Speaking on the Senate floor on January 26, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) decried the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, calling it a "sham" and a "kangaroo court." He said such a trial would be at odds with the impeachment criteria set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Further, Sen. Paul argued that Democrats, who have accused President Trump of inciting an attack on the Capitol building, are much more culpable than Mr. Trump for using inflammatory language. He cited speci...
Jan 29, 2021•12 min•Ep. 50
Addressing a massive "Save America" rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump vigorously disputed that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election. He urged the crowd to "peacefully and patriotically" support the U.S. senators and House members who had pledged to object to accepting disputed electoral votes. Mr. Trump also presented a rundown of voting irregularities in swing states that Mr. Biden claimed by narrow margins. The Trump spee...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 49
President Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural address, considered by many historians to be one of the best inaugural speeches in U.S. history, came five weeks before the end of the U.S. Civil War and six weeks before Mr. Lincoln was assassinated. Portions of this address are etched in stone in the Lincoln Memorial. The recording used on this podcast, by Lincoln impersonator Walter Trumbull, attempts to re-create what the speech likely would have sounded like, as Mr. Lincoln spoke to a large outdo...
Jan 15, 2021•11 min•Ep. 48
Our most-listened-to podcast of 2020 featured this address by President Donald Trump, delivered at South Dakota's 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration on the eve of Independence Day. Mr. Trump honored the four presidents whose images are presented on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Citing the "radical ideology attacking our country," he said "the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Ea...
Jan 01, 2021•44 min•Ep. 47
Our second most-listened-to podcast of 2020 featured a graduation speech by Antonin Scalia, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986 until his death in 2016. This 2015 address, presented at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Md., pokes fun at the platitudes often offered in graduation speeches, such as "follow your star" and "never compromise your principles." Justice Scalia's remarks have been abridged slightly for this podcast. A transcript of this address, under the title...
Dec 31, 2020•20 min
Our third most-listened-to podcast of 2020 featured British-born philosopher Roger Scruton , once hailed as “the most influential conservative thinker since Edmund Burke.” Mr. Scruton died Jan. 12, 2020, at the age of 75. His books include The Meaning of Conservatism (1980, 2001), An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture ( 1998, 2005), and The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (2002). Roger Scruton delivered this address at a lecture-and-discussion event titled "Be...
Dec 30, 2020•19 min
Our fourth most-listened-to podcast of 2020 featured a 1981 graduation speech by President Ronald Reagan. On May 17, 1981, just six weeks after being shot and wounded by a would-be assassin, President Reagan delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "[I hope] that you will always be able to speak of an America that is strong and free," he told the graduates, "to find in your hearts an unbounded pride in this much-loved country, this once and future land, this...
Dec 29, 2020•27 min
This was our 5th most-listened-to podcast of 2020 — a speech by then-Attorney General Bill Barr. The Chinese Communist Party "seeks to...overthrow the rules-based international system and to make the world safe for dictatorship," he warned in an address delivered July 16, 2020. "How the United States responds to this challenge...will determine whether the United States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own destiny or whether the CCP and its autocratic tributaries wil...
Dec 28, 2020•42 min
For more than half a century, Paul Harvey was one of America's most popular radio personalities. Millions of listeners tuned in for his daily mid-day broadcast via ABC Radio, Paul Harvey News and Comment . On his Christmas program each year, Paul Harvey re-told a modern-day parable, "The Man and the Birds." This episode features his re-telling from Dec. 25, 2004. If you have a comment or question about the Notable Speeches podcast, email [email protected] . Merry Christmas...
Dec 24, 2020•8 min•Ep. 46
This episode features an address by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.), recently pardoned by President Donald Trump. Gen. Flynn served briefly as Mr. Trump's National Security Adviser in 2017. He resigned in the wake of allegations that he had held unlawful policy-related discussions with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential transition in late 2016. In this address, at a Dec. 12, 2020, rally in Washington, D.C., Gen. Flynn said the U.S. faces "a historic constitution...
Dec 18, 2020•21 min•Ep. 45
Walter Hooper, an American who spent his life helping preserve and promote the literary legacy of British writer C.S. Lewis, died Dec. 7, 2020, at age 89. In this address from 2007, Mr. Hooper talks about how he met C.S. Lewis and eventually came to manage the writer's literary estate following Lewis's death in 1963. Walter Hooper went on to edit many collections of C.S. Lewis's essays, poems, and letters, and he worked to keep Lewis's writings in print. In 1997, Christianity Today wrote that "H...
Dec 11, 2020•30 min•Ep. 44
With the U.S. presidential election outcome clouded by claims of vote fraud, Republican legislators in several swing states have convened "election integrity" hearings to hear testimony from various witnesses, including members of the legal team. On Nov. 30, 2020, Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani was among those speaking at an unofficial hearing organized by Arizona state legislators. This episode of the Notable Speeches podcast features Mr. Guiliani's opening statement from that hearing, in whic...
Dec 04, 2020•24 min•Season 43Ep. 43
In this Nov. 12, 2020, address, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito said "the COVID crisis has highlighted constitutional fault lines." Speaking to a virtual gathering of the Federalist Society's annual National Lawyers Convention, he reflected on "emerging trends in the assessment of individual rights." In particular, he spoke of a "growing hostility" to First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty and freedom of speech. Samuel Alito has served on the Supreme Court ...
Nov 20, 2020•31 min•Ep. 42
Influential author, philosopher, theologian, Jonathan Sacks died November 7, 2020, at age 72. Baron Sacks, a member of the British House of Lords, served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom (United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth) from 1991-2013. He held degrees from the University of Cambridge and The University of London (King's College). His books include The Politics of Hope (2000) and Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (2020). In 2016, the John Templeton Foun...
Nov 13, 2020•25 min•Ep. 41
In an October 19 speech at Michigan's Hillsdale College, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos urged returning K-12 educational decisions to parents and families via school choice and other initiatives. "We want parents to have the freedom, the choices, and the funds to make the best decisions for their children," she said. "We must...reorder everything about education around what the family wants and what the family needs." Besty DeVos has served as U.S. Education Secretary since early ...
Oct 30, 2020•22 min•Ep. 40
Was it an abuse of presidential power for Donald Trump to ask the president of Ukraine to "look into" potential corruption involving Hunter Biden and Ukrainian oil company Burisma? That was the key issue in President Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year. Burisma hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board in 2014, while his father — Joe Biden — was vice president of the United States and tasked with overseeing U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Speaking in defense of Mr. Trump at the January impeac...
Oct 23, 2020•30 min•Ep. 39
During the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) presented a "civics lesson." "[Somewhere along the way,] we decided to forget what civics are and allow politics to swallow everything," Sasse said in his opening statement. He noted that Democrats on the committee were focusing on political matters unrelated to the confirmation process. "Huge parts of what we're doing in this hearing would be really confusing t...
Oct 16, 2020•14 min•Ep. 38
On Oct. 13, 2016, weeks before scoring one of the biggest political upsets in U.S. history, Donald J. Trump delivered a "closing argument" speech before an enthusiastic crowd in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Republican nominee pledged that, if elected, he would work to "remove from our politics the special interests who have betrayed our workers, our borders, our freedoms, and our sovereign rights as a nation." He also decried what he called a "campaign of destruction" being waged by his Democratic ...
Oct 09, 2020•38 min•Ep. 37
In this address, the U.S. Secretary of State calls on Catholic leaders, as well as other religious leaders, to exercise a "bold moral witness" against religious persecution — especially persecution in China. The secretary spoke at a symposium titled "Advancing and Defending International Religious Freedom through Diplomacy," sponsored by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See. That event was held in Rome on Sept. 30, 2020. Earlier in September, Mr. Pompeo wrote an article for the religious magazine Fi...
Oct 02, 2020•14 min•Ep. 36
The late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (a former U.S. Attorney General) once said, "The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America." In this address, current Attorney General Bill Barr argues that career federal prosecutors must not only be committed to even-handed justice, but they also must be accountable to the attorney general, the president, and ultimately to the voters. He spoke at a Constitution Day event, on Sept. 16, 2020...
Sep 25, 2020•43 min•Ep. 35
The battle against "political correctness" isn't new. In this 1999 address presented at Harvard Law School, actor and social activist Charlton Heston decried political correctness as a kind of "cultural war...in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated." He called on his audience to not "let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism." Mr. Heston also criticized the media company Time/Warner for ...
Sep 18, 2020•22 min•Ep. 34
Many Americans think the American Civil War was solely about slavery, but the cultural, political, and economic dynamics leading to war were multi-faceted. In this address, Donald Livingston, founder of the Abbeville Institute , argues that the historical record undercuts oversimplified explanations and common mischaracterizations. Mr. Livingston also speculates that slavery in the Confederate states likely would have ended even if the South had won the war and become an independent nation...
Sep 11, 2020•26 min•Ep. 33
Voddie Baucham, a native of Los Angeles, is a former pastor and church planter who is now Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. In this address, he warns of a "cultural Marxism" that is driving America by dividing people by race and other forms of identity. While acknowledging the deleterious impact of multi-generational national sins, Mr. Baucham argues that racial resentments can be overcome through the grace of God. His remarks, recorded at a Founders Minis...
Sep 04, 2020•30 min•Ep. 32
In a Senate Floor address on July 30, 2020, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he would not support any Supreme Court nominee who hasn't explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. "How long before we ask our nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States to recognize Roe as the outrage that it is?" he said. " Roe is an illegitimate decision. It has no basis in the Constitution. None . It has no basis in the law." A transcript of Sen. Hawley's remarks is at https://www.thepublic...
Jul 31, 2020•12 min•Ep. 31
The Chinese Communist Party "seeks to...overthrow the rules-based international system and to make the world safe for dictatorship," U.S. Attorney General William Barr warned in this address delivered July 16, 2020. "How the United States responds to this challenge...will determine whether the United States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own destiny or whether the CCP and its autocratic tributaries will control the future," he said. Mr. Barr spoke at Gerald R. For...
Jul 17, 2020•42 min•Ep. 30
This bonus episode features an address by President Donald Trump at South Dakota's 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration. Mr. Trump honored the four presidents whose images are presented on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Citing the "radical ideology attacking our country," he said "the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth.... [O]ur country was founded on Judeo-Christian principle...
Jul 04, 2020•44 min•Ep. 29
One day after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial decision in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County (and companion cases Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. EEOC and Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda ), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) denounced the decision during a speech on the Senate floor. "If you can invoke textualism and originalism in order to reach such a decision...then textualism and originalism and all of those phrases don’t mean much," he said. "[This is] exactly the opposite of wha...
Jun 19, 2020•15 min•Ep. 28
In the wake of protests that swept the nation following the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) delivered this speech on the Senate floor. "Until we heal this divide, we will never, ever have the kind of society we want," Mr. Rubio warned. "The only way forward is to treat each other with the empathy and respect required of a people who have decided to share a nation — and a future." A transcript of his remarks is at https://www.thepublicdiscours...
Jun 12, 2020•13 min•Ep. 27
On May 17, 1981, just six weeks after being shot and wounded by a would-be assassin, President Ronald Reagan delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "[I hope] that you will always be able to speak of an America that is strong and free," he told the graduates, "to find in your hearts an unbounded pride in this much-loved country, this once and future land, this bright and hopeful nation whose generous spirit and great ideals the world still honors." You can ...
May 29, 2020•27 min•Ep. 26
Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington delivered this brief speech in May 2015 at Dillard University in New Orleans. Mr. Washington, a native of Mount Vernon, New York, holds a degree in theater (1977) from Fordham University in New York City. He also studied at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Denzel Washington won Oscars for his performances in Glory (Best Supporting Actor – 1989) and Training Day (Best Actor – 2001). His remarks have been abridged slightly for ...
May 22, 2020•11 min•Ep. 25
