Unpacking Court Packing

his right to do that. He violated no law. He was legalistically absolutely correct, but it was a bone head idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body, including the Congress, in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Bone headed. Indeed, this is verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with

Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowls, Senator. I do want to get to the Supreme Court hearings. You've just come from Capitol Hill. But I have to ask you, because you actually know the guy, You've you've served with the guy, what happened to that Joe Biden. I think I find myself agreeing with that. Joe Biden in nineteen eighty three, then the one today I don't know about. Well, look in nineteen eighty three, I mean I was thirteen, and were you even a sparkle in your daddy's eyes? Not

for a number of years after that. Actually that Joe Biden is wandering in Iowa cornfield somewhere, you know. I like that he gave a clear answer on this, and today we're getting a clear answer from the other side of the left. I mean, there are people explicitly advocating for court packing, and Joe Biden he has said that voters don't deserve to have an answer on where he stands on the issue. But this is a significant issue. I mean, this could radically shift the balance of power

in the country. Well, look that that's exactly right. It's not accidental that Biden won't answer this question. It's not accidental that Kamala Harris won't answer this question. I think the reason they wan't answer it is their answer is yes, their hardcore base wants them to pack the court, and I think they recognize that's a really unpopular idea, So they're refusing to answer it, and they pretty much assumed

the press will give them a pass. I mean you mentioned, you know, so Biden was asked a couple of days ago, do the voters deserve to know the answer on your question? And his response was no, the voters don't deserve to know that, Like what, what in the have you ever heard? I mean, that's a bizarre thing for a candidate for president to say, and it's I believe if Biden wins, if there's a Democratic majority in both houses, they will pack the court. I think that's the path we're on.

And I actually think so. We finished the hearing today, the second round of questioning. It was kind of a snooze fest. It went, you know, nine ten hours. It was shorter than yesterday. Yesterday it was about twelve hours. And the interesting news about today as the Democrats surrendered, they just gave up that they have decided. Amy Cony Barrett is going to be confirmed. And you know what, the American people watching her are really impressed. I mean,

this is a remarkable woman. She's an impressive woman. I think the people turning on the TV see her calm, cool, collected. See here sitting there at a table with not a single note in front of her answering the questions, and I think the Democrats realized, Okay, we're getting the crap beat out of us right now, and the word came out essentially runaway. It was striking by this afternoon, and I guess I had my round of questioning right about lunchtime.

Hearing room was almost empty, but there were two Democrats left in the room that they had fled. And I actually started started my questioning by pointing out that they had given up. That the good news is we now know for a fact Judge Barrett is going to be confirmed as Justice Barrett, and I pointed out there were only two Democrats in the room and Dick Durban from Illinois, he just about lost it. He exploded. He jumped in and interrupted me, which rarely happens at hearings. I mean,

you don't see that very often. And he jumped in and he said, well, well there's a pandemic. And I couldn't help but responding, well, yeah, that's true, there is a pandemic. But yesterday you were all here and you had all the Democrats lined up. Pat Lay he didn't show up, and Kamala Harris. Those are the only two Democrats who didn't show up to the hearing. Everyone else was physically present today. They literally they would show up

for their little round of questioning, but nobody. There were really no fireworks, and I think they realize they can't stop it. They've got to put on enough of a show that their hardcore activists aren't mad at them, but it is clear they're dialing it in. Every time they try to throw a fastball at her, she just smiles, and she she knows the substance a lot better than they do, and she's not going down like the traps they tried to lay. She's not falling into. But part

of I think they're objective. At the beginning of the hearing was to lay the predicate that the nomination and the confirmation itself is fundamentally illegitimate, because that's the predicate. Their endgame is court packing in a few months. So I think they're willing to say, Okay, we lose now. They think they're going to win a couple of weeks. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. I don't know who wins on election day, but they think they're to be

in power. And I think their answer next year is packed the court. I don't know if they plan to go to eleven or thirteen. But one of the interesting things, so, what does packing the court mean? What does that term mean. It's a term that everyone is understood for a hundred years. It is expanding the number of justices in order to put your political supporters on there. So it's changing the number of justices in the court. Yea. So a couple

interesting things on this number. One, the number of justices in the court is not specified the constitution. Well, this is something that the left wingers have been bringing up. They say, look, there's no constitutional requirement that it be nine judges. So come on, we've changed the number of judges before. What's the big deal. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. And it has varied anywhere from

five justices to as many as ten. And for the first one hundred years or so of our country's history, the number of justices largely followed the number of Court of appeals circuits there were. The idea was each Supreme Court justice was the circuit justice for that particular court of appeal. So as Congress added another court of appeals, they added another justice. It's been at nine though for one hundred and fifty years, so really kind of Civil

War era forward. It hasn't moved, and nine has been steady. Now they're thirteen courts of appeals, but there's still only

nine justices. It's been steady. And the most famous instance of court packing as the one Joe Biden was talking about in the clip we played a few minutes ago, which is FDR so FDR four termed dominant Democratic President, Great Depression, pushing, trying to push through his new deal, and he was finding different components of the new deal struck down by the Supreme Court, and he was really frustrated. He was really angry, and he proposed to pack the court.

His plan was for each justice over a certain age, I forget if it was seventy or seventy five, I think it's seventy or thereabout, but that there would be a new justice appointed, so you wouldn't kick the old ones off. You'd just appoint a new one for all the old guys. And that would have immediately taken the court up to I think fifteen. And it was interesting. Number one, the Democratic Congress, there were big Democratic majorities of both houses. They said, this is too much. We're

not going that far. We're not going to do it now history and so they resisted. They said it would destroy the independence. They actually agreed with what Joe Biden just said, that it would destroy the independence of the court, it would politicize the court. One interesting thing about that fight, though, is actually history in many ways FDR may have won

that fight anyway. So at least the good news here is though FDR try to stack the courts and pack the churts rather, and he loses, So then the issue goes away for a while. Right, Well, yes, and no, um, he lost the fight to pack the court. But but actually history shows in many ways he won the political fight.

So there had been five justices who were striking down multiple New Deal programs, and when he introduced the court packing legislation, one of those justices, a justice named Owen Roberts, switched his vote and it's it's referred to as the switch in time that saved nine because he had Justice

Roberts had been voting with four other justices. The four others were known as the four Horsemen, which was not meant to be a compliment, and and Roberts switched his vote in nineteen thirty seven in a case that upheld the minimum wage laws from the state of Washington State. And there's some dispute among historians about whether Robert switched his vote because of the court packing plan or not, but whether he did or not, before the plan, there

were five justices ruling regularly against FDR. Once FDR launched a full on assault on the court, it switched and they began rolling over for a whole lot more so, either way, the independence of the Court was I think substantially jeopardized even by the proposal of court packing, and I think that lesson has a lot of powerful significance

for where we are today. I think part of the reason Democrats are threatening court packing is a. I think they mean it and they'll do it, But B I think they're also perfectly happy to try to intimidate the

current justices. You know, we've seen John Roberts flipping his votes in a bunch of cases lately in voting with the liberals, and and in fact, Sheldon Whitehouse, a colleague of mine on the Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in in a gun control case, basically threatening the Court that if they didn't do what he wanted, they would have to. I think the phrase he used was restructure the court, but it was a threat of

court packing. And what's interesting, and part of the reason I believe that this threat is real, this is not you know, there's some folks in the media, some folks who think, gosh, they really wouldn't do that. That seems really radical. The biggest indication to me that they really mean it is there is a concerted effort among Democrats and the media to redefine what it means to pack the court, right right. So you know, we've talked about

before the incredible message discipline that Democrats have. About a week ago, the talking point went out that every Democrat began repeating, which is, well, the Republicans have been packing the court for four years. Well, that's not actually what packing the court means. Filling vacancies when there's a vacancy, appointing a justice, confirming the justice. That's not packing the court. Packing the court is expanding the number of justices to

put your cronies on there. It's a very different thing, and they're trying to You're seeing the media exercise this theme, and I think it's all set up to have it be the predicate for next year to say, well, judge Barrett was illegitimate. Trump packed the court already, so we just need to actually ap that. They recently wrote an

article where they said to depoliticize the court. So so you want to talk about an Orwellian term packing the court, adding new left injustices and growing it beyond nine to I don't know, eleven thirteen. Wherever they go is, according to the Associated Press, is depoliticizing the court, the AP wrote this week, and it went on to say, which some critics have referred to as packing, Well, no, actually everybody referred to it as packing. Of course, the term

court packing is much older than the term depoliticizing. So what you're telling me, because I was just about to celebrate when you told me there was a Democrat surrender on Amy Coney Barrett today, I thought, oh gosh, this is good news. We finally got to win here. But what you're suggesting is this may have been a tactical surrender. They've got no dirt on Barrett. They're not going to

stop this nomination. It would maybe hurt them if they did, but they are going to use the confirmation of Judge Barrett as another excuse for court packing, which you know we played it earlier. Joe Biden in the nineteen eighties may have said that he thought it a bone headed scheme. But don't forget Joe Biden has changed his views one hundred eighty degrees multiple times over the course of his career.

You saw this actually during the George HW. Bush administration, where he said it would be a terrible idea to nominate and confirm a judge, a Supreme Court justice in an election year. Then fast forward to twenty sixteen, he said, it is absolutely essential that we nominate and confirm a Supreme Court justice in an election year. Fast forward to twenty twenty. He's flipped on this again. So I see there's no reason not to suspect something similar would hold

for the question of court packing. Well, it's not just Joe Biden that's changes views. Practically every Democrat has. I read a number of these statements today at the questioning Pat Lahey in twenty seventeen. Quote, the Judiciary Committee once stood against a court packing scheme that would have eroded

judicial independence. That was a proud moment. Dick Blumenthal twenty eighteen, commenting on the nineteen thirty seven Judiciary Committee statement that it is a measure which we should be which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America. That was two years ago. Dick Durban twenty eighteen.

Seventy five years ago, we went through this, and I think the Congress was correct in stopping this popular president named Franklin Roosevelt from that idea. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg in twenty nineteen, just last year, here's what Justice Ginsburg said. She said, if anything would make the Court look partisan, it would be that one side saying we're in power,

we're going to enlarge the number of judges. Notice she knows what packing is, so that we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to. And she went on to say nine seems to be a good number. It's been that way for a long time. I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court. They all agreed with this until they got very unhappy with the president's judicial

nominations for the vacancies. That he had, and at this point, I think it is all about power, and it's all about you know, we talked yesterday in the podcast about I went through the litany of constitutional rights that are hanging in the balance, that are one vote away, a lot, all the different rights that I talk about in my book one vote away, religious liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment, and I explained in the hearing how every one of

those rights was hanging in the balance. You know what's amazing, Michael, both yesterday and today, not a single Democrat disagreed with me, Not a single one of them argued on the merits, not a single one of them made the case for what their radical justices actually want to do taking away those constitutional liberties. Instead, this is about brute power. I

think they recognize they can't stop it now. So their plan and their hope is they win in November and then they use brute power to just grow the court and force in radicals who will mandate their view of policy from the court. Well, I want to ask you about one particular example of the exercise of brute power, which today frankly completely overshadowed the confirmation hearings. That was the matter of big tech censoring. A new report just

came out from the New York Post. It showed emails between Hunter Biden and one of his oligarch pals over in Ukraine. We've talked at length on this podcast about the shady business connections between Hunter Biden and these Ukraine energy companies and oligarchs. An email suggesting that Hunter Biden not only discussed this issue with Joe Biden, but actually introduced the Ukrainian oligarch to Joe Biden. This is very explosive stuff during a presidential campaign. Big tech platforms Facebook

and Twitter censored the New York Post report. They offered no evidence to the contrary, They had no reason to suggest that this was not real. They simply said this could be damaging information, damaging to whom, damaging of course, to the Biden campaign. And the craziest part of it all is it worked. It didn't work to stop the conversation, but it worked to stop the spread of this particular link throughout big tech. I you know, we've criticized big

tech on this show before. I did not know that those companies would take election interference to this kind of a dangerous extent. I don't know if this New York Post story is true or not, but it was really quite stunning. This afternoon. Both Twitter and Facebook just decided

we're going to block this story. And by the way, so they would block it a if you tweeted it, if you tweeted it, if I tweeted it, and you linked to the story, if you tried to click on the link, you'd get a warning on Twitter that that this link has content that may be harmful. Well maybe

harmful to Joe Biden's political prospects, but it's not. And not only that they did something which which I don't recall seeing them have the cajoness to do before that being a Cuban term, I'll look it up, which is they banned the New York Post itself, so the New York Post published or the Post was, and the Post has one of the largest circulations of any newspaper in the country. I mean, this is not you know, Bob's newsletter. This is the New York frigging Post. And they blocked

the Post from tweeting out their own story. And mind you, neither Twitter or Facebook say it's false. Neither of them have. They don't have any evidence that it's inaccurate. They simply made the unaccountable decision, the arrogant decision. We will not allow this to be shared discussed, and you, the press, can't even put out your own stories. And it was so brazen Senator staffer in communications at Facebook who made this decision to suppress the information. He ended up tweeting

about it. I looked up his bio. Do you know what his jobs were before he started working at Facebook. He worked for Democratic political action committees, He worked for Democratic elected politicians. He is a Democrat operative at a supposedly neutral tech platform, using that neutral tech platform to suppress damaging information about Democrats mere weeks to an election.

How can we permit that to continue? So he has on his Twitter bio that he is an alum of California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's office, So not just any Democrat, but one of the most partisan left wing Democrats to ever serve. And he's also an alama of the d Triple See, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It is literally their political arm who exists for one purpose to elect Democratic members of Congress. That's the Facebook spokesperson

explaining their decision. We're going to silence that nothing to see here. So I sent today letters to the CEOs of both Facebook and Twitter as chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting out a series of questions asking them who made the decision, what was the basis for it? What other news sites you have you blocked and silenced? Have you ever blocked the New York Times or even blocked the Washington Post? Have you ever

blocked anything damaging and Donald Trump? Or is it only stories that you think are damaging of Joe Biden that you're going to block? And what's interesting about this? You said a minute ago, Well, you know they were able to succeed in this. I actually think they screwed up. I think their arrogance is their pitfall, because this is now a ten times bigger story because they blocked it. Then if they just ignored it, if they'd let people

tweet about it. Look, one of the challenges and we find this, you know, when we did the podcasts talking about James Komi and you know, all the Russia Gate and everything, people are tired of it. They're just there, all the names and Brennan and Coomy, and it's complicated and people want to tune it out and it's noise, and I get it. I look, I do this for a living, and it's hard to follow all this stuff. I think this story could very easily have faded into

that kind of mist of noise. I'm not sure what Bisma is anymore, a Ukraine or Biden whatever, hunter Biden, and I'm not sure it would have gotten a whole lot of attention beyond right wingers who are already are going to vote for Trump. But I'm not sure it would have gotten a lot of attention beyond that except for Twitter and Facebook. Sensory it where you're sitting there

going okay. If they can block a major newspaper a couple of weeks before presidential election publishing what purports to be evidence of corruption at the very highest level of politics, that's a big, frigate deal, and I think it actually backfired on them. And it's frankly that itself is a bigger story, perhaps even than Joe Biden's potentially corrupt dealings

with Ukraine. The idea that a few oligarchs in Silicon Valley are now going to control effectively the public sphere, the control of information around the Internet, interfering in an election in a way that the Russians could only have dreamed of. They would never have been able to interfere to that regard. Is there something that we can do? I mean, obviously the Democrats control the House, the Republicans have the Senate and the White House for now, hopefully

that continues. Is there anything that we can do or are we basically at the whims of these Silicon Valley masters of the universe. So there's a lot we can do. As you know, I've been leading the charge on this for several years. The most of the action that can

be done on this is in the executive branch. So I have met and talked with on this topic, President Trump, Vice President Pence, the White House Chief of Staff, the White House Council, Attorney General Bill Barr, the Deputy Attorney General, Sistant Attorney General for the Anti Trust Division, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. I've urged all of them to use the enforcement power of the executive branch. Look, in Congress, we don't have the ability to impanel grand jury.

We don't have the ability to bring indictments. The authority to enforce the law is with the executive branch, and so I've shared multiple hearings, I shine a light on it, but at the end of the day, the executive has to move. And one of the challenges at DJ is it tends to be very siloed, where the Antitrust Division thinks about anti trust issues, the Civil Division thinks about civil issues, and each little silo. This challenge of tech censorship is a new creature and it doesn't fit neatly

into any of those silos. And so I've been I've had multiple conversations with bar about it. I hope DOJ is willing to press forward, but I'm frustrated. We're four years into it, and I know the President's frustrated with it. I've had multiple conversations with him. I also think Section two thirty, the special immunity from my ability that Congress has given big tech, is plainly failing. That that was based on the notion that these big tech entities would

be neutral public flora. They're not anymore. They're not pretending. Just today alone, I think obliterated that pretense. There is no way that you can argue when you are interfering weeks before an election for one political party over another there is no way that you can argue that you are a neutral tech platform. Yeah, although I will say it all comes down to the election, because if if, if we start next year with Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi,

they're not going to do a damn thing about big tech. Huh. They want big tech to censor your speech. So not only are they going to go after your speech through the Supreme Court, but they're also going to go after your speech through a big tech You know, we had a couple of years ago Mark Zuckerberg testify before Judiciary, Can and Commerce Committee, and it was this monstrosity of a joint committee meeting where there were forty some odd Senators and it was it was striking in that virtually

every senator, Democrat and Republican was critical of Zuckerberg and big tech. And it should have gotten the nervous weight. Why is everyone pissed at us? This is dangerous. But if you listen to what they were saying, the two sides were pissed for very different reasons. Republicans, at least some of the Republicans, were upset at the censorship, at the abuse of power, at the silencing of dissenting views. The Democrats were upset that they didn't censor more. The

Democrats were upset on the other side. And basically, if I were to sum up the democrats argument at that hearing, it was, how the hell did you let Donald Trump win? How could you possibly let these crazy conservatives communicate on your platform? Next time? Censor more? That's what the Democrats want. So if they win, there's not going to be any DJ enforcement. There's not going to be any enforcement of law.

If the Democrats win, Big tech is unchecked and it is the oligarch's running things until another election changes things. And so that's one of many reasons why I hope we have a good election and Trump gets reelected, because we need to address this is the biggest concentration of power in the world of the median communication that the world has ever seen. That's right, and it's an important point you make that the election is the key here. The twenty sixteen election is the impetus for so much

of this censorship. Now, this new censorship is coming down to the twenty twenty election. If we want to control our public sphere again, our public square again, we're going to have to focus on those elections as well. Before I let you go, Senator, I know you've worked now what a twelve or fourteen hour day? But before I let you go, I have to get to the mail back.

There's one question in particular that popped up that I really want to hear your answer on This question is from Steve Senator Cruz, what did you think of Jim Carrey's portrait of you as a demon entering hell? It was pretty surreal. Um, Look, Jim Carrey is a funny guy. I love his movies. You know, Mask was hysterical. What is the one where he plays the new newscaster becomes god for for a period of Yes, Bruce Almighty, Bruce Almighty, I mean Bruce Almighty is side splittingly funny. He's a

talented guy. He's gone hard, hard lefty, and he's actually a pretty talented artist. He paints, but he paints the sort of hard lefty, nasty. So he actually, back when I was in my reelection campaign against Beto, he did a painting of me that was really horrible, attacking. So this is the second time he's painted me, which is very odd that Jim Carrey is like So this this second one, I'm like, bright red and looked like a

demon out of hell. And actually, I'll tell you I'll answer this question by telling you the story as I had the conversation with Caroline last night. So Caroline is my twelve year old and she is a spirited girl, and she was explaining she said, she said, Dad, I'm really sarcastic. You wouldn't understand it because you're not sarcastic. Like, wait, what do you mean? I'm not sarcastic. I'm a smart alec all the time. Like what, like twelve year old, like,

you're not sarcastic? It actually kind of hurts. And she's like when when have you ever been sarcastic? And then you're just like, okay, all my like, dad, efforts here are not succeeding. And I said, well, all right, I'll give you an example. Caroline. I said, you know Jim Carrey is. She's like, yeah, everyone knows who Jim Carrey is. Of course I do. And I said, well, this week he painted a picture of me as a devil and a demon. She's like, what why would he do that?

So I actually texted her the demon devil thing, and then what I tweeted the picture out and I said, hey, Jim Carrey, can I get a copy this from my office? And it was just kind of you know, I figured embraced it, half fun and she's like, Dad, that's not sarcastic. That's not that's not sarcastic at all. You're she was, if you know how to impress the twelve year old, please tell me my nine year old I can do no wrong. My twelve year old I can do no right.

So so you know, Senator, everybody is a critic, from the twelve year old girls all the way up to former comedic actors who I have to tell you, I agree with you. Jim Carrey's very funny. Me and Myself and Irene is one of my favorite films. I think, though these days Jim Carrey is funnier when he's being serious than when he's in these comedy films. I don't know, that's my view. Look Hiss, Joe Biden and S and L's pretty funny. I mean, he's he's a talented actor.

I just wish he would do a little less politics a little more acting. I will tell Verdict listeners something, so I'm already planning. Don't tell anyone else this, but but on Halloween. I'm going to make his painting my avatar on Twitter. Well, luckily this conversation is just between me, you and I don't know a million or so people, so no one will know. And I look forward to that. That's I'm sure. I'm sure Jim Carrey will be very honored. We've got a question on court packing that actually we

didn't touch on. This is a more more of a tactical question. I guess for Republicans is from Chris. If Democrats win in November and actually do pack the court, do Republicans then respond in kind when they return to power? You know, Democrats grow the court from nine to twelve and then Republicans grow at twelve to fifteen. Who knows? I think we do. I think, of course we do. I think that'd be terrible for the court and terrible for the country. So I don't want to go down

that road. But I think if they go, I think I think whatever happens, it would go to an odd number just so that you have you don't have the possibility of a tie. But if they go to eleven or thirteen, I think we go to fifteen or seventeen, and I think it becomes tit for tat and you end up having the Court as this super legislature with a bunch of politically appointed people, And it's an escalation

that I think would be a terrible idea. Now, by the way, there is a chance that Republicans are too wimpy to do it, that we let democrats pack the court and then when we take control, we like are scared of our own shadow and don't do anything. I'm hopeful we wouldn't do that, because, frankly, if we find ourselves in that picture next year, even though I think they're going to do it, I'm going to fight as

hard as I can to stop it. And then one of the main arguments I planned to do you use is if you do it, will respond in kind, and if you can't even incredibly respond to that, then you might as well just give up, right now, right. It's a sort of political version of peace through strength. You know, if you have strength, that will hopefully encourage your opponents and not to be so aggressive. But I think you're

absolutely right. The idea of unilateral political disarmament is just absolutely mad, and it will only invite more political aggression. It's worth noting that Republicans the first two years of Trump, we had the presidency, we had the Senate, and we had the House. We could have packed the court then. Yeah, we could have expanded it from nine to eleven or thirteen and just immediately stuck on justice. We didn't do that. I mean that, and I would have opposed it. It

would have been and no one even suggested. It was such a bad idea that no one even suggested it. And so the level of escalation, the fact that the Democrats are going down this road, the fact that Joe Biden is saying the voters don't deserve to know his answer. I mean, it's a really scary escalation. And and it's you don't have to look back to ancient his treaty to say Republicans didn't do it. You have to look back two years ago. We didn't do it when we

could have. It was the right thing not to do it then. And I hope we don't find find it happening a few months from now. And it is scary to see even just that redefinition, the normalizing of that idea, as you said earlier, of court packing changing the meaning of the term. You actually just saw this yesterday, as a result of the hearings, Senator Hirono was lambasting Judge

Barrett for using the term sexual preference. She said this, which has been an innocuous term for as long as one can remember, she said, this is offensive, and then over the course of the day everyone seemed to get on board, the media, leftist politicians, even the dictionary online. I think Mariam Webster's changed the definition of sexual preference

to say that it's now an offensive term. That kind of power all in one place is obviously a great threat, and it just shows you what the normalization of a term like court packing could lead us to. So Webster's dictionary in one day, when the Democrats criticize the term sexual preference, they change the dictionary definition the next day. That's a little terrifying. Noah Webster's got to be twirling in his grave right. A final point, that's just kind

of an interesting observation on that sexual preference issue. So both Maizie Horrono and Corey Booker lambasted Judge Barrett for using the phrase sexual preference, which I don't think Judge Barrett meant to convey anything but just an interesting observation. Both Herono and Booker insisted that sexual orientation is immutable, which I thought was actually a fascinating point. I was genuinely not aware that it is a position of the

far left. Immutable means not capable of changing, always constant, never changing. I wasn't aware that the far left maintains that sexual orientation never can change, that it is unalterable, and it's it's an odd position to have when they

simultaneously insist that gender is capable of continuously changing. So I mean, it's and I don't know that that is the position of the left, but both Herono and Booker insisted upon it, and I think it's a vestige of some of the arguments that used to be common between left and right about whether whether sexual orientation, whether being gay, is genetics and or a choice. And so when they

say immutable, what they mean is innate. But innate is different from immutable to say you can never, at any point change your orientation. I just thought it was a fascinating observation about the lack of introspection and the incoherence of the left's views on sexuality. More broadly speaking, well, of course, I mean, just to put it in very simple terms. If a gay man has a homosexual orientation

that can ever change. If he then transitions and identifies as a woman, but his preference or orientation doesn't change, then then is he still he's not a gay man anymore? He can't. You can't have those two things at once. Who knows. It's it's not reasoned, it's it's ideology that they stated as a virtue signal. So when they said immutable, I don't know that they're actually focused on what that word even means. It just was sort of a I sent out a tweet yesterday just being like, this is curious,

this is this is odd. Oh well, I think if they don't know what the word means, they might very likely redefine it very soon. That does seem to be You know, we have much more mail bag to get to. But alas Senator, we are out of time. I can't make you work a thirteen hour work day to day. So we will be back again on verdict. We will save questions until next time. Please, to everybody, do send your questions in. We love reading them, we like bring them up on the show. Thank you, of course to

everyone for subscribing. If you haven't subscribed yet be sure to do it. You can subscribe as you know, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify. You can subscribe on YouTube until the big tech overlords shut us down, but until then we will be on all of those platforms. Thank you as always for listening. Senator, I will see you next time. I am Michael Knowles. This is Verdict

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