal a huge jump where our elite universities and degrees, sorry, John, degrees from elite universities really won't matter very much anymore. What do you think I have? It's interesting and part of this speaking, Tory went on, I met a professor whose name will be kept
anonymous, whose son is going to a very prestigious prep school. And he said his son and his friends, even though their parents are sending them to his prep school to get them into the kind of colleges that the CREATU is talking about and that I was very happy to go to. Said these friends, this son and this many friends are all decided to go to SEC colleges Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Flord And he said the parents are horrified by this, but they also want to know why, and they've been told by
their kids. And this was going on before the protest, but the protest is just, you know, it's just exacerbated. It is that they feel they're going to be harassed and discriminated against because of their traditional views and these colleges and they feel, meaning this is not true, but they feel that at the SEC, the large Southern and Western Land Grant colleges, that they will be treated much more fairly and that their careers will be better off.
That's right. I still don't think that's true. Well, I can see why youngsters think that, but I'm still not sure that the credentialing effect of the I League school is going to it's been suffering, it's going to suffer, but I still don't see it being overthrown by this. Maybe there'll be a sort of time limit. Like you know, I'm John you I went to Yale and Harvard, but it was pre nineteen nineteen ninety five or something
like that, and so my degree actually matters. But anybody who went to Harvard Yale in the twenty tens and beyond is you know, basically an illiterate moron who's been propagandized and brainwashed by a bunch of lefty professors. So I know, John, you have to go in a couple of minutes the quick question did you ever have any courses at Harvard from Nat Laser? Nathan Glazer? No, No, I know who he is, but I didn't take it. Yeah, you know want the famous sociologists, So a sociologists.
I just dusted off. It came out of a box of you know, books of wine have been stored for a long time. By the way, everyone can't see how nice Steve's background finally looks because he has unveiled his new library. And I know he's been posting on Facebook every time he files a book in his new bookshelf, he puts a picture of it. On Facebook. This is my actual detached home office that hasn't changed. I know it's
beautiful, It's really beautiful. Oh no, no, John, I got my poster at the Oh your Churchill posters, yeah, deserve great church posts. I've got mine from the world from the in London, the Imperial War Museum. That's what the Imperial War Museum. So so Glazier, you know. He became known as one of them conservatives. But he was at Berkeley in sixty four for this free speech movement and was at the very center of
the faculty trying to broke or a compromise. And I found his collection of essays called Remembering the Answers Essays on the American Student Revolt, and I've read a few years ago, but one written in nineteen sixty eight. Just two sentences from it, because this tell you how how radically things have changed from them to now, and then raises a question. This is a chapter called
the Jewish Role in Student Activism, published in nineteen sixty eight. First sentence, this is not a period in American history in which there is much danger that Jews will suffer from unequal treatment, prejudice, or discrimination. That's his first sentence right, and then the next page a little longer. But because indeed, since Jews are no longer attacked except in publications of small circulation, and there he has in mind, you know this old old crazy right wing
stuff. Perhaps yeah, right, since jew actually the Birchers weren't Semitic,
But never mind. From now, since Jews are no longer attacked except in publications small as responsible for the destruction of morality, religion, personal liberty, and private property, it becomes possible to discuss and analyze, even if with an apology for doing so, the reasons why the children of generally liberal, enlightened and prosperous businessmen and professionals, which is what Jews for the most part, are, are to be found predominantly both in the leadership and among the
followers of the broad and variegated body of student protesters and radicals. So two things have changed. One is Jews are not immune in fact of the principal target of discrimination and hatred on campuses. This is obvious. And second, a lot of this essays concerned with the questions goes back decades is why were so many Communist leaders Jews, even though Mark was anti Semitic and all the
rest of that. I am wondering two things, if we're going to see another generation of people like Glazer. This whole book says, I can't believe I thought of myself as a radical and now I'm a conservative and it was the student revolution the sixties and seventies or what did it? And he explains all this a great detail. I wonder if we're going to see that kind of transformation again from you know, smarter liberals in the academy, and whether
we're going to see especially Jewish students of whatever disposition turned conservative. Also that I've got I've got a few colleagues that I've talked to who have not just at Berkeley, other schools, who've told me, because of all this, they will not be voting for Biden this time. They're not going to give any money to Biden. They hated Trump in the last two elections, but they're going to vote for Trump. I was, I was actually flabbergasted by
this. I do think John's what John always accuses our arguments of being this sort of the cut rate Marxism. I think that's there is a lot to that in this particular case, when you look at I mean, never mind the fact that we know marxis Marx was an anti semi so, but what the whole narrative forgive me again around free speech is no longer a free speech for all. Free speech as a principle absolute free speech. It's free speech
for the oppressed, but not the oppressor. And when Jews became identified not with the oppressed but with the oppressor, they no longer have they a They no longer have the right to free speech. I mean, we've even seen instances where police will shut earlier in this whole debacle, police would shut down Jews speaking out against the pro Palestinians or pro Israel getting shut down. But also just this idea that that what those dumb pro Palestinian idiots are out there
screaming it makes no sense of free speech. It's about power, and it's about power of the oppressed against the oppressor. And that's the only thing that they can that they have to bring to bear against against Israel, because if they actually understood and even one fact about the situation, they couldn't say any of the nonsense that they say. Right So, so I think that as more and more Jews realize that they bought into the leftist nonsense and that whole
oppressor oppressed dynamic, Marxist dynamic has now turned against them. I think I think you're right. I think more and more Jews will have to become conservative. John has to go because he's that's okay. We'll carry on without you, John, any other people depended on me showing up. We will will talk about you behind your back and truth to our listeners why you're wrong about it. As I tell people, Lucretia always goes to stab you in the
front. Don't worry exactly. I never stabbed people in the back. I never say anything that I wouldn't say to their face. Ever. There have fun, John, I see you next week. Yeah, well, let's see. I mean, where to go with all that? I mean, you know, we'll just see. But I think that this is another cataclysmic moment that takes a while to play out, right, I mean that I did think that's true. We'll see a little bit of a respite because you know, it's the end of the school year and some of this will die
down. But but talking today with the person who's in charge of incident command on my university and one of the things that they are doing to because we
have convocations and graduation next week. One of the things that they are doing this is very interesting, I think, to forestall any kind of violence or disruption to these you know, important ceremonies is they've they've set up a security perimeter where they're stopping students or others from bringing in paces of water plywood, which he showed me pictures of the protests that that they put down on Tuesday
of this week, and somebody had brought in a couch. A couch, I mean, and you know, just so obviously these things are being funded. They're not grassroots operations by any stretch of the imagination, and they're obviously being probably funded by Iran and or George Soros and some combination of other awful groups. But but how interesting that that you that these protests, these these idiot students are so pathetic that they can't make it through a protest without cases
of bottled water, alkaline bottled water and vegan burritos. You know, sorry, I'm big, but I know not you I know, interesting that it's not as if these really are grassroots uprisings of students who are somehow all of a sudden in solidarity with Gaza. You know, I'm sure a few of them are, you know, the result of the brainwashing by their professors. But you know it's I do think it will be a watershed moment, Steve. We'll see it will take it day out, right, I mean it.
But also I mean, yeah, things may go. I mean clearly, these cowardly administrators are playing for time and saying, gosh, the school year is almost over. If we can just get through graduation in the next two weeks, it'll all die down and things will calm down and we can go back to normal and we don't have to do anything serious, right, we don't have to discipline anybody, or if you're like the Columbia professors sent out the email to his students saying, oh, you've all been through so
much. I'm not going to hold the final. I'm going to just give you all a's in the class. Right, Yeah, that's right. That's gonna be good for Columbia's reputation. Do you remember what John said last week Babylon B He said, any Asian kid who is relegated to Columbia would be an embarrassment to his family. But I'm not so sure by the way, that that that that hope on the part of the coward administrators is right.
So I meaning what, well, I don't know if we mentioned this, but you know, their little detail came out the evening of Iran's sort of slow motion, slow cruise missile attack on Israel, and the news items said, oh, several groups at planning meetings for the Democratic Invention in Chicago broke out into cheers that news of the Irani attack on Israel, and what the people's takeaway was, Oh, it shows that the people protesting are not anti
war at all, they're anti Israel. And I thought, wait a minute, they're having planning meetings to disrupt the Democratic Convention in August. I think that now, of course, you know, the people who actually ride in sixty eight, they're all, you know, eighty something years old now, they're still alive at all. But I think there's the sort of historical legend of that, and I think there's going to be a real attempt to recreate
that. I think, by the way, it's unlickly to succeed, only because I know a little about this that convention security now is so much more intense than it was in the sixties. The perimeters are much farther away from the halls and the hotels. That doesn't mean they won't cause some action and rowdiness, mostly probably outside the perimeters. Right, Yeah, that's right.
And I think the Democrats are going to work very hard with their media friends to not televise it and not report on it very much, and then they will have discipline inside the hall to not call attention to it. I mean, one of the things that happened in sixty eight is the riot outside cost
almost literally a riot inside. And okay, but then I also think that if Israel opens a second front against Hesbola, which is thought to be on the way when they finally get done with Gaza or something else will touch it off. And again the cycle of protests in the sixties, there were several phases to it and it didn't take you know, once the energies have been released, it doesn't take much of a spark to set it back up again.
And you know I do, by the way, see people on the left saying this is not going to end until we have a repeat of Kent State. That's where you know, young National Guard troops, many of them the same age as the protesters, probably not well trained in that circumstance they're in. It's still, by the way, unclear whether there was an order to fire or somebody panicked, but you know, four kids got shot.
And by the way, there were opinion polls taken after that, and you know, majority of Americans sided with the National Guard, just as the overwhelming majority right now of Americans are disgust at what's going on on campus and Democrats can't seem to figure this out. I mean, if ever there was an easy sister soldier moment of legend of the Clinton years, it's right now and
they can't do it. They can't do it. But you know what music and Republicans, which leads to me to my first Babylon b Well wait a minute, Well all right now, let's linger on that for a minute. I mean, I won't get into the substance of it. But you know, the one person who knew how to exploit this was Governor Reagan. And you know, both of my books were actually the first volume has a lot
of detail about the way he would. First of all, just the one thing I'll mention only he did call out the National Guard at Berkeley in nineteen seventy and had the helicopter spray an air raid on students. He had the helicopter spray tear gas versus drub everybody out their minds. But he also never the university shut tear guests and rubber bullets. All this. Well, good for you guys, and I think maybe other places have done this too.
But the other thing is is Reagan never for a moment humored any of the pretensions of the protesters. Everybody else will saying, well, they're Idealistsy're just misguided. Gregan said, no, there are a bunch of punk idiots. Yep, you know, full stop. He said it more eloquently than that. But look, I mean, there's all I'm going to say is this, and then you can do your headlines and we'll get im just gonna say, Steve, a whole bunch of clips of that were all over Twitter,
black and white of that right. Well, And of course Reagan used his wit, which Trump could do too. I think, by the way, I'll say that, well, you know, Reagan used to say, uh, well, the hippie say make love not war. Doesn't look to me like they're capable of much of either one, right, he would mock them. And you know, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed I owned a laundromat in Berkeley. Ro was great stuff, right, So he would be tough and angry and also funny and ridiculing and mocking. Who is
better at that combo than Trump? So remember last thing, I'll say, Sorry, I'm going on along here. Remember in Charlottesville when he said the next day when he's both find people on both sides, comment was wrenched from contract context and light about he said, don't think they're going to stop Roberty Lee's statue. They're going to go after Jefferson Washington next, right, And some reports said, oh no, that would never happen, and Trump said,
excuse me, they were slaveholders. You're not paying attention, are you? Well guess what that did happen in twenty twenty in the George Floyd riots. And then coming to is you may have seen the picture where the statue of George Washington on the Columbia campus. It wasn't toppled, but it was defaced and wrapped up in cloth and painted, you know stuff, and you know, obscured. And my joke about it is what these students think they're
Christo. You know that crazy artists would wrap castles and things. I think that ought to be a Trump ad. I think you got to put that up and saying I told you so, and this is crazy stuff, and they're they're whole, they're wholly owned by Joe Biden the Democratic Party, which is true. And I think you hit a lot of mileage with that. It's sure worked for Nixon and for Reagan in the late sixties and thirty seventies.
So and I do say, go ahead, they will. But again, Republicans in Congress man oh man, Sorry, I actually don't see the cleverness to that, but maybe maybe it'll play out differently to the to the legislation, make it all right that whatever it's called, right, Yeah, okay, So, which leads me again you can you can still on anything, but I was I wanted to get this one out there. Moments from victory against Democrats, Republicans decided to start attacking First Amendment is headline or yes,
yes it is, but it's really not satire. Yeah yeah, so this one, this one is satire but still funny. Uh. Immigration crisis ended as frat boys deployed to guard southern border. Yes, and Congressional Democrats demand forty billion for UCLA protest border security. Did you see what they put? I mean, it's just amazing to me. And then we didn't get
to this story. Fine, you heard about the whistleblower who, the healthy, young whistleblower ended up dying of natural causes at fort whistleblower right sadly announces whistleblowers shot self and back while falling off skyscraper directly into wood chipper while wearing cement shoes. Yeah. The other joke I heard someone say, is this Hillary Clinton on the board of Boeing or something like that. You know it's no, that's just very weird. Well, a couple of little ones.
History repeats itself as Communists run out of food and they show our friends slut ski kind Lalla ended with this tragedy. AOC announces she was killed during New York PD raid at Columbia and is dead again, going to be John tonight. Yeah, you get to do the whole thing, So always drink your lafroug neat. Let's go Brandon and God saved the Queen Man lips nothing. Nothing makes sense. What's you're talking about? Stay out of the way. Gotta make this creep, don't me. I don't love you. It's hot,
so you you do you that, I'll do me. They'll do you. No love lost, no reson. We've got lessons. We've got to No love loss, no reason, no reason. Ricochet joined the conversation.