RadixJournal - Absolute Power

00:00:00.000 The president can't really be prosecuted for war crimes or disasters that occurred during

00:00:14.460 his tenure.

00:00:16.720 So I think it was about 10 years ago or a little bit longer, Barack Obama, with a drone,

00:00:26.480 assassinated an American citizen.

00:00:30.000 This was the Alawakee, I believe was his name.

00:00:34.380 And that was a new step.

00:00:41.260 It's one thing for the government to, say, execute someone who's been convicted of murder.

00:00:48.740 It's another thing for them to preemptively eliminate an American citizen who might threaten 0.87

00:00:55.940 them.

00:00:56.320 And I think a lot of conservative terror warriors didn't really know how to handle this issue.

00:01:09.080 It was like the guy sweating with two buttons.

00:01:11.420 It was like hate everything Obama does or, you know, bombastic self-righteous defense of

00:01:19.500 the Constitution or something. 0.99

00:01:20.860 I mean, it's a or, you know, the terrorists, the terrorists must die. 0.83

00:01:26.260 They were just kind of conflicted with it.

00:01:29.480 George W. Bush, he could have been prosecuted for knowingly lying to the American public or

00:01:40.580 having Colin Powell knowingly lie to the UN and prosecuting this war.

00:01:46.020 Was there such massive graft in the funding of the occupation that we could have even gone

00:01:57.380 after the top guy at some point?

00:01:59.820 Well, Nancy Pelosi nixed that. 1.00

00:02:02.860 She nipped it in the bud.

00:02:04.000 And the moment that in 2006, when the Democrats retook Congress, we're not going to do that.

00:02:14.000 So there's a sort of, I guess you could call it a gentleman's agreement, but you could also

00:02:19.880 call it an absolute power of the president in the realm of foreign policy that he's not

00:02:27.300 going to be prosecuted for things that he does for use of the military.

00:02:34.060 He's the commander in chief for any sort of vigorous action, emergency power, a state of

00:02:43.120 exception.

00:02:44.200 What if COVID was much, much worse and we were dying, you know, at a clip of 40 percent?

00:02:50.660 It was like some horrible, what is it, legionnaire's outbreak.

00:02:58.660 And the president just sent the Marines into every American city in hazmat suits and they

00:03:06.600 were shooting on sight anyone who didn't comply with the lockdown order.

00:03:11.640 Or we were engaged in a zombie apocalypse. 0.99

00:03:15.040 And if anyone gets bit by the zombie, you've got to kill him immediately before he bites someone 0.99

00:03:20.100 else. 0.99

00:03:20.400 You must be cruel to be kind.

00:03:23.580 The president won't be prosecuted for that.

00:03:29.980 And there is, I think even these kind of vague self-righteous claims of like, no one's above

00:03:37.320 the law or something like this.

00:03:40.840 I understand what they're saying or the people have the power, not the president.

00:03:46.220 But these strike me as just kind of words, words, words.

00:03:51.480 The government can spy on you.

00:03:55.800 The government can kidnap you and put you in prison. 1.00

00:03:59.380 The government can kill you.

00:04:01.960 And it does have ways of justifying that, like the legal system.

00:04:08.600 But the most important thing about that is that it can.

00:04:13.780 And I don't think the government is going to randomly drone strike, you know, dissident

00:04:21.660 voices in a preemptive violent action.

00:04:25.880 I don't think it's going to do that on a wide scale.

00:04:28.500 But it did do that.

00:04:30.800 And it can do that.

00:04:32.400 And it probably will do it again.

00:04:35.260 I don't think any of us have anything to fear.

00:04:38.020 But it's really the point of it.

00:04:40.820 It's the point of who makes the exception.

00:04:45.720 Who is exceptional?

00:04:48.140 The state itself is exceptional.

00:04:50.940 And certainly in geopolitics, the president is exceptional.

00:04:55.060 He has exceptional powers.

00:04:56.360 And that just is what it is.

00:05:00.380 And, you know, you could barely be upset about this decision.

00:05:07.240 But if you're just claiming, like saying things like the people have the power or no one's

00:05:14.400 above the law, you're just using words, basically.

00:05:18.920 Words that have very little connection to reality.

00:05:22.080 What does that mean that the people have the power?

00:05:25.200 So as Joe Biden said in his response to the decision, what does that actually mean?

00:05:29.880 It means nothing.

00:05:32.560 It's at most a kind of justification for the government, or it's just kind of frivolous,

00:05:40.400 puffy nonsense.

00:05:43.640 Yeah, I think that's Biden's knee-jerk instinct to preserve legitimacy in the institution.

00:05:51.300 Yeah, but it's everyone's knee-jerk.

00:05:53.500 Absolutely, yeah.

00:05:56.440 Way of preserving legitimacy.

00:05:58.240 I mean, every single politician will say this, certainly, including Trump, especially

00:06:02.820 Trump.

00:06:04.920 Well, see, on that point, what I think this Supreme Court ruling does is it brings an added

00:06:12.100 level of honesty to the image of the president.

00:06:14.200 And that, yeah, you actually can do stuff like that, you know?

00:06:19.120 But I actually had a question related to this.

00:06:21.780 I don't know what your thoughts are, but don't you think it's accurate to say that at the end

00:06:26.060 of the day, the buck really stops with the military?

00:06:29.720 This is an interesting question that I've asked before.

00:06:35.740 Like, where does the buck stop?

00:06:38.660 So, in legislation, for instance, Congress initiates legislation.

00:06:52.540 The president does not.

00:06:53.800 I think a lot of people think that the president writes the law.

00:06:57.800 No.

00:06:58.660 Something's initiated.

00:06:59.920 It passes both houses.

00:07:01.340 It goes to the president.

00:07:02.500 He can veto it.

00:07:03.420 That veto can be overridden by, what is it, two-thirds support in the House?

00:07:10.180 I forgot the number, but an overwhelming majority of legislatures.

00:07:14.940 So, on that sphere, they are sovereign.

00:07:21.300 They can impeach the president.

00:07:25.140 The Supreme Court can override both on domestic legislation and, obviously, on legal cases.

00:07:40.140 The Supreme Court can override everyone.

00:07:43.780 It can override its inferior courts.

00:07:46.140 It can override Congress.

00:07:48.480 It can override a veto.

00:07:49.820 I mean, you could have a situation where the Congress creates legislation, the president

00:07:56.620 vetoes it, Congress overwhelmingly passes it, and five years later, the Supreme Court dismisses

00:08:03.440 the law on the basis of Marbury.

00:08:08.560 So, you could make a very strong case that the Supreme Court is sovereign.

00:08:13.820 So, here, we're looking at it from a Schmittian point of view, not this kind of like three,

00:08:19.280 you know, limited government and, you know, checks and balances or whatever.

00:08:23.540 Yeah, of course, there's checks and balances.

00:08:25.320 And, of course, the government is limited in some way.

00:08:27.700 It's almost like redundant to say these things.

00:08:30.500 Again, this is all just happy talk, just words, words, words from people, how they describe

00:08:34.880 the government.

00:08:35.620 The question is, who is the big daddy?

00:08:38.440 Who will ultimately say no to something or say yes to something?

00:08:44.180 You could strongly argue that the Supreme Court is sovereign in that sense.

00:08:51.060 And that does kind of, I don't know, it is a little bit disturbing that these lawyers, and

00:09:02.400 they're not just lawyers, they're kind of political lawyers, you know, in effect, not necessarily

00:09:07.360 in the way that it was defined initially in the Constitution.

00:09:10.620 But, you know, to be a Supreme Court justice, you aren't just a lawyer, you're not even just

00:09:18.140 a legal scholar, you're also a kind of political person, you know, let's be honest here.

00:09:24.760 So the fact that nine of them are sovereign is a little bit disconcerting.

00:09:32.560 Like, do we live ultimately at the end of the day under a judicial tyranny?

00:09:37.440 It's an interesting question.

00:09:41.600 Now, in terms of the president having war powers, I mean, the Congress has the power of the purse,

00:09:51.540 but the Congress is supposed to declare war, but we all know that certainly, well, across

00:10:00.400 the 20th century, this has been abrogated.

00:10:03.360 And interestingly, Truman declared the Korean War on the basis of justification of the United

00:10:11.160 Nations.

00:10:13.220 So many, which is fascinating, that I don't think has been done, like a major war, there's

00:10:19.640 been other kind of peacekeeping stuff that's happened.

00:10:22.080 But the Congress is ultimately going to fund these things, Congress is ultimately going

00:10:31.040 to give authority and justify the president.

00:10:35.260 The president acts, and I think this happened in the Nixon administration, if there's like

00:10:40.500 a 48-hour emergency, the president can simply act.

00:10:44.480 But, and I understand, I support that, I understand it, it obviously can be abused, but the notion

00:10:54.120 that, you know, Russia bombs Hawaii, I mean, this is obviously ridiculous, but the notion

00:11:04.060 that they do that on a Saturday, and so you have to, like, well, we got to wait till Congress

00:11:09.140 is back in session on Tuesday, they got, you know, Mondays, holidays, we got to wait, guys,

00:11:13.700 we can't fire a bullet until, you know, we get this legally settled. 0.92

00:11:17.840 I mean, that is ridiculous.

00:11:19.800 So I ultimately support these things, even though this can obviously be abused. 0.65

00:11:26.240 And the problem with Trump is that, you know, like, what he is going to claim, and I imagine

00:11:34.820 this is going to succeed, is that this creating false slates of electors is going to be

00:11:43.320 an official act, and any sort of communication, or most of the communication he has, because

00:11:49.740 it's a little bit ambiguous, like you could appeal, and blah, blah, blah, most of the communications

00:11:55.560 he had with Mike Pence, who was the kind of fulcrum of the Stop the Steal attempt to overturn

00:12:04.680 the election, the fake elector schemes, all that kind of stuff is going to be an official

00:12:11.520 act.

00:12:12.020 And I do think he's going to get away with this.

00:12:19.340 He got slammed in New York State, but I'm not, I don't think he's going to get hit again

00:12:28.720 before the election.

00:12:30.060 Could get hit afterward.

00:12:31.260 He's using, well, this is the ultimate end of it.

00:12:39.220 Like, we assume noble motives, and yes, could this be abused?

00:12:45.100 You know, if I just use some ridiculous scenario of Russia invading Hawaii or something, you

00:12:54.000 know, could, you know, we expect a president just to be, he's awakened at 3 a.m., they give

00:13:01.600 him a shot of espresso, and he just goes into the war room and is like, fire back, you know,

00:13:06.900 declare war immediately, like, do this.

00:13:08.820 And that's the kind of noble image we have in our mind of why a president should be absolute

00:13:17.100 and should be sovereign in this area.

00:13:19.840 We'll handle the legalese later.

00:13:22.320 We'll get Congress on board on Tuesday once they get back from their 4th of July holiday,

00:13:27.580 whatever.

00:13:28.160 We got to act.

00:13:31.280 But the fact is, stop the steal demonstrates this, you know, Donald Trump was clearly attempting

00:13:39.580 to stay in office.

00:13:41.560 Now, I agree, just to be totally fair here, I agree with many of the, like, substantial

00:13:51.540 criticisms of the 2020 election.

00:13:55.720 I don't think it was stolen, these, you know, they were moving boxes around in Arizona, that's

00:14:03.020 just, this strikes me as tenuous at best.

00:14:06.840 But I agree with the notion that it just got out of hand with doing all of these mail-in

00:14:14.760 ballots and ballot harvesting and just having the election be for, like, a month or two months.

00:14:20.380 Maybe I'm just merely a conservative, and I think that 90% to 95% of the election should

00:14:30.060 occur the day of.

00:14:31.600 You know, if you're like an international businessman or a military man, you might, you should be

00:14:37.320 able to, in fact, mail in your ballot.

00:14:39.180 But that should be minimized.

00:14:41.880 You should have a reason to do that.

00:14:43.640 You shouldn't just do that, just because it's easier or something.

00:14:47.660 So I agree with that criticism of 2020.

00:14:51.940 I do not think it was stolen.

00:14:54.760 I think also the stop the steal notion and the elector notion was originating from below.

00:15:02.980 It was a kind of, I mean, stop the steal was actually a website purchased in 2016 by Roger

00:15:07.580 Stone.

00:15:07.980 So this was all, and it came out, you know, we have Ali Akbar, Nick Fuentes, and Alex

00:15:15.460 Jones being the vanguard of that movement before it got adopted by mainstream people.

00:15:21.680 I mean, I just, I'm sorry, this is not real.

00:15:26.260 This is not like a, I shouldn't say real, it's very real.

00:15:29.520 This is not a noble act by the president to protect the people or the country.

00:15:34.080 Um, so I don't, I have a hard time taking it seriously, but he's going to seemingly get

00:15:42.520 away with it because we assume that the president is going to be a good man who has the authority

00:15:50.440 to act in an absolute manner, in a totally legally immune manner, in an exceptional manner

00:15:57.480 on behalf of the nation. 0.91

00:15:58.580 If he's simply doing this crap on behalf of himself, it, it, I understand where you're 0.97

00:16:05.220 just like, why are we allowing him to do these shenanigans? 0.97

00:16:12.120 So, well, uh, go ahead.

00:16:14.840 Uh, importantly, I've spoken for 40 minutes, so I, I've kind of gotten some ideas out there,

00:16:19.900 plenty of food to bite into.

00:16:22.120 Um, yeah, so, um, we're in this situation where, um, I think, uh, it's not a dissenting

00:16:30.720 voice within the generals where they view, uh, Donald Trump as a national security threat.

00:16:36.640 I mean, nevermind that he's a criminal.

00:16:39.400 I mean, he's an actual insurrectionist, right?

00:16:41.820 He literally led the charge.

00:16:43.260 So, uh, and now you have this Supreme court ruling and now, uh, aren't the generals going

00:16:50.200 to look at this and think, well, wait a minute, uh, he was operating with impunity before what's

00:16:56.440 going to happen now, you know, and, and he's, he's had all this talk of basically disbanding

00:17:02.720 the American empire, right?

00:17:04.480 Uh, he's kind of implied it strongly with his boards on NATO and all that.

00:17:09.080 Yeah.

00:17:09.120 Well, he's implied it now, whether he'll do it now, remember at the end of his administration,

00:17:13.440 he appointed McGregor as I forgot what he was, national security advisor or something

00:17:18.760 who sent out a memo basically saying, we're removing military bases abroad.

00:17:23.980 We're dismantling things through a combination of just, you know, active foot dragging, actively

00:17:32.640 ignoring the situation and, and through just like laziness of, you know, we're ready to

00:17:38.320 go home for Christmas, nothing happened, but there, there is a, an example of this guy is

00:17:50.500 going to dismantle the empire.

00:17:52.500 Now he didn't do that during his presidency proper.

00:17:55.820 That was all that lame duck stuff. 0.91

00:17:57.300 And maybe it was, he was just appointing these like, you know, Kremlin backed right wing retards 1.00

00:18:04.220 who were doing this crap, but whatever it's, it, it, like he, he popped the cherry on that. 0.99

00:18:13.020 And, uh, you know, I, I think of the military men, they would look at that and just be like, 0.98

00:18:18.280 yikes, but again, they didn't support the coup, the coup.

00:18:22.680 If we want to call it that, I mean, maybe a coup is better than insurrection, but it was

00:18:26.900 a sort of insurrection is like, Oh, let's just define those things as like an insurrection

00:18:31.420 is kind of bottom up and a coup is top down.

00:18:34.160 It was kind of both.

00:18:36.120 Uh, there was a legal theory developed by the Claremont Institute and John Eastman of

00:18:42.340 why this was legal.

00:18:43.340 And, and Navarro had a hand in this as well.

00:18:46.080 There was also just a sort of insurrection quality to J six and this, in the sense that

00:18:52.180 look, it was out of control.

00:18:53.980 Look, I will, I'll agree with the conservative rejoinder to what I just said, which is that

00:18:59.020 BLM was a sort of insurrection. 0.99

00:19:00.500 Yeah, it was both of them didn't have a chance to actually take power.

00:19:06.460 Both of them were spazzing out of people who were self-righteous and deeply emotional, but

00:19:16.060 that again, that doesn't mean it's not a threat to civil order and a threat to political order.

00:19:23.860 So it was kind of J six was kind of both and the military quite notably was not involved.

00:19:31.600 There was interesting little shenanigans going on with Flynn's brother.

00:19:35.580 I mean, that is fascinating, but you know, the, the overwhelming reality of the situation

00:19:43.380 is that the military did not mark, you know, you had right-wing QAnon retards march into 0.94

00:19:50.380 the Capitol.

00:19:50.980 You didn't have soldiers march into the Capitol and shoot anyone who didn't comply.

00:19:55.740 And that is the fundamental reason why it didn't succeed.

00:19:59.140 But then to, then to claim, I mean, this is what I get from every conservative.

00:20:03.700 I argue with this is, is that like, like, I mean, the analogy I would use is that, you

00:20:09.480 know, if I robbed a bank and I pointed a gun at a bank teller, but I was wearing a clown

00:20:14.700 outfit and like honking a horn and driving a like little mini car or something, but I 0.99

00:20:21.220 still said, give me the fucking money in the vault. 0.98

00:20:24.060 You know, when I was, when I were arrested, I could be like, what are you talking about? 1.00

00:20:28.120 I'm literally a clown. 0.90

00:20:30.540 Like this is a, this is a clown act. 0.94

00:20:33.340 In fact, like that's not an excuse. 0.89

00:20:37.200 Like just because you're bad at criming doesn't mean you're not criming, you know?

00:20:44.140 I mean, it's just.

00:20:45.520 Right.

00:20:46.680 Oh yeah.

00:20:47.500 I mean, see, this is a kind of male type divide, right?

00:20:53.060 Like there, there's this martial male type that'll exert power nakedly and openly and honestly.

00:20:57.820 He'll tell you that's what he's doing.

00:20:59.220 Yeah.

00:20:59.780 This was kind of a sneaky way, you know, not exactly.

00:21:05.620 Exactly.

00:21:05.940 This was a path of aggressive coup.

00:21:07.420 Probably the first in history.

00:21:10.340 Yes.

00:21:10.900 It was a weird female suffering from borderline personality disorder. 1.00

00:21:15.680 The first one time that has happened.

00:21:17.980 Most time coups are like totally alpha male. 0.99

00:21:20.920 Like, like I'm taking over this shit kind of thing. 0.99

00:21:25.040 This was the first female version of a coup. 1.00

00:21:27.920 It's like, is it a coup?

00:21:28.940 Was it a coup?

00:21:29.780 I don't know.

00:21:31.120 Maybe.

00:21:31.500 Well, hey, as long as we're breaking the glass ceiling, right?

00:21:34.800 Right.

00:21:35.240 Right.

00:21:35.780 Right.

00:21:36.620 Yep.

00:21:36.800 Right.

00:21:37.380 Correct.

00:21:37.620 Right.

00:21:37.920 Right.

00:21:38.460 Right.

00:21:38.540 Right.

00:21:38.660 Right.

00:21:39.620 Right.

00:21:40.060 Right.

00:21:40.640 Right.

00:21:40.860 Right.

00:21:41.280 Right.

00:21:41.980 Right.

00:21:42.180 Right.

00:21:47.400 Right.

00:21:47.980 Right.

00:21:48.500 Yeah.

00:21:49.420 Right.

00:21:49.560 Right.

00:21:49.920 Right.

00:21:50.740 Right.

00:21:50.760 Right.

00:21:51.340 Right.

00:21:52.000 Right.

00:21:52.640 Right.

00:21:52.980 Right.

00:21:57.020 Right.

00:21:57.180 Right.

00:21:59.540 Right.

00:21:59.800 Right.

00:22:00.740 Right.

00:22:01.840 Right.

00:22:03.620 Right.

00:22:04.180 Right.

RadixJournal - July 03, 2024

Absolute Power

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