A U.S. Supreme Court judge dies — and the left threatens riots if Trump replaces her.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.73978
Summary
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a hero to the left. She was a trailblazer, a feminist, and a feminist judge, but she wasn t the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. That was Sandra Day O'Connor. She wasn't the first Jew on the court, that was Louis Brandeis more than a century ago. And while she was a leftist in some ways, she wasn't a partisan Democrat.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my Rebels. Maybe you've heard the news. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 87-year-old Supreme
00:00:04.380
Court justice in the States, passed away. A strange overreaction from Canadian politicians
00:00:09.640
who I don't think could name a single judgment she wrote, but I think it's a symbol of the power
00:00:15.260
struggle in America, obviously. I'll show you some interesting clips and quotes. Let me invite you
00:00:20.720
to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus because you see what I'm going to let you hear in this
00:00:26.560
podcast. You'll hear lots of clips from confirmations of judges in the States, but I want you to see it.
00:00:33.420
I want you to see some riot scenes, and the way to see it is to get Rebel News Plus, which is the video
00:00:38.300
version of this podcast. You also get videos from Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies every week.
00:00:43.340
They're TV-length shows, too. Just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. I
00:00:49.580
think it's worth every penny. I would say so, but I think a lot of people agree. All right, here's
00:00:54.320
today's podcast. Tonight, a U.S. Supreme Court judge dies, and the left threatens riots if Trump
00:01:15.500
replaces her. It's September 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:19.180
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:24.980
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:29.060
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody
00:01:39.820
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at age 87, was a hero to the left. She was a trailblazer, a woman judge,
00:01:46.220
a feminist judge, but she wasn't the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. That was Sandra Day
00:01:51.740
O'Connor, nominated by Republican Ronald Reagan. She wasn't the first Jew on the court. That
00:01:56.960
was Louis Brandeis more than a century ago. So why was she so beloved by the left? Why did
00:02:03.660
they make movies about her and T-shirts about her? And why did otherwise normal people wear
00:02:09.740
tattoos of her? Well, because she was very left-wing, I suppose. More liberal than left-wing.
00:02:17.020
Justice Ginsburg, how do you feel about San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players
00:02:25.420
who have basically refused to stand for the national anthem?
00:02:31.180
Justice Ginsburg, what do I think? I think it's really dumb of them. Would I arrest them for doing
00:02:37.180
it? No. I think it's dumb and disrespectful. The same, I would have the same answer if you asked me
00:02:46.220
about flag burning. I said, I think it's a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn't lock a person up.
00:02:52.540
And while she was a leftist in some ways, she wasn't a partisan Democrat.
00:02:58.780
Here she dismisses a Democrat idea to pack the court, which would mean the Democrats,
00:03:02.860
if they ever had the power, would take the court, which has nine seats on it and greatly expand it.
00:03:07.420
So they would just appoint a ton of liberals to dilute and water down and swamp the five
00:03:12.940
conservatives who are on the bench right now. I have heard that there are some people
00:03:18.620
on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges.
00:03:27.980
I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the court.
00:03:41.820
who stays on the court past the age of 70, the president would have authority to nominate
00:03:50.060
another justice. If that plan had been effective, the court's number would have swelled immediately from
00:04:00.140
nine to 15. And the president would have six appointments to make.
00:04:07.500
He mentioned before the court appearing partisan. Well, if anything would make the court appear
00:04:19.420
partisan, it would be that one side saying, when we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number
00:04:25.180
of judges. So we will have more people who will vote the way we want them to.
00:04:40.060
not at all in favor of that solution to what I see is
00:04:46.460
a temporary situation. So she was left wing, I think more liberal than left wing. I think the main
00:04:57.420
reason why the left liked her, now that I think about it, she wasn't that left wing. She was a
00:05:03.500
feminist and she was for abortion on demand, as in she was like several other liberal members of the
00:05:09.340
court. I mean, the famous abortion case of Roe v. Wade was back in 1973. She really had nothing to do
00:05:14.380
with that. I think, if I may, what people on the left liked about her was that she was old and that
00:05:24.460
they hoped she would get very old in that her seat would outlast Donald Trump so that a democratic
00:05:32.860
president could replace her, not Trump. That's what they liked about her. Every time she was in the
00:05:38.060
hospital, which was quite frequent, it was news, not just news in itself. I'm not sure how newsy
00:05:43.020
any given Supreme Court judge in the hospital would be. I suppose it's newsy as a cabinet secretary or
00:05:47.900
a senator, but it was that the left was rooting for her to outlive Trump. Elizabeth May, the Canadian
00:05:54.380
Green Party celebrity, framed her death that way, then deleted it as she has deleted so many of her
00:05:59.900
drunk tweets. But it was an issue and she made it an issue. See, in Canada, judges must retire at age
00:06:06.140
75. Same with senators. Now, that's age discrimination, I'm sure. But in Canada,
00:06:10.780
judges and senators are appointed. So there's no natural tool to get rid of judges or senators who
00:06:16.140
aren't that sharp anymore. There's no such limit on MPs because presumably voters could decide if
00:06:21.980
someone is still with it, as indeed many people are into their late 70s and 80s. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
00:06:27.740
was 87 when she passed away. Was she really with it in all those final years? I don't really know.
00:06:34.300
I don't know if we'll ever know. Judges have clerks, usually the brightest law graduates from across the
00:06:39.680
country, the brightest of the brightest who want to work at the Supreme Court. So perhaps they were
00:06:43.940
doing much of the thinking and writing for her. We'll never really know. That happens in Canada,
00:06:48.200
with the clerks. But judges are retired at age 75, no matter what. By staying as long as she could,
00:06:55.640
Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a choice. I mean, she could have retired four years ago and let Barack
00:07:00.180
Obama fill her seat. Four years ago, she was 83. She had been on the court for 23 years back then.
00:07:07.660
Wasn't that enough? There were plenty of Democrats who were worried, who wanted her to step down.
00:07:13.160
I know it's crass, but that's politics, especially court politics. But she just wouldn't leave.
00:07:18.580
And now she has left all of us. And it's absolute and total political war in America. Here's Chuck
00:07:24.240
Schumer, the highly partisan New York Democrat senator. His very first tweet after her death
00:07:29.340
mentioned politics. A few minutes later, some aide probably convinced him to maybe do a tweet that
00:07:34.180
was more human and less political. So he did. There was a rage on the left when she died. I understand
00:07:39.820
mourning someone's life, especially a long and successful and important public life. I bet you
00:07:45.820
a dollar, though, that few Democrats could name a single court ruling she wrote. I mean, seriously,
00:07:53.240
Holy fuck, you guys! I'm driving your car, but I just got a notification that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died!
00:08:01.480
What on earth is that? That's rage that, you know, the duly elected president of the United States
00:08:21.740
will do his job and nominate a judge and that the Senate will vote on that judge's suitability.
00:08:27.000
That's how it's outlined in the U.S. Constitution, except that the president is Trump and the Senate
00:08:31.180
is run by a Republican named Mitch McConnell. And for all his flaws, and there are many, appointing judges,
00:08:36.760
well, he's probably been the best senator on that ever, really. I don't know what else the Senate does
00:08:41.760
these days, but it approves judges, strong conservative judges, vetted by a conservative group called the
00:08:46.780
Federalist Society. Maybe the greatest surprise to the Trump presidency is just how principal
00:08:52.000
Trump's judge picks have been, much more than any other Republican in recent memory, certainly better
00:08:56.780
than either of the Bush presidents. Look at this upset headline in NBC. Oh, they're so mad.
00:09:04.280
McConnell reaches milestone on judges by filling final circuit court vacancy. Trump and McConnell
00:09:09.880
have confirmed more judges at a faster rate than any recent administration other than Jimmy Carter's
00:09:14.740
when the judiciary was greatly expanded. McConnell has confirmed 53 circuit court judges appointed by
00:09:22.500
Trump in three and a half years. Obama confirmed 55 in all eight years of his presidency. For all
00:09:29.240
judges, Trump has now confirmed 200. George W. Bush follows with 197 at this point in his presidency
00:09:35.420
and Bill Clinton with 186. Yeah, and they're not just judges. I mean, Stephen Harper appointed a large
00:09:41.300
number of judges, too, just numerically. He actually appointed eight Supreme Court judges, five of
00:09:46.640
whom are still sitting. You wouldn't know it, though. For whatever reason, Harper just didn't really
00:09:50.800
care. He delegated choosing judges to leftists or reds or globalists or progressives. You really can't
00:09:57.500
tell the difference between that Stephen Harper judge and the Justin Trudeau judge. Maybe there's one
00:10:01.400
exception on the bench. Like I say, who would have expected Trump to be so good? Well, the left knows
00:10:07.480
it, which is why they've gone just nuts. Just crazy. Talking about rioting. Talking about doing bad
00:10:15.820
things that they've never done before, which is puzzling to me. I mean, they impeached Trump. They've
00:10:20.680
been rioting all summer. What exactly would the left add to what they're doing already? And the crazy part
00:10:25.640
is they're demanding that Trump not follow the Constitution, that he not follow the law. If he
00:10:30.540
follows the law, they say they will break the law. Not very compelling either to Trump or to voters.
00:10:35.560
Canadians were getting into it, too, which is really weird. Here's a super gross professor from the University
00:10:40.360
of Waterloo, a professor, a CBC pundit, a Trudeau policy advisor. But of course, those things go
00:10:45.660
together. And he said, burn down the Congress. What? He's an academic. He's a professor. Presumably he's read
00:10:52.380
the U.S. Constitution. He knows it's the president's job to nominate a judge and it's the Senate's job to
00:10:58.460
confirm the judge or not confirm it. And he's calling for people, I don't know, Americans maybe, to riot and commit
00:11:04.540
arson. What's wrong with them? Imagine being a student in his class. Let's say you're a 19-year-old
00:11:10.520
female student going to college and maybe you happen to be a little bit conservative. Maybe
00:11:14.860
even support Trump. Do you dare to open your mouth for fear of being attacked by this raging man
00:11:19.780
or him, I don't know, threatening you with violence? God forbid. What a weirdo. What a stupid professor.
00:11:26.300
I was completely unsurprised to see that someone sent poisonous ricin to the White House and that
00:11:33.360
investigators believe it came from Canada. We don't have the name of the suspect as I read this.
00:11:38.420
Of course, it came from Canada. I mean, our media, led by the CBC, is obsessed with hating Trump.
00:11:44.380
I wonder if they helped radicalize whoever sent the poison. We don't know yet. Anyways, it's so weird.
00:11:50.520
Justin Trudeau, who hates Trump, felt the need to weigh in with not one but two tweets about Ruth
00:11:56.940
Bader Ginsburg, which is odd. He never met her that I know of. Obviously, he couldn't name a thing
00:12:01.260
she ever wrote or ruled on. He just knows she's a Democrat and she's contrary to Trump, so he had
00:12:06.060
to weigh in. I noticed that on that same day, Canada's John Turner, the long-serving MP, cabinet
00:12:12.340
minister, briefly prime minister, passed away. He was a liberal. I'm not. But you must acknowledge the
00:12:17.080
man's public spiritedness and his long service. Trudeau didn't. It fell to Chrystia Freeland to
00:12:22.080
put out a statement about it. Trudeau had lots to say about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It wasn't until
00:12:26.100
about a day later that someone on Trudeau's staff just put something on his Twitter feed.
00:12:30.700
It was so gross. So gross. What's wrong with Trudeau? So what's going to happen? Well, I'm afraid Barack
00:12:38.700
Obama and Joe Biden are going to get their way. And I'm only half joking by that because, of course,
00:12:42.940
they were in the same position exactly four years ago. It was an election year,
00:12:45.920
but there was a vacancy. Obama and Biden tweeted that the Senate had to confirm. They needed the
00:12:53.080
court to work. They wanted the court to work. There was no such thing as waiting till after
00:12:56.780
the election. That's a made-up thing. That's not in the Constitution, they said.
00:13:01.920
I made it absolutely clear that I would go forward with the confirmation process as chairman,
00:13:08.560
even a few months before a presidential election.
00:13:11.660
Yeah, look, that's the rule. President gets to a point. I'm with Obama and Biden. So what we have
00:13:17.180
here is a tantrum in advance, a warning. If Trump nominates and the Senate confirms, there will be
00:13:22.280
riots, which is exactly what the Democrats are telegraphing they will do and will be their reaction
00:13:27.320
if they lose the election 42 days from now. They refuse to accept the rules. They're rigging the
00:13:32.000
rules when they can, but saying quite clearly that if they lose by the rules, they will simply ignore
00:13:36.240
the rules. They're saying that about the vote. Now they're saying it about a nomination of a judge.
00:13:41.860
We saw how insane they were during the last nomination for a judge, Brett Kavanaugh. It's just
00:13:46.940
crazy to even say it, but they literally accused them of being a serial rapist in college. They actually
00:13:52.240
said that Michael Avenatti was the lawyer who dredged up all sorts of witnesses who claimed it,
00:13:56.560
though none of them could actually remember anything nor explain why they waited dozens of years
00:14:01.340
to even mention it. It was a sham. Avenatti, I should tell you, is in prison now for extortion,
00:14:07.480
but that's what the Democrats did. They were literally banging on the doors of the court trying
00:14:11.520
to smash them in. Nancy Pelosi was on TV the other day saying if Trump goes ahead,
00:14:15.340
she might impeach him again. What can you do then? Some have mentioned the possibility if they try to
00:14:20.560
push through a nominee in a lame duck session that you and the House could move to impeach President
00:14:26.900
Trump or Attorney General Barr as a way of stalling and preventing the Senate from acting
00:14:31.900
on this nomination. Well, we have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to
00:14:39.340
discuss right now. Do you get the people that, do you get the feeling these people don't play by the
00:14:44.800
rules? But I'm excited by it. I see the quality of the candidates being bandied about. Trump says
00:14:50.100
he'll appoint a woman. I don't like identity politics, but I don't think he's doing it for that reason.
00:14:54.560
I think he's doing it partly because otherwise there'll be another hundred fake rape claims.
00:14:59.720
You can't really do that to a woman candidate, but they can do other things, mainly call them racist
00:15:03.480
or something even worse, apparently, a Christian. Do you consider yourself an Orthodox Catholic?
00:15:10.360
I am a Catholic, Senator Durbin. The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern.
00:15:20.560
That's Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by Trump three years ago to serve on the Seventh Circuit
00:15:25.240
Appeals Court in the Midwest. Very senior judge, very conservative. Boy, do the Democrats hate her,
00:15:30.320
as you can see. But she already had her Senate hearings, as you saw, and she won the vote,
00:15:34.860
as you saw. She's the same judge now as she was three years ago. Do you really need full hearings
00:15:39.300
for her again? Same thing with Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban-American judge Trump elevated to the Appeals
00:15:45.580
Circuit in the Southeast. She was voted on by the Senate less than a year ago. She was confirmed
00:15:50.600
by a vote of 80 to 15. Why even bother having another hearing for her? There was just a hearing
00:15:56.800
on these judges months ago. They both passed. Just go straight to the vote again. I don't know if I
00:16:02.600
would care that much. Other than on judges, Trump has been amazing. Probably the single best file he's
00:16:08.020
had. I bet Trump appoints Lagoa. He wants to lock in Florida. He wants to get Hispanic votes.
00:16:12.300
How would the Democrats fight her? The rapist charge wouldn't work. I don't think the racist
00:16:16.700
charge would work. Big win for everyone. Part of me does want the awful, awful hearings run by the
00:16:22.560
worst people in the world, the smears, who literally called Brett Kavanaugh a rapist, in front of his
00:16:26.920
family who were sitting there, based on cooked-up lies of that criminal Avenatti. It was horrific.
00:16:32.440
But you know, I don't know if you remember this. That was right before the last elections,
00:16:36.080
the midterm. Trump was in a slump. He was definitely behind. And the Democrats smelled blood.
00:16:40.360
But they couldn't control themselves. They went too far. And Americans, normal Americans,
00:16:44.740
independent Americans, moderates, even the more normal Democrats, they couldn't believe what was
00:16:50.440
going on. The vile attacks on Kavanaugh not only gave Trump's campaign some energy, it shocked and
00:16:56.660
grossed out so many moderate Democrats. In fact, far from hurting Republicans, check this out. Look at
00:17:00.800
this. Four Democrats lost the Senate. Kavanaugh's revenge. Every Democratic senator in a competitive
00:17:09.380
midterm race who voted against Brett Kavanaugh lost. Let me read the facts. Every Democratic
00:17:15.620
senator who voted against Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the nation's highest court lost
00:17:19.580
in their competitive re-election bids. The Democratic senators who voted against Kavanaugh's confirmation
00:17:24.500
then lost their seats during Tuesday's midterm elections included Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North
00:17:30.260
Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Bill Nelson of Florida. Look at those
00:17:35.080
places. North Dakota, very normal people. Indiana, normal. Missouri, sort of normal. Florida,
00:17:41.260
okay, definitely not normal, but very evenly matched Republican Democrats. Americans saw this.
00:17:46.760
Democrats saw that and said, no, thank you. The attackers and shriekers are the nutty ones. That's
00:18:10.980
why I'm a little bit optimistic about the election 42 days from now, because that kind of shrieking
00:18:15.340
and screaming. That's been the only message the Democrats in the media party have had all summer.
00:18:19.980
Riots, Black Lives Matter extremism, burning cities, and now the same scorched earth approach
00:18:25.120
to a court nomination. I don't want a hearing. I just want the judges. But you know what?
00:18:30.420
Let the Democrats show Americans who they really are, and let that be the last thought on the minds
00:18:34.860
of millions of Americans as they go to vote. Stay with us. We'll have more about this with our
00:18:39.580
friends. Welcome back. Well, I'm hardly a scholar of the Supreme Court of the United States, but
00:18:56.240
reviewing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I think that the chief reason Democrats have put so many of their hopes
00:19:04.360
in her succession is not that she was a particularly powerful jurist. I'm not saying she was by any
00:19:12.740
minds inconsequential, but she wasn't a Scalia. She wasn't a Clarence Thomas. I think she's simply
00:19:18.740
a seat of power for the Democrats that they don't want to give to Trump. I don't think anyone's that
00:19:25.420
passionate about the woman herself, other than the symbol that she was a Democrat appointee who was
00:19:32.680
in their minds, hopefully going to outlive Trump. And I think the rage you're seeing at her passing
00:19:39.540
is not about her life or her work, but about the thought that the 2016 election has consequences,
00:19:48.600
including that Trump will appoint another judge. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's go to an expert,
00:19:54.420
at least certainly more expert than me, our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large
00:19:59.060
at brightbart.com. I don't know if you're a Supreme Court scholar, Joel, but you're certainly
00:20:04.000
a much closer follower than me. Was she a great judge or was she just great in the minds of liberals
00:20:10.480
because she was a Democrat who refused to go away? Well, she was a brilliant lawyer. I think that's
00:20:19.040
beyond dispute. She was the first, not the first, but the only woman in her class at Harvard Law School
00:20:26.200
back in the 1950s, which tells you something about the kind of obstacles she faced. And she went on
00:20:36.720
to graduate from Columbia and then have a very successful legal career. Much of that career
00:20:43.160
involved challenging gender discrimination in American law. And she won almost every case she
00:20:50.180
argued before the Supreme Court. So she was a very accomplished lawyer and a passionate advocate of
00:20:58.200
women's rights. So you grant that to her. On the court, she made less of an impact. And as you suggest,
00:21:05.100
she was more a reliable liberal vote than a real thought leader. She did not have the stature,
00:21:13.260
for example, of an Antonin Scalia, who really defined conservative judicial philosophy for
00:21:20.320
a generation, maybe two generations of conservative lawyers and legal scholars. So she wasn't important
00:21:26.920
in terms of her ideas. She hasn't left us too many opinions that stand out in the mind or in the memory,
00:21:33.580
but she was a reliable liberal vote. And you're correct that that's the reason many in the Democratic
00:21:40.600
Party and on the left were particularly enthusiastic about her. She simply was also tenacious
00:21:45.080
in a physical sense. She died at age 87. She was determined to outlast Donald Trump. And she very
00:21:53.440
nearly made it, assuming for, you know, if you don't assume that he's reelected. But she really she really
00:22:00.400
had a kind of physical strength that belied her very small frame. And interestingly enough, she was also
00:22:10.020
broad minded enough to have Antonin Scalia as a close friend. So she was quite sad when he passed
00:22:16.220
away four years ago, also during an election year. And she was critical of things like Colin Kaepernick
00:22:22.900
kneeling for the anthem. She was not a fan of kneeling for the national anthem. So she represents a kind of
00:22:28.180
old liberalism associated with the women's rights movement and so forth, not quite on board with the
00:22:35.740
new woke thought in the Democratic Party or on the left. And she was disturbed in recent years by the
00:22:42.940
increasing attacks on members of the judiciary by the left. So in that sense, she wasn't quite on board
00:22:50.860
with what Democrats are trying to do. She was very much in favor of President Obama being allowed to
00:22:56.620
nominate a justice in 2016. But she was against court packing, which is what the left wants to do now.
00:23:03.360
This is the new scheme that the Democrats are floating to add justices to the nine-member
00:23:08.160
Supreme Court. Right now it has a 5-4 conservative majority, temporarily 5-3. It could have a 6-3
00:23:14.480
conservative majority if Trump is able to put his appointee on the court. And Democrats say,
00:23:20.240
well, we're going to negate your 6-3 majority. If we get power again, if Joe Biden wins the presidency
00:23:25.600
and we win the Senate and we keep the House, we're going to expand the number of Supreme Court
00:23:30.400
justices to 13 and then quickly confirm four new justices so that we have a 7-6 majority,
00:23:37.520
you don't have a 6-3 majority. So that's where things stand.
00:23:41.360
You know, you mentioned how Ruth Bader Ginsburg was against the radical identity politics
00:23:48.800
of Kaepernick. I think that would come as a surprise to some of her more woke mourners today.
00:23:54.480
But here's a clip of her saying that she does not want the court packed and she fears that that would
00:24:01.840
turn the court in the eyes of the public into a partisan instrument. Take a look at this.
00:24:06.720
Past the age of 70, the president would have authority to nominate another justice. If that plan had been
00:24:17.600
effective, the court's number would have swelled immediately from 9 to 15. And the president would
00:24:27.760
have six appointments to make. You mentioned before the court appearing partisan. Well, if anything would
00:24:41.120
make the court appear partisan, it would be that one side saying, when we're in power, we're going to
00:24:47.760
enlarge the number of judges. So we will have more people who will vote the way we want them to. So I am
00:25:03.520
not at all in favor of that solution to what I see as a temporary situation.
00:25:17.040
Very calm, speaking slowly, as you say, minute physically, but still all there mentally.
00:25:26.400
It's interesting that she has a big enough view of the world that although she's a down the line
00:25:30.560
liberal, she sees the problems with a clearly partisan trick. And I think that the fact that
00:25:38.640
she was against that kind of trickery, Joel, and the Democrat Party wants that kind of trickery now,
00:25:44.960
is very similar to the Democratic Party right now saying, well, we're going to have mail-in ballots,
00:25:49.600
we're going to keep counting them after the official voting day, we're not going to concede no matter
00:25:55.360
what. It strikes me that she's fair-minded enough a judge to see rule rigging or an attempt to change
00:26:03.840
the rules by the Democrats. And she's grown up enough to blow the whistle on it. I think the calls
00:26:11.520
to pack the court by the Democrats are of the same species of trickery as their mail-in voting and
00:26:19.200
their other plans not to concede if they lose. That's right. The Democrats have all kinds of
00:26:24.800
ways of changing the rules when they don't win. And they should perhaps change the name of their
00:26:30.880
party because they don't seem to like democracy very much. They lost the last election and still
00:26:34.480
haven't gotten over it. Now, the Democrats are accusing Republicans of changing their mind about
00:26:39.200
the rules because Republicans said, you should not confirm a new Supreme Court justice in an election
00:26:44.720
year. That was the argument Republicans used to keep Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court when
00:26:49.840
Obama nominated him in the last year of his second term. But the situation there was somewhat different.
00:26:56.000
You had the opposition controlling the Senate. And so these two sides, the presidency with Obama on the
00:27:02.560
left and Senate with Republicans on the right, they weren't really going to see eye to eye about much of
00:27:06.960
anything. And Obama had by then established such a clear preference for the left. And he had really
00:27:14.560
a bad track record of ignoring the Constitution, especially on things like the Iran deal and
00:27:19.520
Obamacare and so forth, DACA. I think that Senate Republicans were on firm ground. They're now being
00:27:26.720
accused of hypocrisy because they want to give a vote to whoever President Trump nominates later this
00:27:32.240
week. I don't know that it really matters. Democrats can also be accused of hypocrisy because,
00:27:36.160
of course, they put out all kinds of statements in 2016 that the Senate has to do its duty. The
00:27:40.560
Constitution doesn't say anything about presidential election years blocking justices. We've had
00:27:45.600
almost 30 judges appointed or justices appointed during election years. I think there have been 29
00:27:52.560
vacancies over the last two centuries and a half during an election year. So this is all going to
00:27:58.160
be very interesting. We don't know how it's going to go. Maybe it'll depend on who President Trump
00:28:02.080
nominates. He's committed to nominating a woman. He's going to nominate one of a list of five right now.
00:28:08.320
We don't know who exactly is on the list, but Trump has at least released two potential
00:28:13.920
lists of candidates. Joe Biden is refusing to release a list, even though Biden said he was
00:28:19.440
working on one in June. He said he was going to nominate an African-American woman to the court
00:28:24.880
and that he would shortly have a list for us. And we have never seen that list.
00:28:29.520
So Trump at least is in an advantageous position with regard to transparency. He has told the public
00:28:35.920
that there are two lists now of candidates for the Supreme Court. He's going to choose from those
00:28:42.240
lists. He won't confine his choices to those lists, but those lists give you some idea of who the
00:28:46.400
candidates might be. And the odds-on favorite right now is a woman named Amy Coney Barrett. She is an
00:28:52.880
appellate judge who is known for conservative legal opinions. There are several others on the list who he
00:29:00.240
could choose. So this is a very exciting moment in a way, even though it's also very divisive.
00:29:05.760
I mean, had we not had the riots and George Floyd and all of that, I would have said this is
00:29:10.640
potentially the most divisive thing to happen. And in fact, I did say many months ago that I wanted
00:29:15.440
Ruth Bader Ginsburg to survive at least past the election because I couldn't imagine a more divisive
00:29:19.920
thing happening than for her seat to become vacant in the middle of an election. But now that we've seen
00:29:24.800
you know, much more radical divisions and rioting and violence, it doesn't seem quite as bad. So I
00:29:31.680
think we can actually handle this one. Yeah, we're talking with Joel Pollack. He's also the author of
00:29:37.040
Red November. Will the country vote red for Trump or red for socialism? We'll find out in just 42 days.
00:29:44.960
I was thinking about Trump's statement that he's going to nominate a woman. And that feels like
00:29:50.160
Democrat Party identity politics. But I actually think it's a pragmatic move by Trump, because if
00:29:56.800
it was a man, you know, that the Michael Avenatti's of the world that he's in jail, but someone else
00:30:02.000
like him would concoct sexual harassment claims out of thin air, they it's less likely they would do that
00:30:10.480
about a woman candidate. I actually think that's the number one reason he's going to nominate a woman
00:30:16.240
candidate. Now, obviously, you know enough about Democrats that the next charge would be racism. So that's
00:30:22.480
why I think that he might nominate, for example, there's a Cuban American Court of Appeals judge
00:30:29.280
right out of Miami. Yeah, she was the first female chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, and she was
00:30:35.280
quickly elevated to, I believe, the 11th circuit on the appellate court. So we'll see. I mean, she's got
00:30:42.240
a very short track record there. But that's a good thing, usually for judges these days, because you
00:30:47.920
don't want too many people knowing too much of what you think. So yes, especially before an election
00:30:53.360
where Trump is competing for the Latino vote, that could be very important. He could have a stronger
00:30:58.960
chance, you might argue, in Florida if he nominated her. We shall see. But I do think the strongest factor
00:31:04.320
in nominating a woman is simply that the outrage on the left and perhaps beyond the left, if he replaced
00:31:11.280
one of the court's first female justices with a male justice, would be pretty hard to ignore.
00:31:15.280
So I think he's going to stick with the tradition of keeping a woman in that particular seat. And
00:31:21.440
he's got many good candidates, and many of them are good conservative candidates. So we'll see what
00:31:26.800
happens. Democrats are starting to talk about violence, by the way. This is no longer simply
00:31:31.440
tolerating violence, but actually encouraging violence if the Trump pick goes through. Alexandria Ocasio
00:31:38.320
Cortez said this event should radicalize America. So they are gunning for this, even though, as you
00:31:45.120
and I have discussed many times before, this is something Democrats were talking about doing long
00:31:49.760
before Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. You and I talked, I believe, on June 30th about Democrats
00:31:54.480
planning to pack the courts or planning to eliminate the filibuster to make it easier for them to do things
00:32:00.720
like that. We were talking about it in June already. So the Democrats now are floating the idea. In fact,
00:32:05.440
Joe Biden explicitly said that now we're going to take drastic action. Or I think it was Chuck
00:32:12.240
Schumer said, if Republicans go ahead with this, then packing the courts is on the table. Well,
00:32:16.080
it was already on the table. It's been on the table for months. And, you know, you heard it here
00:32:20.240
first. I mean, The Rebel and Breitbart, these are two outlets that said this was coming. And now
00:32:25.120
everyone's trying to pretend it's a surprise. But this has been coming for a long time. Democrats are
00:32:29.040
planning to expand their power and the power of the federal government dramatically if they win the
00:32:34.240
election. Yeah. Let me ask you one last question. I'm always grateful for your time,
00:32:37.440
Joel. I remember Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. It's the most brutal thing I've ever
00:32:44.320
seen. It made the Clarence Thomas high-tech lynching look like a baby shower.
00:32:50.880
literally accusing a man of being a serial rapist based on clearly manufactured
00:33:02.560
wisps of gossip. I've never seen anything like it. And that wasn't even the worst of it.
00:33:07.040
Screaming at senators in the hallways of the Senate. Right. Smashing the doors of the beautiful Supreme
00:33:14.160
Court carved. Like, it was a premonition of the riots we've seen this year. And it was so shocking
00:33:20.400
to behold. But I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Obviously, a lot of middle Americans,
00:33:25.200
independent Americans did. Because in fact, senators who voted against Kavanaugh were turfed.
00:33:31.040
I think it energized the Republican base. And so although I don't want to see that kind of
00:33:35.600
personal destruction, part of me says, let the people have a final reminder in these last 42 days
00:33:42.400
of what the opponent looks like, of the viciousness. Because I don't think the Democrats will be able
00:33:47.600
to control themselves. If it's Amy Coney Barrett, I think they'll see full-blown anti-Christian,
00:33:53.680
anti-Catholic bigotry. I think you'll see such bad behavior that it might actually, ironically,
00:33:59.040
paradoxically, put Trump over the top. What do you think of that?
00:34:02.720
It's possible. It's also possible that knowing that, Democrats will eventually try to reel it in.
00:34:07.440
You're not going to have those kinds of confrontations in the Senate because of the COVID
00:34:11.040
restrictions. So, you know, I think any of these hearings and so forth, and even the votes,
00:34:14.800
will be taking place remotely to some extent. But you're correct. There's always the potential for
00:34:20.160
that. And we'll see. Certainly, protests are shifting from D.C. to the homes of the senators.
00:34:26.960
There have been protesters for the last 48 hours outside of Senator Mitch McConnell's home in Kentucky.
00:34:33.520
I believe in Kentucky or wherever he's living. It could be his D.C. residence.
00:34:37.600
I'm not sure, actually. But, you know, that's the kind of thing we'll see. And we'll see more of it
00:34:42.800
if Democrats win. But I do think that Trump is going to nominate someone. He said he would do so
00:34:49.120
by the end of the week. And Mitch McConnell is promising a vote. Even if that vote fails,
00:34:53.360
the public will know the kind of person Trump wants to put forward. And that could also have
00:34:57.760
an effect on the electorate. Because if voters see that Democrats are turning down a woman,
00:35:02.640
they're turning down perhaps a Latino woman, a Catholic woman, whoever, that's going to create
00:35:07.920
a negative impression, no matter how wild it gets. Simply the fact that Democrats would try to block
00:35:13.040
someone like that. Obama used the Merrick Garland pick, I think, in a failed attempt to do something
00:35:18.240
similar. But Obama wanted to show that if he chose a white guy who was sort of thought of as a moderate
00:35:22.960
in some ways, that Republicans would prove their own intolerance of Obama by blocking Merrick Garland.
00:35:32.320
It turned out the public was also pretty sick of Obama at that stage. So that kind of backfired. But
00:35:36.800
I think Trump could do well by putting up a nominee who presents the most attractive, and I don't use
00:35:42.800
that term in a gendered way, but sort of the most attractive candidate to a broad swath of the electorate.
00:35:49.280
And daring the Democrats to vote against that person, I think, is probably a good move heading
00:35:53.440
into an election. Very interesting. Joel, thanks so much for making time for us. I know
00:35:57.840
these next 42 days are very intense. It's always great to grab some of your time. Good luck out there.
00:36:04.080
Thank you. All right, there you have it, Joel Pollack. And let me remind you of Joel's new book
00:36:08.720
called Red November. Will the country vote red for Trump or red for socialism?
00:36:13.200
The stakes couldn't be higher. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:36:19.280
Hey, welcome back to my monologue Friday on Marcy Ian, running for the Liberal Party. John writes,
00:36:33.200
no qualifications. Yep, she'd make a perfect liberal. You know, I learned after I did my monologue that
00:36:38.960
she was involved with the We Day charity. This is perfect. So was Bill Morneau, who quit in disgrace.
00:36:44.560
She'll fit right in. Scott writes, these women on the social are ultra-woke. They live in affluent areas
00:36:50.320
and are clueless to what the majority of society face every day. Yeah, but it's selective wokeness.
00:36:55.920
I told you that Lainey Louie wrote some really weird and gross sexual racist comments about Janet
00:37:03.200
Jackson. And that was okay. But not Jessica Mulroney having a feud with another African-American. I don't
00:37:08.800
even understand the rules. It's no rules. It's cancel culture. And that's the media party.
00:37:16.000
All right. Media party or liberal party, a distinction without a difference in Canada.
00:37:19.760
Oh, you bet. I've said that the media party is the auxiliary of the liberal party. And it's much
00:37:27.200
more effective because it's not labeled with a warning. That little L for liberal sign tells you,
00:37:32.560
beware liars are here. The media party pretends the truth tellers. That's our show for today. Until
00:37:38.160
tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.