The Armstrong and getting show very sure. I'm sorry as we await for the records from the National Archives. Are you absolutely certain? Are you absolutely positive there is no
record of any complaint by terror read against you. I am absolutely positive that no one that I'm aware of ever has been made aware of any complaint, a formal complaint made by or a complaint by terror read against me at the time this allegedly happened twenty seven years ago, or until the I announced for Prett well, I was a guess it was in April or May this year. So that's from Joe Biden this morning. Now he did it. At some point he opened with the unequivocally stated that
that's never happened. He never u raped or whatever you want to call it, this woman terror read. I said to Sean, though, we might as well play the embarrassing Biden clip, and Sean said, Sean said, You're gonna have to be more specific, but um, I picked out the one where he sounded the worst, but mostly it was fine. It was Joe Biden saying, no, I never did this. Uh, I didn't do anything like this. I've never done anything like this. There's no complaint blah, blah blah, and we're
thinking it's over. Lany j h N is the David and Diane Stiffy Research Fellow to over Institution Director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University, and Jones is now long here. How are you, sir? I am fine. How are you? Gentlemen? We're We're great, you know, all things considered. So do you think the Joe Biden sexual assault thing
is more or less over? Um? You know? I I don't know, And I say I don't know because the Democratic Party and where it is now, uh, it's very different than where the Democratic Party was when Joe Biden spent most of his time in politics. And what I mean by that is the elements of the far left that have essentially occupied the party. And we saw this during during the presidential primary. I think we're going to
continue to push Biden. They're going to continue to push him on this, and while uther ordinary circumstances, an interview like that would have would have kind of lanced the boil. I'm just not so sure that folks are going to be willing to let go of this at this point. And this is just one of those issues. It's really hard. I mean, how do you square what he said with the way that he treated, for example, Brett Kavanaugh during
during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. I think, I think these are questions that are going to continue, and I'm just not sure that that interview today did it well. I get those a questions from the right because I do still have those questions. The way you wanted to change college campuses, the way you went after Kavanaugh, I need more explanation for how that squares with this. But in terms of the left, what would the left push him to do? I mean, what else can he do well?
I I think you know, you saw this with the Washington Post editorial board saying he ought to release his pay ferms, make make them completely open. The ones that are that are that are held at the University of Delaware. Um, I think more questions will arise. There's some dispute, for example, over whether, in fact the National Archives is the place where a complaint from his Senate time would be would
be held. I think that's that's a question. Yeah, he said no personnel stuff would be in those archives that people are demanding opening, so there's just no point. Yeah. But but you know, I think that's not going to be satisfactory to some, you know, particularly and hit who are the thing on the left comes to play because I think on the left, you know, there there are some who are agitating and saying, look, you know, is
there more there? We cannot have a nominee of our party who the nominally Democratic party, that is, who who is tainted by this kind of thing, and they want to know more. Now that may just be a way of them trying to get Biden out, which is highly highly probable now. But my point is simply that I just think that that the agitation among some core that the left is going to continue to dog his campaign.
So yeah, I'm reminded of the quote from Orwell that we more or less started the show with this morning, in which he's talking about the the reason you acquire powers for power. Power is the goal, and if the AOC crowd can get rid of the last vestige of the old moderate Democrat crowd, they don't care if they lose to Trump in the doing of that, in the same way that like your dispatch anti Trump Republicans, they're more than willing to lose to Biden to get rid
of Trump. So anyway, oh a. Speaking of the election and parties and the rest of it. As a libertarian leaning fellow, I was fairly excited to see Justin Amash, a non crackpot mostly get into the race. What do we know about him? What do you think of the dynamics of that if if indeed he doesn't, I think he will. Yeah, you know, this is a tough one. I've kind of heard it argued both ways that his presence hurts Biden and his presence hurts Trump. I've kind
of heard it both ways. I mean, look, I think our political them is better off when we have people who fill parts of of lanes or parts of people's political interests that wouldn't be filled otherwise. And I do think that there are a number of people who are concerned on the right about how the Republican Party seems increasingly comfortable embracing big government, how it's increasingly comfortable embracing lots of spending, how it's increasingly comfortable embracing the role
of the nanny state in in policing people's lives. And I think that Amash presents an alternative to them now for the left. Yeah, so you you just explained the part to me, that makes the most sense. So that damages a Republican candidate because he's small government. But I I have heard also the arguments that it hurts Biden more.
Please explain that to me. I don't get it at all. Well, I think I think that the notion there is that you've got this this uh, this this sort of group of voters who are they're just uncomfortable with Biden for whatever reason, but they can't vote for Trump because they really don't like Trump, so they need to put their votes somewhere else, So they're gonna put it with Justin Amash that basically he's a placeholder for whatever it is they don't like about about about Joe Biden and they
don't like about Donald Trump. I don't think that's a very big percentage of people to to sort of betray my my my true feeling on this. I don't think there's a ton of people who would vote that way. But the idea again is just do you have an alternative to vote for who's not you know, you just you really don't like Joe Biden for whatever reason, and you can't bring yourself to vote for Trump, and then you vote for someone like Amash, who has been you know,
principled on on a number of different things. Uh. And so you know that's where you that's where you put your vote. Hey, Jack, do you mind if we do a minute. I know we've been talking about this a lot, but it's always great to talk to Lani Chan of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and get your point of view. Alan he let's talk a little bit about civil liberties in the COVID response. What's your take on what's happening
these days? Well, people are understandably uncomfortable with the idea, for example, of tech companies like you know, Apple and Facebook having more control over personal data that could be used at some point down the road for for for the gain of those companies. It'll be one thing if you said, look, we're going to use the data to gelocate people to ensure we're not spreading coronavirus. That's one thing. But I think people are are nervous because the tech
companies in particular have been shown to not be trustworthy. Well, what about the in the limited time we have and I'm sorry to interrupt, but what about the mass closures of so many businesses and the rationale going from flattening the curve to just eliminating cases if we can. Yeah, just last night you had Southern California say no, we make our own decisions in our county, not the governor. Yeah. I mean to be clear that the goal post keeps
shifting on this. The reason why we were sheltering in place to flatten the curve was precisely because we didn't want to overburden our health care system. It's clear our healthcare system is not going to be overbur so now that we've achieved that goal, we do need to responsibly reopen the economy. We we cannot be out there. I've heard people argue, but what we need to do is we need to save every life possible. That that is
not the goal of public policy in this case. It should not be the goal because it's unachievable fundamentally, we we we have to realize that. By the way, there's a ton of other problems with closing the economy and keeping it closed. People's livelihood, of people's health that's affected too. Yeah,
that's the point we've been trying to make. And it was funny, strange I read this allegedly great peace in Politico, in which the guide did not even acknowledge that a crushed economy will cost lives maybe half as many lives as the COVID, maybe as many, maybe three times as many. So we're not trading lives for money. We're trading lives
for money and lives. Yeah, and and and that's one thing, by the way, these epidemiological models they never account for They don't account for the fact that people are sheltering in place, which means rates of obesity and rates of other diseases are going to rise. That elective procedures have been canceled, which means cancer diagnoses have been missed. There's all sorts of things. And I'm not saying that that the number of those people overwhelmed the number of people
who would have died from coronavirus. But you've gotta you gotta consider all of that, and public policy has to be balanced. It can't be out of balance. And I fear that right now there's a little bit about a balance in some states, California especially. Well, we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. I hope you're you and yours are healthy. We are, thank you. Thanks lon um I heard another explanation of why they Some people think that Amash getting into the races libertarian
hurts Biden more than Trump. I could get into that if you get next hour. If you don't grab it at Armstrong and Guinea dot com via podcast. If you're like, yeah, I'm kind of mystified by that theory too, so I'd like to hear it. There's another hour of this show. Some people get it very exciting. Armstrong and