Mark Hemmingway joins me to discuss the Supreme Court's recent ruling allowing mail-in ballots to be counted after election day, and why this could have a massive impact on the integrity of our election system. He also talks about why he thinks the court should strike down the Voting Rights Act and the gerrymandering that goes along with it.
00:00:00.580Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:07.420Before we get started, I just want to remind you that, of course, America's 250th anniversary is coming up.
00:00:13.580And if you want to pick up some great merch to celebrate the holiday, you can head over to ShopBlazeMedia.com.
00:00:19.780When you do, use the promo code ORIN10 to get 10% off your order and to get 30 days of free Blaze TV.
00:00:27.720so shop blazemedia.com use the promo code or intend to get that 10 off your order and then
00:00:34.300you'll get a 30-day free trial for blaze tv as well all right guys we've had a couple of rather
00:00:41.580unfortunate uh supreme court decisions here in the last few days they're gonna have a very serious
00:00:47.220impact on our elections and unfortunately possibly the integrity of our entire nation
00:00:54.040join me to discuss this today as a man who has written for pretty much every conservative
00:00:57.900publication you can think of mark hemingway thank you so much for coming on man how are you doing
00:01:02.320i practically worked at every conservative publication you can think of right i could
00:01:07.980just start listing them but why bother right just say yes what you're trying to say is i'm old um
00:01:13.080yes but but with excellent experience um so uh mark i know that you and your wife wrote a book
00:01:22.480about uh election integrity the election of 2020 everything that happened going on there this is
00:01:28.840something that you are well versed in uh so let's start with the ruling that is getting less
00:01:33.840attention but i think is also incredibly important what happened with mail-in balance what did the
00:01:39.060supreme court rule in this case uh they basically ruled that you know states that have existing laws
00:01:44.760allowing you to accept uh mail-in ballots absentee ballots after election day um you know are are are
00:01:52.020fine. Basically, the Supreme Court is, you know, there are huge problems with this decision just
00:01:57.440from a common sense perspective in terms of, you know, you look at a lot of these states where,
00:02:02.760you know, there's an issue where, you know, like in California, I believe the law is, you know,
00:02:06.960they will accept ballots after election day if they don't even necessarily have postmarks,
00:02:10.920which is just absolute madness. I mean, there's no way to prove there's any sort of chain of
00:02:15.780custody or anything like that with these particular ballots that come in after election day. So,
00:02:21.760just you know obviously from a fraud perspective that's a problem and the idea that we don't have
00:02:26.480fraud problems because of this is just absolute nonsense um we had you know two elections in the
00:02:32.880largest city in connecticut basically that were stolen by a democratic mayor um you know elections
00:02:38.320literally overturned because they caught someone who worked for his campaign on bat on camera
00:02:43.440stuffing you know about stuffing drop boxes with you know mail-in ballots um and uh you know this
00:02:50.480likely extended to two mayoral primaries that he won narrowly this way. And the interesting thing
00:02:57.060about this is the only reason why we know this happened is because it happened in a Democratic
00:03:01.560primary, where there was an actual incentive for the urban Democratic machine, like not everybody
00:03:07.000was aligned on who was stealing the election. You had this been a general election where we're
00:03:11.140stuffing a ballot box against Republican, of course, you know, there just isn't any sort of,
00:03:15.240you know, institutional incentive when you have, you know, majority Democrat urban machine to
00:03:22.220determine whether or not there's any ballot fraud in sort of general elections. So there are obvious
00:03:30.360problems with this. Now, from the Supreme Court's perspective, I think what is going on here to some
00:03:36.660extent is there's been a lot of hand-wringing, particularly by John Roberts, you know, the chief
00:03:42.340justice about preserving the quote-unquote integrity of the court in the eyes of the
00:03:48.660And the Supreme Court had previously handed down a very controversial decision, at least
00:03:53.640controversial for the left, that the Voting Rights Act mandated gerrymandering congressional
00:04:01.160districts explicitly on racial lines, that this had been accepted law in a lot of places
00:04:05.240in the country, even though it's just prima facie and sane, that in a country where you're
00:04:11.060not supposed to discriminate against people if they were doing this. And the Supreme Court had
00:04:14.320said, no, you can't, you know, you know, can't draw congressional race, you know, congressional
00:04:20.140boundaries strictly on race. I mean, that's ridiculous. And Justice Thomas, of course,0.97
00:04:24.440went even further than that and said he would strike that entire part of the Voting Rights Act
00:04:28.620that, you know, that people were using to interpret to say that this was, you know, an okay thing to
00:04:33.320do. And I think what the Supreme Court is just trying to do is they're trying to preserve their
00:04:37.920integrated by saying, we're just going to stay out of how local elections are, you know, run
00:04:42.760pretty much, you know, all together, you know, states are going to have the final authority
00:04:47.680on how they conduct their elections, not federal courts coming in and saying you have to racially
00:04:52.940gerrymander, not federal courts coming in and saying you can't accept ballots after election
00:04:58.040day, you know, one for the right, one for the left or whatever. And the problem is, is that,
00:05:03.460But when these decisions aren't dictated along the lines of the law and common sense necessarily, over time, it starts to look like they're making decisions to preserve the integrity of the court rather than ruling on the law.
00:05:18.460And that, over time, is going to be the thing that undermines people's perception of the court's integrity.
00:05:24.660Right. That's a huge problem. You can't just say, well, we're a body that interprets a set piece of law.
00:05:32.400But if we feel like it might create some civil unrest or it might undermine our position somewhere in the body politic, well, then we'll just make another decision and we'll kind of just invent the, you know, the ideas behind it along the way.
00:06:00.700And what it's really going to do is it's going to create a whole new set of issues that, of course, the Supreme Court's going to have to decide further down the line.
00:06:07.640You know, they're just creating bigger headaches for themselves, you know, ultimately, I think, in a lot of ways.
00:06:12.140Never mind that we're already dealing with this situation here where preserving the, quote, unquote, integrity of the court is like, I'm sorry, that horse is out of the barn.
00:06:19.800Democrats have decided they've already gone all in on court packing, basically.
00:06:23.600they had complete control of the court for decades and decades and decades and all of a sudden they
00:06:29.400don't have control of the court for the first time in a you know couple of generations and they're
00:06:34.080freaking out and they have you know shown no integrity of their own on this you know they're
00:06:40.600gonna you know if they if they get the ability to you know uh you know gain control of all three
00:06:45.960branches or whatever they're gonna do something drastic and i mean like this is the thing right
00:06:50.140now that I think everybody should be worried about, which is that, you know, the 2030 census
00:06:54.600is going to be existential for Democrats in a lot of ways. I mean, the way it's going to reapportion
00:06:58.520congressional seats and electoral votes in this country is going to make it very hard for Democrats
00:07:03.960to win nationally for a long time to come. I mean, the bottom line here is that democratic
00:07:08.840governance is a national crisis and we need to be treating it as such. And one of the problems
00:07:13.540that that's created in terms of this quote unquote crisis is one for the Democratic Party
00:07:18.400itself. Nobody wants to live in areas that are governed by Democrats anymore. And they're all
00:07:22.460moving to South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, you know, the, the, the Sunbelt, uh,
00:07:27.880you know, you know, or, you know, places where they're just even places like Arizona, which
00:07:31.600aren't necessarily Republican, but are just far less democratic and more sane than, you know,
00:07:36.480California, for instance. So, um, you know, when, if, if Democrats get control of all three branches
00:07:42.860of, you know, in, in 2028, they're going to make, they're going to try and do something drastic.
00:07:47.280I don't know whether it means creating two new states out of Puerto Rico and D.C. or packing the court or whatever it is they have to do.
00:07:54.500But that's what we're looking at right now, and their approach to the court is a big part of that.
00:08:00.280In addition to the fact that they're freaking out that they just don't have control over this branch, they've also just figured out that the way that the modern judiciary has developed, it's the only branch of government that basically has no democratic accountability.
00:08:11.700And you can just create laws and do whatever the hell you want ex-cathedra at this point in time.
00:08:15.820And if you look at, you know, all of these national injunctions that completely random federal judges are handing down against Trump, it's pretty clear that judges are abusing their power and Democrats intend to let them abuse their power, you know, because it's only really running in one direction.
00:08:32.480You didn't see a flood of nationwide injunctions against Obama or Biden.
00:08:38.200I mean, you saw a few here and there, but but not anywhere near the level.
00:08:43.220I mean, I forget people have done charts on this, but I mean, like the number of national injunctions that have happened just in Trump's term, you know, exceeds the last however many presidents combined. It's nuts.
00:08:53.420Well, and I don't think that this is a coincidence. I think that this was a situation manufactured by the left.
00:09:00.080I mean, they basically paralyzed Congress.
00:09:06.500If a Republican's in charge, you have the deep state and you have the inability to actually use the machinery of the executive branch in any meaningful sense.
00:09:15.260And so the only real branch of government that consistently could deliver any kind of result, I mean, Congress can't even pass a budget.
00:09:23.220Well, we've got judges basically ruling the country.
00:09:25.860The only time we actually see real legislative change in any significant sense is when the courts decide legislation said something else. And that's what really matters. And so they built basically, I mean, you look at the Civil Rights Act and all of the case law around it and how it radically warped the entirety of the American experience without basically any legislation being passed for a very long time.
00:09:48.620you know, that ability was something that the Democrats entirely relied on. And when they lost
00:09:53.660control of the highest version of the court, you know, that obviously sent them into a panic
00:09:58.580because they created this monster and now they didn't entirely control it. But yeah, you're
00:10:03.020right. Like going forward, the plan is to ensure that nothing like that could ever happen again.
00:10:07.720Yes, no, that's, that's exactly right. And, you know, so much of this is just about
00:10:13.440propping up the system anymore or whatever. And frankly, part of the problem here is,
00:10:18.620is that the system for so long has, you know, relied on assumptions that, you know,
00:10:25.800support liberal America's vision for things basically, or whatever. And, you know, here's
00:10:32.460the thing I will say, there've been a couple of really bad Supreme Court decisions here, but,
00:10:36.320you know, and again, this is not necessarily a huge compliment to the current court.
00:10:41.100But one thing people need to understand is this is the best Supreme Court we've had in American history, period.
00:10:46.900I mean, it really is like that. That's that's that's not necessarily a compliment to the judicial branch or the Supreme Court.
00:10:54.360But to be perfectly perfectly honest, I mean, originalism has won the day.
00:10:58.960You know, even the liberal justices pretty much, you know, argue from originalist point of view, you know,
00:11:04.920And, you know, even with John Roberts and Justice Barrett doing some things that are, you know, causing a lot of consternation on the right, you know, those are two justices that still routinely have weighed in on the right position on some, you know, fairly important things for conservatives in this country.
00:11:21.180And things that I should clarify aren't just, you know, good for conservatives.
00:11:25.260These are things that are very much in accordance with, you know, what the Constitution was, you know, intended to be, you know, and general human flourishing and liberty.
00:11:33.980um so you know we shouldn't be completely despairing in that regard but it should also
00:11:39.980be a wake-up call to show you like look this is the best spring court we've ever had we got a long
00:11:44.220ways to go here um and it's just frustrating because you know look we overturned roe v wade
00:11:50.060right and that was a generational project that was 50 years and lots of money and huge amounts
00:11:57.020of investment and everything and it's like we won on the legal question finally and quite
00:12:01.180definitively and i you know and at the same time uh living for 50 years under the the insane regime
00:12:09.340created by roe v wade where you could kill an unborn child for any reason at any time uh you
00:12:14.940know we had an abortion regime this country went far beyond what you know socialist europe had
00:12:19.900i'm in terms of its you know you know being lax and frankly barbaric um and that had a radical0.75
00:12:27.020transformational effect on the culture and you know now that we've undone undone roe v wade
00:12:33.420has it necessarily slowed down abortion in this country no it hasn't right we've got this huge
00:12:38.380cultural battle that we now have to fight but we you know we couldn't have we couldn't have fought
00:12:43.100it at a reasonable piecemeal way because the existing law was so insane for so long um and
00:12:49.900that's kind of what we're dealing with here i'm afraid on the birthright citizenship thing like
00:12:53.900I'm not a doomer on the birthright citizenship issue, and certainly I think we're going to go
00:13:00.020into that. But the reality is that it's going to force a generational battle. It's going to force
00:13:04.480us to start vetting for judges on immigration. The way that we vet it for judges and make sure
00:13:09.520that they're pro-life and other things like that, it's going to cause us to completely refocus and
00:13:14.120redirect a lot of our energies toward undoing the damage. No, I agree with all of that. And
00:13:19.560you know you're right to stop and pause and say look as frustrating as these rulings are
00:13:24.200you know this is the best court we've had in an extremely long time you know it's like when people
00:13:30.040get angry at the trump administration it's like look guys i i understand i have my disagreements
00:13:33.940but you know they're still the best republican administration i've seen in my entire lifetime
00:13:38.780now that might be insufficient like things might be so dire that the best is not enough but that
00:13:44.940doesn't you know you still have to keep that in mind that you know that the reality is they are
00:13:49.720still outperforming everything we've seen before basically yes uh but that said i share your
00:13:57.040concerns about the generational nature of what this project is going to entail because i was
00:14:01.600actually going to bring up exactly what you just said there with roe v wade you know we spent so
00:14:05.720many decades vote vetting these judges focusing entirely on pro-life causes making this essential
00:14:12.640thing and you know rightly so abortion is an absolute you know crime against humanity it
00:14:18.260should absolutely be outlawed um that that was the right thing to focus on at that time
00:14:23.500but the amount of time it took for that generational change to occur meant that basically
00:14:30.480we lost the the war while winning that battle in a lot of ways i don't know that we could even
00:14:37.680convince the culture at large anymore. We were much closer in the 1970s in convincing people
00:14:43.540that abortion was wrong than we are today, even though we couldn't do it because of the legal
00:14:47.320framework. Now we have the legal framework, but the culture is so far gone. I don't know that we
00:14:51.460can fight back to that point. And I fear the same to be true of birthright citizenship. Yeah, I think
00:14:58.180we do start vetting judges for this. I think we do make this the litmus test. We make it clear
00:15:02.520that this is the only way to understand the 14th amendment but you know when we have originalist
00:15:08.140judges saying actually the 14th amendment totally meant chinese birthright citizenship
00:15:12.260what does the originalist hermeneutic even mean at that point and if we do groom judges to
00:15:18.260specifically understand that issue and not just the general approach to the constitution
00:15:23.080and it takes us another 50 years to get you know a bench full of guys who believe that
00:15:28.200then what will the country look like yeah the democrats are in trouble because uh no one wants0.97
00:15:33.180to live in the areas they govern except all the third worlders they want to bring in and give0.98
00:15:36.900citizenship to in 50 years will people even remember what it looks like to have a functional
00:15:41.480society to fall back on yeah so one of the things we need to understand here i think is that uh
00:15:47.980the conservative legal movement right now is kind of like the dog that caught the car bumper
00:15:51.640um you know there were so many things here where you know the the conservative legal movement was
00:15:56.720set up to like you know fix right um they were gonna um you know like and if you look at what's
00:16:02.880been accomplished just in like the last decade with you know roe v wade you know chevron restraining
00:16:08.320federal power um you know i mean generation multiple generational victories on the second
00:16:13.420amendment and religious freedom i mean these are really really big things i mean like let's let's
00:16:18.180be clear here you know um there's a a lot of you know wonderful things that have come out of
00:16:23.720conservative legal movement. If you look at the conservative movement as a whole, the conservative
00:16:27.940legal movement itself might be the most successful sort of part of that sort of coalition in terms of
00:16:33.520having, you know, lasting change, achieving lasting victories. Okay. You know, does that mean that,
00:16:41.720you know, we're in a great place right now? No, it doesn't. But it's not anything to sneeze at.
00:16:47.080It is also true that, you know, part of the issue there is the part of the reason we were focusing
00:16:51.800on things like the second amendment and roe v wade and all these other things is because you know 10
00:16:57.48015 years ago even though you know there were plenty of people that were pointing cassandra
00:17:02.440like to the problems of mass immigration it really didn't seem like an issue um that most people were
00:17:08.720concerned about and moreover you know probably wrongly but there was already a fairly big
00:17:13.980consensus view across the board that birthright citizenship was a thing that was in the constitution
00:17:18.780and had been that way for 100 150 years um even though as we're learning you know um the historical
00:17:25.260record on this issue is a lot more complicated um and you know worth paying attention to so um
00:17:33.580i again i i you know i you know you could there are people that would say the federalist society
00:17:40.460and all these other things had turned into sort of you know careerists or whatever you know and
00:17:44.780had gotten sort of fat and happy and didn't take the principles at stake um you know as seriously
00:17:49.580as they should have and i think that there's some you know might be a little bit of truth to that
00:17:53.900i mean part of the one of the issues is that we need to go after as a conservative we need to go
00:17:57.580after big law a lot more strongly trump started to do that but um there's a lot that's going on
00:18:01.980in big law firms that is i think corrupting things um but it's also true again that i think that you
00:18:07.340know you're seeing the conservative legal movement that is turning fairly sharply on this issue
00:18:12.300um and and i think they're going to be in in the right place um but again it's just a question
00:18:17.340how much time and energy it's going to take to get to a point where you know we overturn this
00:18:22.060but it's also true that 10 15 years ago um this you know just wasn't an issue on everybody's
00:18:28.140radar i mean it really wasn't until joe biden tried to literally weaponize it by letting in
00:18:32.860you know 10 12 15 you know whatever the estimates are but you know it's at least 10 million illegals
00:18:38.860into the country as a deliberate attempt to change the demographics, that, you know,0.57
00:19:06.360And I guess, you know, the biggest problem, I think, for allowing this to be addressed was that until things got pretty obviously dire, it was very difficult to have the conversation with conservatives about why demographics matter.
00:19:24.940You weren't allowed to talk about it.0.99
00:19:26.660You know, Ben Shapiro, you know, famously, I don't give a damn about the browning of America.0.71
00:19:31.400You know, these are things that we're not allowed to address.
00:19:33.940We're not allowed to notice that different groups have different cultures and those cultures come with different traditions that will support different political ideas, that these are not just completely disembodied, you know, ideological things just floating in the air, that political positions and political understandings are actually grounded in the way people grow up, the way they understand the world, the religions, these things.
00:19:59.760And so when we import people from many different places who do not hold these values, they will eventually change the nature of the United States and its legal culture and its legislation, everything else alongside it.
00:20:14.760Like this was just something that was aggressively gatecapped out of almost all conservative institutions and conversations.0.67
00:20:21.700Of course, you have the Pat Buchanan's, as you say, you have these others who were up
00:20:25.720front about this early, but, you know, Enoch Powell and Pat Buchanan are making comeback
00:20:29.860for a reason here, you know, that they obviously saw this a long way out.
00:20:33.960And I think the good news is it does seem like we're much more comfortable having this
00:20:42.260I'm constantly on mainstream, you know, talk shows or, you know, these different organizations
00:20:48.100and they're having this conversation, like they're recognizing this issue.
00:20:51.360So I think that we shouldn't discount how far things have come. There has been a radical change in just the last five to 10 years on this. But I just worry that this is a ticking time bomb. And we spent so much time telling people not to look at the time bomb that we only have so much time left to diffuse this before it really becomes an issue that can no longer be addressed in this manner.
00:21:12.880yeah and i think that like so what you said there is exactly the reason why i think part of the
00:21:18.080issue is the judiciary has to pull its head out of its posterior um you know like you mentioned
00:21:23.720earlier you talked about you know the hermeneutics of of originalism like what does this even mean
00:21:27.860at a certain point right and so one of the things that's interesting uh you know my wife just wrote
00:21:32.640a book on justice samuel alito and one of the things that's interesting about samuel alito is
00:21:36.360that he's an originalist but with a giant asterisk he calls himself a practical originalist like
00:21:41.760Basically, the deal here is he thinks it's really important to determine the, you know, the, you know, why a law was created and what the rationale or whatever was behind it.
00:21:50.920But at the end of the day, you know, it can't just be an argument about semantics.
00:21:54.620Like, you've got to figure out what, you know, the the the the the end result that you want that is both compatible with the Constitution and is, you know, a matter of sort of human, you know, what is going to produce the most in the way of human flourishing.
00:22:07.280um and uh you know the birthright citizenship case is a very good example of this right you
00:22:15.420know you can go down these textualist rabbit holes about oh well the constitution this is
00:22:19.980what they obviously intended i guarantee you that you know if i could you know um exhume george0.91
00:22:26.320washington's you know corpse and have him talk to us he would look at you know chinese spies
00:22:31.620flowing flying the territories in the northern marianas or whatever and giving birth and having
00:22:36.540kids that are you know citizens the united states that can you know run for president or whatever
00:22:40.700he would say that is absolute madness right you know uh so look yes i mean i think the actual
00:22:47.440historical and quote-unquote originalist textualist case um against birthright citizenship is far
00:22:52.900stronger than uh the decision that was handed down would have you believe and in fact if you
00:22:57.860read clarence thomas's 91 page dissent and alito's brilliant dissent as well you'll see that
00:23:02.980They, they, they, they raise all kinds of issues that the majority doesn't have any
00:23:14.160Like, you know, if this is something that is like literally threatens, you know, the1.00
00:23:17.880destruction of the Republic and it has, you know, profoundly negative consequences for
00:23:21.220the country, you have to do something about it.
00:23:24.060And look, look, I understand this is a tricky issue for constitutional jurisprudence, right?
00:23:30.680and you have people all the time that say well you know that when they wrote the first amendment
00:23:34.580they didn't have social media in mind and it's so much you know worse or whatever um you know and
00:23:39.880to some extent like i'm a radically pro second amendment guy but at the same time like i just
00:23:45.560accept that machine guns are outlawed because if you look what happened the early 1930s with john
00:23:49.960dillinger and pretty boy floyd and you know bonnie and clyde and like all these interstate bank
00:23:54.660robbers using tommy guns all at once you can see where the public freaked out and said the second
00:23:59.020Amendment was not intended for this, whether or not you think that's the right cultural or legal
00:24:03.760attitude at all. But people looked at this, and they said, we want a certain practical outcome.
00:24:08.900Well, look, we've got to have a certain practical outcome here that is good for the preservation of,
00:24:14.960you know, this country and the preservation of liberty. And I think in this case, it's not a,
00:24:20.200you know, a tricky question of, you know, whether or not the Second Amendment, you know,
00:24:23.200prohibited machine guns or, you know, the actual legal question here is much clearer in terms of
00:24:32.640the text and history. You know, it's not just a question of like new technology or something like
00:24:38.260this. I mean, I think that this is something that, you know, as a practical matter, we can find
00:24:43.220agreement on. Yeah, I mean, this, you know, obviously, Thomas and Alito are amazing. You
00:24:49.920know i've i've i've been regularly you know declaring that we should clone clarence thomas
00:24:54.560or you know put him on the the the golden throne and maintain him you know in perpetuity uh to to
00:25:01.400ensure that he can rule over the united states and protect the republic like obviously these guys are
00:25:05.740amazing my worry is that it's the people behind them you know ironically the people who should
00:25:10.900have what should be more conservative attitudes that seem to not get it i mean it's hard to look
00:25:16.540at originalism seriously when you say that the 14th amendment allows for chinese birth tourism
00:25:22.960you know we're in a scenario where the current interpretation of the first amendment means that0.62
00:25:28.060i have to allow someone to build a giant you know hindu demon god or you know build their own muslim
00:25:33.580city in the middle of texas when in reality if you look at the first amendment up until like 18400.86
00:25:40.560we were banning catholics from holding public office so the idea that the founders originally0.96
00:25:45.920admit that, yeah, you should just let anyone of any religion completely dominate the public square0.99
00:25:52.140is ridiculous. It's in no way original. But that's what most originalists would hold today. And the0.55
00:25:57.520same thing is to be true of birthright citizenship. It seems like originalism is whatever you heard
00:26:01.620on NPR on the way over to the courthouse more than it is the actual original position of the
00:26:07.840people who wrote these documents. Well, it's not even that. I mean, you're seeing all these things
00:26:11.780being used as a wedge right you know they are using you know the freedom that you give them
00:26:18.120to amass power so that they can you know eliminate freedom i mean that's really what's you know0.93
00:26:23.280going on here does anybody think a majority muslim society in the united states or even0.92
00:26:28.460majority muslim towns that we're seeing in michigan here are going to be pro-freedom pro-religious
00:26:33.460freedom pro-tolerance it's not going to happen so again like i said it's you know originalism
00:26:39.160is the goal originalism is a good thing original is a good framework but at the end of the day you
00:26:44.640have to ask yourself like is there a practical outcome here that we we we need to move toward
00:26:50.580in order to preserve you know you know basic you know you know a basic orderly society you know
00:26:58.140based on certain values that will you know preserve liberty for the next generation and beyond
00:27:02.520and and that's the that's the problem that that's where we're at right now people are not able to
00:27:07.760think in those terms i mean part of the issue here though is also just to be honest um clarence
00:27:14.300thomas and and again i don't know i'm partial to alito but like alito these these men are not just
00:27:21.240it's not just that they issue good rulings and these men are absolutely brilliant i mean they're
00:27:26.220able to see things in second third fourth order consequences i mean one of the things about
00:27:30.660clarence thomas is that you know he stakes out oftentimes maximal positions in in dissents and
00:27:36.880things like that. But they're so well laid out that down the line, people end up just following
00:27:42.340his trail of logic or whatever. And, you know, he achieves victories that way. I mean, you look at
00:27:47.140how Sam Alito conducts himself in oral questioning. I mean, he's just the number of times that he is
00:27:51.980just completely blown up an entire case just by asking a basic question at the right moment in
00:27:59.140the right context. I mean, it's just like, I mean, this is, you know, these are men that do not come0.99
00:28:04.440along uh very often and we need to pay attention to them so i'm not eager to replace them on the
00:28:09.880court even though they're very old and i'm you know i'm looking at the actuarial tables for
00:28:13.620black men and clarence thomas's age and i'm certainly worried about what might happen but
00:28:18.480at the same time then you know i don't know what to say unlike say ruth bader ginsburg
00:28:22.580um who destroyed democrats uh hopes for you know getting control of the court by staying on
00:28:28.180um you know i'm sorry i think feel like clarence thomas to some extent has earned that right
00:28:33.180But, you know, we need to be demanding more of basically everyone in public life.
00:28:38.620And, you know, if you want to know what we demand at that level, well, it should be Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are probably the single two best, you know, in terms of integrity.
00:28:50.560I don't, you know, by the way, you know how there's a quote unquote ethics scandal everyone's always throwing in their faces.
00:28:56.860ProPublica, which is an awful, awful liberal news organization, they say in their financial disclosures, I believe they got $54 million just to dig up dirt on conservative Supreme Court justices.
00:29:12.200We need to defend these men and we need to uphold them as an example for generations to come.
00:29:18.680we also need billionaires who will put 54 bill or 54 million dollars into you know going after
00:29:26.100a supreme court justice i mean i'll just be frank the democrats are playing an entirely
00:29:30.440different game man like it's not even close every conservative donor is like well if i give you a
00:29:35.080hundred thousand dollars i need to see these 15 things done by the end of the month democrats are
00:29:39.680just like yeah so i gave a couple billion dollars to whoever and uh they'll just do whatever they
00:29:43.860need to do with it uh it it's absolutely absurd the you know the the uh it where there's no parody
00:29:50.120here it it's not even close yeah well so my concern is this um i am famously not a huge fan of
00:29:58.420democracy um however if we're going to hold this thing together people have to have at least some
00:30:04.660belief that legit that elections are legitimate now we've already had the fact that basically
00:30:10.240every election of my lifetime has been called illegitimate by the opposing party the idea that
00:30:15.840you just peacefully transfer power to someone else is increasingly something under dispute
00:30:21.440but when we have a scenario where it's more or less a free-for-all on balloting and when
00:30:28.640foreign populations are allowed to come in and you know completely transform the you know the
00:30:34.640the voter dynamic at every generation a question quickly becomes how long will people look at0.97
00:30:41.620elections as a legitimate mechanism for transferring power inside the united states i mean
00:30:47.620i i really do worry about this i know that this is doomer or whatever but i don't think it's any
00:30:53.540level of hyperbole to say that we're increasingly reaching a point where uh you know no side will
00:31:00.840ever view each other's elections as legitimate ever again and increasingly at least on the
00:31:06.160conservative side you'll be able to see the raw mechanism by which those elections are being
00:31:10.620stolen and what do you do in a moment like that like i you know obviously there's no easy answer
00:31:16.580to that but it just feels like that is a path we are moving down far more quickly than i'm
00:31:21.180comfortable with and very few people seem to be taking it very seriously you know that's a really
00:31:26.800a good question and i don't have a very good answer for it um the issue is you know primarily
00:31:32.800one i think that most affects presidential elections and like that's that's a huge problem
00:31:37.700what i what i can say however is that you know increasingly we're seeing a massive divide between
00:31:44.440red and blue states in terms of like functional governance um i mean like this is just you know
00:31:49.920it's massive and and unavoidable um you know i i'm from oregon and uh if you look at what
00:31:56.600has happened to oregon in the span of you know you know 25 30 years um to being run by you know
00:32:02.960rockefeller libertarian republicans to now wild radical progressives um you know i mean i
00:32:11.420and i've written about this extensively um the amount of governmental dysfunction in just
00:32:17.080And again, a state of four million people, it shouldn't be that hard to govern. It's just off the charts.
00:32:22.460You know, the progressives in control of the state right now are frankly flailing.
00:32:27.120I don't think they're necessarily in any danger of losing a statewide election, but it's closer than you might imagine.
00:32:32.900There was a huge earthquake recently in the state when the progressive governor called a special legislative session after she failed with Democratic super majorities in both houses to pass the largest state tax increase in history.
00:32:51.180And then she ended up strong arming the legislature into passing it by one vote in each house.
00:32:58.300and then immediately in a state of four million people they got something like 400,000 signatures
00:33:03.740like in the span of six weeks to get it on the ballot to overturn this tax increase like
00:33:08.720you're starting to you're going to start to see I think some kind of rebellions around the margins
00:33:13.800you know even Spencer Pratt failing miserably in LA I mean like I think that's been a wake-up call
00:33:19.160for a lot of people and you know a lot of Californians and that dysfunction and that
00:33:23.880contrast between, you know, say, what goes on in, you know, Idaho or Tennessee is going to be
00:33:29.020increasingly obvious. And I hope that will point the way toward, you know, some kind of reform or
00:33:35.580some kind of, you know, waking up, but I'm not super optimistic about, say, California reforming
00:33:41.620itself anytime soon. But it's also true that you can only put off the consequences of that level
00:33:47.260of, you know, terrible governance for so long. I mean, Mom Donnie's out there right now bragging
00:33:53.500about how new york just passed 125 billion dollar quote-unquote balanced budget a budget only
00:33:59.960balanced by getting several billion dollars from the state to bail them out in the immediate term
00:34:04.320and deferring massive amounts of pension payments i mean like this is like the rubber's going to hit
00:34:10.160the road here in a very big way look what's going on in illinois and connecticut with pensions and
00:34:13.920things i mean it's just everywhere you look under blue state governance it's just an absolute
00:34:20.580disaster. And I think people are going to wake up to the contrast of these things. I mean,
00:34:26.840this was the subtext of Ezra Klein's abundance book, right? You know, the whole thing was
00:34:31.940Democrats cannot govern. They cannot build anything. And Democrats, in order to stay
00:34:36.280viable as a party, have to demonstrate that they can do that. Democrats have instead chosen a
00:34:41.060different route. Like they are, they're going to go full socialism and they're hoping to take over
00:34:45.960the country as a whole with socialism to make it so that you can't escape California for Tennessee
00:34:50.460or Idaho, because it's just all going to be bad everywhere. And, uh, you know, it's going to be
00:34:55.080a race to see whether they can do that or not. I I'm not confident they'll be able to pull that
00:34:59.060off. Um, and if they do try and pull it off, there will be something more drastic. Uh, I don't want
00:35:04.900to, you know, even speculate about the, you know, the crack of the United States or whatever, but
00:35:08.780like it, it, it could get that bad if, if they continue going down the path that they're going0.99
00:35:13.640because they are that inept. Well, I certainly agree that the contrast between how red states0.92
00:35:20.140are being run as opposed to blue states should be sending signals to people. That should be
00:35:26.500too much when you look at the degradation of so many of these blue states that should have
00:35:32.600every advantage and yet somehow are still falling apart, are still falling behind the standards of
00:35:38.360living, everything else, just basic functions of municipalities and counties and these things
00:35:43.440are completely collapsing. And so I would hope, as you say, that this wakes people up. But the
00:35:49.500problem seems to be that instead they just go Zora Mamdani. They just go with with someone like0.75
00:35:55.720that. And at some level, yeah, I would agree that they probably couldn't take over the entire United
00:36:02.120States with socialism. But what they can do is bring a lot of people who are very, very comfortable
00:36:07.660with third world socialist government into the United States and ensure that they're the ones0.96
00:36:13.040that are ultimately deciding these elections i mean you'll have people flee from these blue
00:36:17.340states and yeah they i mean i live in florida we got a little better because of covid but for a
00:36:23.060very long time we were a purple state trending blue because people would flee you know new jersey
00:36:29.460and new york and they'd come down here and vote for exactly what they got up there the fact that
00:36:33.900they fleed didn't in any way change their political beliefs or you know they just came down and said
00:36:39.160hey, why don't you guys have higher teacher pay and unions like we have up north? This is
00:36:43.920ridiculous. We should change that. And so that was the attitude that the vast majority of people0.61
00:36:48.720coming in the state had. Now, when they came with COVID, it was people who were specifically fleeing
00:36:52.980the madness from COVID. And that kind of set the state back to red. So hopefully that's the trend.
00:36:58.940It's no longer just people fleeing the economic conditions, but it's people who are actually
00:37:02.820seeking that ideological shift in governance. But I do worry that that's ultimately what we're
00:37:07.940just going to see is blue state migration to turn red states purple and blue states just well they
00:37:13.300become red in the communist sense well yeah i don't know again i'm from oregon and obviously
00:37:19.460a huge amount of oregon's problems are the results of uh demographic shifts that came from out of
00:37:23.440state migration a bunch of californians moved to my hometown my hometown in oregon was 18 000 people
00:37:28.120in the 80s when i moved there it's now over 100 huge amount of you know californians that wanted
00:37:33.000to live in a beautiful mountain town you know we're there now and it's obviously changed the
00:37:36.640politics for the worse. However, I do think that, you know, again, we're in a whole new situation
00:37:42.040here, you know, than we were 15 years ago. You know, when I was, you know, 30 years ago,
00:37:46.900Californians moving into Oregon, or Californians moving to Colorado, or whatever it was,
00:37:50.920it was just a matter of sort of boiling the frog. Whereas now, if you, you know, talk to anybody
00:37:55.200that lives in Texas, you talk to anyone who lives in Tennessee, the people that are there that are
00:37:59.300very, you know, very, you know, conscientious of this, and changing the culture and changing the
00:38:05.220politics or whatever and like they're sort of monitoring this closely in a way that they weren't
00:38:09.620like if you listen to matthew mcconaughey's you know um joe rogan interview like matthew mcconaughey
00:38:15.680was nobody's idea of a conservative but he is you know a native texan actually talks about this he's
00:38:20.360like i tell californians you cannot come to texas and you know pretend that this is california you
00:38:26.440know like this you know we do things a certain way here and we we call it you know texas and
00:38:30.460you know whatever is a particular culture my parents have a friend who is a member of the
00:38:34.300idaho state legislature and i don't even know the constitutionality of this or whatever and i don't
00:38:38.620think it's passed but for several years now he's passed he's been trying to pass a law in idaho
00:38:42.520that says um if you move there from out of state you have to live in the state for five years
00:38:48.340before you can vote in state and local elections oh yeah absolutely i mean so i think people are
00:38:54.340really thinking about this in a way that they weren't before and it's going to make it a lot
00:38:57.880harder to do this um and uh you know i i i don't know but uh you know again though part of the
00:39:06.240problem is it's not just that i think that people are um more accepting of socialism or this or that
00:39:13.780part of the problem is is that um we need to attack all kinds of other institutions i mean
00:39:18.920part of what's going on with the legal stuff that we've been talking about you know again
00:39:23.780read katanji brown jackson's you know opinions and dissents or whatever the problem here is not1.00
00:39:30.260just that she's pushing a radical agenda the problem is that she is actually stupid i mean1.00
00:39:35.780she is she does not deserve to be on the court um she is not intelligent she clearly has been you1.00
00:39:43.860know afforded all kinds of unnecessary grace throughout her life in terms of you know being
00:39:49.260qualified to do things i mean and um i worry that that is just emblematic of where sort of the voting
00:39:56.620public is in terms of like their capacity to even understand supreme court arguments or whatever
00:40:02.140like how much of the general public is even able to read clarence thomas's dissent and you know
00:40:07.740parse why you know read 91 pages of that and parse why it's you know any good i mean you're a former
00:40:13.980public school teacher you probably know how dire it is as you know much as anyone and so I do think
00:40:21.360that we have to combat all kinds of you know institutions here it's not just you know saving
00:40:26.840the conservative legal movement everything has a lot to do with you know fighting academia and
00:40:31.380establishing maybe even new law schools or whatever we need to do but it's it's really is
00:40:37.440part of the the thing here is it's it's on one hand you know it's depressing because it's such
00:40:43.260a multi-pronged fight but you know on the other hand it's like that famous quote from chesty
00:40:47.620polar and korea when he's told that like his men are outnumbered 10 to 1 and he's like great then
00:40:52.300you know we can fire in any direction you know um you know and the thing is is i also think that we0.52
00:40:58.560are also reaching a situation here where it is in the land of the blind the one-eyed men will be
00:41:02.640kings i mean again so many areas of the country anymore are like so dysfunctional that it's going
00:41:08.920to be, uh, easy enough to sort of, you know, mount a challenge, you know, um, it's going to be easy
00:41:16.100to easier to mount a challenge than, than you anticipate. I mean, part of what's going on here
00:41:19.660with the democratic socialists doing so well is that, you know, democratic urban machines have
00:41:25.180become so, um, lethargic and dysfunctional that all it takes is a highly motivated, motivated
00:41:30.320minority to go in and waltz away with a primary election. Um, and I think that, you know, again,
00:41:36.680there's you know we i think we need to start contesting things a lot more than we have in
00:41:43.040urban areas you know i think spencer pratt was a massive wake-up call on that particular issue
00:41:48.540like we can actually make real headway here actually and even in a place like la if we just
00:41:53.960go in and you know and you know really fight for it but the problem is and the problem the
00:41:59.180conservative movement has been for a long time is you know not a lot of people are willing to
00:42:03.940fight for it the way that Democrats are. I mean, like that DSA woman who just won the congressional
00:42:09.180primary, what's her, Chevalier or whatever. I mean, she was a college student for the last
00:42:13.700seven years. I mean, you know, conservatives have actual jobs, you know, families to raise
00:42:20.380or whatever. It's hard to fight against that. But I think that we're going to have to find the will
00:42:25.400and energy or whatever to go into areas where people, where things aren't, haven't been
00:42:29.040previously contested and start contesting them yeah i mean look i've been listening to talk radio
00:42:35.980uh since i was like seven you know uh i i love the line that democrats don't have jobs as much
00:42:43.260as anybody and it's of course true it's of course true but at some point we have to realize well if
00:42:48.060the revolutionaries without jobs are winning then we need to either look at the system or we have to
00:42:53.480look at you know our approach to it yeah you're in the belly of the beast right now uh you you
00:42:58.660interact with people in washington all the time is there an understanding that republicans have
00:43:03.740to get more serious about this stuff that they're you know we are looking at an existential crisis i
00:43:08.500mean so much of this is frankly uh you know to to just be real honest about funding again as we
00:43:15.140talked about with democrats you know you can sit around as a democratic activist for years doing
00:43:21.020nothing because you'll get paid you'll clear a check you know you'll continue to be able to pay
00:43:26.560rent and have food that's not available for republicans i have a whole slew mark of like
00:43:32.260really intelligent incredibly capable very fired up you know right-wing guys who are ready to go
00:43:38.700into the trenches and get things done i cannot get them through the door i cannot get them through
00:43:42.920the door at any institution i cannot get them you know some kind of sinecure it is impossible
00:43:48.920to even get conservative organizations to hire right-wing men i do not know how to solve this
00:43:55.340problem so to be clear here that there's two issues here in dc one is broader institutional
00:44:02.720dc and the other is congress frankly and in that regard um you need to separate them out broader
00:44:09.920institutional dc has gotten way more based as the kids say um and the younger people that i encounter
00:44:16.660like if i encounter conservatives under 30 in this town it's like whoa you're to the right of
00:44:22.620Genghis Khan. And that's, you know, considering what we have to face and what we're dealing with,
00:44:27.600I don't mean that as an insult. And the think tanks themselves, one, there's a lot of great
00:44:34.140new institutions in terms of, you know, think tanks and stuff that are great, that, you know,
00:44:39.800have sprung up in the Trump era, you know, sort of Partnership Institute, you know, Russ Votes
00:44:44.720Organization, other things that are just great in terms of being much more conservative and much
00:44:51.300more attuned to quote unquote, what time it is. Um, and, and that's all happening. It's very well
00:44:56.580at the same time, the heritage foundation, which, you know, has like a $3 billion endowment. Um,
00:45:01.720and, uh, um, you know, for the longest time was frankly kind of useless, um, has really made a
00:45:09.360turn in the last few years. I know Kevin Roberts got all kinds of flack for the, the, the, the,
00:45:15.060the defense of Tucker Carlson, et cetera, among institutional conservatives. But the reality is
00:45:21.700that the Heritage Foundation, which has among the most assets and firepower of any big think tank
00:45:28.520in town, has really become a lot more aligned with true conservative voters in a way that is
00:45:34.740encouraging. So that's all great. The second issue is Congress. And I do not know even where
00:45:41.680to begin to tell you with that uh republicans in congress particularly republican senators0.99
00:45:46.740are the most useless human beings on the face of the earth like there's always a handful of good0.99
00:45:52.480ones don't get me wrong that are actually out there fighting the good fight or whatever and0.99
00:45:56.300frankly those guys get belittled by their colleagues you know 90 of the time you know for
00:46:02.140you know actually trying to affect change we love our eric schmidt don't we folks yeah we love eric
00:46:07.420Schmidt you know Mike Lee you know he's out there you know trying to well saying hey well what if we
00:46:13.240do this and he's constantly getting mocked for I mean it's just it's insane um and never mind if
00:46:19.220you look at what's happening like we have all of these like incredible priorities like the save
00:46:23.060act debate is just the consummate example of this I mean like I literally have spittle on my
00:46:29.000microphone right now like it is it is not that hard you are not going to face a major political
00:46:34.520blowback for passing the freaking save act it will not happen you know and frankly you do not need
00:46:40.840you know to destroy the filibuster to do it like they refuse to take any of the talking filibuster
00:46:44.960arguments seriously which are well established um never mind it is like vitally important to the
00:46:50.900future of the party and the future of this country that we do something about collections um and they
00:46:55.900they won't won't do anything about it and well let's let's drill down on that for just a second
00:47:00.620because this one really fires me up as it obviously very much fires you up and in from
00:47:06.420the outside you know i am but a humble school teacher okay i have not spent years in dc i i
00:47:12.580get up there once or twice a year yeah that's about all i know about dc we're looking at a
00:47:18.280scenario where obviously the save act benefits republicans if you're just looking from a raw
00:47:24.360self-interest forget about principle forget about anything else just what is good for me as a guy
00:47:30.320who wants to stay employed in republican politics passing the save act is the biggest no-brainer
00:47:36.020in history right so how is it that a gop senate who would purely benefit from this bill
00:47:44.560in theory will not vote for it in practice is it is it really that they are just they hate
00:47:51.700america like do they or or is it really a uniparty issue do they see themselves more as part of a
00:47:58.600ruling elite who would benefit from the status quo than they would from any shift in it like what
00:48:04.140is happening here it's it's a uniparty elite issue with a twist here which is to say that
00:48:09.420several republican senators and some have actually become quite open about it you know now that uh
00:48:14.840you know tillis in north carolina whatever's not running for re-election or whatever
00:48:18.180they want to spite trump they actively want to spite him like they do not care that a majority
00:48:23.920of the american people voted for him they do not care that he has far more allegiance um than
00:48:28.680frankly most of the people that voted for them even um it's just that um they don't want to
00:48:36.560rock the boat and they especially want to stick it to trump um and it's and you know a lot of them
00:48:42.400would never admit it um because that would be bad for their re-election chances but you know
00:48:47.020privately that's what they're doing and you know it helps that you've got guys like tom tillis out
00:48:51.840there um you know just talk openly talking crap about trump um or now john cornyn now that he
00:48:59.020lost his primary after the the you know republican party spent how many tens of millions of dollars0.93
00:49:04.000that would have been better deployed um you know um elsewhere trying to defend his you know
00:49:09.920ridiculous incumbency um remember john cornyn was a sponsor of the save act for crying out loud
00:49:15.680and he's out there every day saying oh no we can't we can't pass it now it's just pure spite0.63
00:49:21.200that's pure spite he was never serious about sponsoring it to begin with he just thought0.94
00:49:25.760that sponsoring would help him you know win his primary and when it didn't yeah screw you
00:49:30.960i mean that's really what's going on so we have this scenario where for better or for worse we're
00:49:38.740stuck with this ruling um people have made you know some hint towards some statutory relief i
00:49:46.540can't imagine if you can pass the save act that you're gonna get anything like that passed you're
00:49:50.880certainly not going to pass constitutional amendment these kind of things as much as i
00:49:54.720would love to see that so my only real immediate recourse that i can see along with you know the
00:50:01.140trump administration has already talked about you know cracking down on birth tourism and the most
00:50:06.000egregious parts of this and that's good that's important don't get me wrong uh but obviously at
00:50:11.180scale this is not a solution um i think the most important thing going forward has to be0.93
00:50:17.160quadrupling down on mass deportations you can't have a birthright citizenship if you're not being
00:50:22.680born here and so i i think that you know i i'm sure the time in iran has been a blast i know
00:50:28.980that marco rubio really wants to take revenge on cuba but i would be you know just overjoyed if
00:50:35.480the trump administration said actually removing the people who are here illegally is our first
00:50:40.780priority and that will be the only thing we message on and the only thing we expend energy on
00:50:45.780until the job is done and that is seems to be the only path forward to solving in this in the short
00:50:51.700term what's your thought i don't think it's the only path forward in the short term i mean
00:50:55.680uh i would say that and actually eric schmidt has already proposed legislation to this extent
00:51:00.220to whatever if you look at the kavanaugh concurrence slash dissent whatever the hell it was
00:51:05.260um um he you know he he he he did basically what i his opinion is basically what i thought they
00:51:12.820were going to do in terms of like splitting the baby in two basically where you know cabinet
00:51:17.360points the way toward a congressional remedy i don't you know schmidt has a piece of legislation
00:51:23.540that would have changed the that would specific where congress would specifically define i forget
00:51:29.540what the the actual language is like the 14th amendment or you know jurisdiction thereof oh
00:51:34.740yeah under the jurisdiction thereof yeah yeah to mean something you know very specific or whatever
00:51:39.840and then send that up back up to the courts i mean i think there's a chance that could succeed
00:51:44.560um i mean look i mean the mass deportation question isn't just because of the birthright
00:51:49.920citizenship ruling i mean that's for you know a million different reasons um oh yeah um you know
00:51:57.200though certainly the birth you know the birthright citizenship was an issue with that you know
00:52:01.680a year year ago it was an issue 10 years ago with that so we did we do need to focus on that for all
00:52:07.520kinds of reasons um but we should be taking an all of the above approach um in terms of you know
00:52:13.240what what goes on there um you know bernie moreno is going to reintroduce uh people forget this but
00:52:18.820harry reid introduced legislation to ban birthright citizenship um and uh um 30 years ago bernie
00:52:26.880moreno is gonna you know try and get people on record about that i mean we just need to like keep
00:52:30.740it in the debate and i and i think it's generally a winning issue do i think it's the issue
00:52:35.840unfortunately right now, partly because the Iran war, I already mentioned affordability is a huge
00:52:40.860thing. Um, and it's also frustrating because the affordability issue was again, you know,
00:52:45.240a Biden issue that we've been saddled with. I mean, like, you know, you can complain about
00:52:49.200a Trump hasn't done enough, but, and, and, you know, maybe that's even fair, but the reality
00:52:54.360is, is like groceries went up like 20% in six months and haven't come back down. And that was
00:52:58.740all because Joe Biden passed a law that a bunch of liberal economists said was, you know, going
00:53:04.580to cause inflation, you know, in terms of, you know, that massive stimulus thing that they did.
00:53:09.220So unfortunately, we're fighting on a whole bunch of different, you know, fronts at this point in
00:53:14.480time. I think the electoral landscape isn't as bad for the midterms as it should be for Republicans,
00:53:21.200which is, I don't know whether that's fortunate or unfortunate, whether it would be lighting more
00:53:25.260of a fire under them. But it looks like, you know, we, one of the things I would say is we,
00:53:30.180We, even though the socialism issue in the Democrats is becoming a massive problem, I don't think we should necessarily despair about that.
00:53:37.660You know, winning a socialist, winning a primary in urban areas is a cause for concern.
00:53:42.920But we don't we haven't seen how this is played out in the broader electorate yet.
00:53:46.300Like you look at what's going on right now, like in the latest Fox poll, Graham Plattner is losing to Susan Collins, who already has a history of repeatedly outperforming her polls by like really large margins.
00:53:58.740I think she outperformed her polling average by like six or eight points in 2020 when she ran.
00:54:05.260And Brown Plattner is only up one or two in the latest New York Times poll.0.77
00:54:11.140It looks like Democrats are going to do something absolutely insane and nominate an Islamist in Michigan, probably lose that.0.70
00:54:19.020You know, we have to see how the socialist thing plays out on the national level, and it could be very bad for them still.0.78
00:54:24.200I mean, at the same time, we also have to be very vigilant in terms of, you know, Axios has a story out this morning about how Republicans are reigniting the Red Scare.
00:54:40.180No, look, the good news is that no matter how unpopular Republicans get, the only thing less popular is Democrats.
00:54:49.780I don't know how they managed to do that, but consistently over and over again, they seem to be doing even worse. And, you know, the affordability issue is one that's just difficult because that's a function of our entire economy. You know, we've designed our entire economy on cheap money and overprinting, and that's just never going away.
00:55:08.460No one, democracy is not going to allow anyone to course correct that. So, you know, is it Trump's fault? Is it Biden's fault? It's everybody's fault. And we're all, you know, we're all on board for this. And, you know, the good news is that deportations, mass deportations would have an impact on affordability. Your housing prices are going to go down.
00:55:28.600You're not going to have your, you know, your schools and your health care facilities as overrun, though, obviously, we'll have other economic impacts. So, you know, that that's a two sided issue as well. But I just think that, you know, while it's true that the economy matters, I don't know that there's anything long term anyone is really going to be able to do to fix that people are just going to keep voting for the guy who gives them free stuff at the end of the day.
00:55:53.660well that's a concern um for sure but you um i don't know i think you also hit on a little
00:55:58.620something there which is you know again you know part of the reason why democratic socialists or
00:56:02.600whatever are winning these primaries or whatever um are because they're out there organizing um
00:56:08.160you know and no one else is doing it and so i would encourage everyone here listening to this
00:56:12.740you know ask yourself what the heck are you doing you know believe it or not just doing stuff in
00:56:18.020your own community has large ripple effects um and uh democrat socialists were ignored because0.98
00:56:24.480oh they're so obviously crazy you know who's going to vote for a person that says we deserve
00:56:28.7209-11 well here we are so you know it just goes to show you that you know knocking on doors and
00:56:34.080talking to people does matter so you know if you were thinking about running for school board or
00:56:37.500you're thinking about you know just you know helping you know you pass out flyers you know
00:56:42.360at the county fair or whatever for the local republicans or whatever like believe it or not
00:56:45.720that kind of stuff does matter and does make a big impact well i just came back from a conference
00:56:50.520with the organization i'm a part of the old glory club and there were several stories of local
00:56:55.700politicians you know county commissioners uh these kind of things who won the races entirely
00:57:00.940because you know these guys went and knocked on 500 or a thousand doors and they won by 300 votes
00:57:06.700you know like this is stuff that seems like small ball you're everyone's looking for someone to come
00:57:12.280save them everybody wants someone to get into the presidency and sweep in and solve all the
00:57:16.860problems but the the long and short of it guys is no one's coming to save you and you know whether
00:57:21.880you think that ultimately you're going to be able to change the culture of your entire country the
00:57:26.900one thing you can always do is fight for these positions at county city levels you can you know
00:57:32.240controlling your county sheriff will have a larger impact on your life than pretty much any other race
00:57:38.080you're talking about nationally in most scenarios so get out there and do that stuff get involved
00:57:43.180find the kind of organizations like the ogc or others that are going to push the type of candidates
00:57:47.680that you want you know know these people in person make sure that you're valuable to them and you have
00:57:52.440something to say for them that you have uh you know you're in their ear like these things do
00:57:56.820matter at the end of the day yeah that's exactly right i mean i've been doing this for almost 30
00:58:00.920years and i got news for you i frequently do not enjoy it anymore like it's a lot i mean you know
00:58:08.200there's been so much going on and it's so crazy but you know at the same time you know why am i
00:58:12.440doing it well you know i got kids um you know i do my wife and i turn to each other at some point
00:58:17.700i remember a few years back and just looked at each other and all the stuff was going on the
00:58:20.380country and it's like cavalry is not coming we are the cavalry you know if you're not putting
00:58:24.400yourself out there i mean like i understand it's very important there's a lot of people out there
00:58:28.320vocationally, like if you're a good plumber, be a good plumber, you know, to your fellow citizens
00:58:32.540and do that. But if you can be a good plumber and you can also, you know, help organize in
00:58:38.720local elections to make sure that your kid can be a good plumber that's, you know, free from
00:58:43.000political interference and excessive taxation and everything else in his life, then go ahead and do
00:58:47.820that too. Yeah, absolutely. Nope. Guys, we're going to go ahead and head to the questions of
00:58:55.820the people but before we do uh mark where should people look for your work uh i write for real
00:59:02.620clear investigations uh slash real clear politics real clear politics.com real clear investigations.com
00:59:07.880i also uh work for the federalist thefederalist.com and you can find me on x at heminator h-e-m-i-n-a-t-o-r
00:59:17.480excellent all right let's go to the questions cherry coke nixon says libs will cosplay as
00:59:24.000the handmaid's tale because we oppose family family drag while scotus guarantees our future
00:59:29.260is actually the turner diaries well let's uh let's hope that's not the direction everything
00:59:34.920goes but yeah man it's uh it's ridiculous to be sure michael robertson says uh bright side we can
00:59:43.560now solve the energy crisis by explain explaining to the boomers that the constitution officially
00:59:48.700demands the end of the country then capture the steam coming out of their brains uh you know i0.79
00:59:55.300am trying to walk a line with this but you know i i think that mark said it best here like
01:00:00.820the constitution is important it's a serious document it is our heritage and we should take
01:00:05.740it very seriously but it's it's not a suicide pact it was it we you know the constitution was
01:00:11.640made for america americans were not made for the constitution uh at the end of the day it has to
01:00:16.220the survival of americans and our way of life that takes priority right and more specifically we do0.72
01:00:21.180very much have a boomer problem in this country that we do have to address i mean the states are0.98
01:00:26.860talking about giving property tax relief to elderly people i mean never mind the elderly0.95
01:00:30.620people like own all the damn property like it's it's it's really insane we need to refocus our0.72
01:00:35.740politics not on the quote-unquote largest generation and just because they have our large voting block0.98
01:00:40.620we need to focus on family formation and affordability and all these other issues for
01:00:44.220you know the upcoming generations so that they don't hate the republican party they don't hate
01:00:48.620conservatives or whatever and we can have a country in the future yeah i heard someone say
01:00:54.140something to the effect of uh boomers love arguing about free markets while they receive their own
01:00:59.900version of socialism uh and uh that unfortunately seems to i don't i don't know how many boomers
01:01:06.300need to hear this but your social security is not the money you put into the system getting far more
01:01:12.220money than you put in like and we're about to run out of money like their entitlement reform and
01:01:17.500other stuff is something that we're going to probably have to deal with um among other things
01:01:21.900but yeah um yeah it's a problem i think the country will explode before anyone runs on getting rid of
01:01:28.460social security i mean like i legitimately think that's true i hate to say it but people forget
01:01:32.940this when when mike huckabee ran for president was it 2008 i think the first time he like radically
01:01:39.260broke with the party and said oh we're never going to cut social security and medicare but he was
01:01:42.520just prescient and you know trump did the same thing like you cannot get elected in this country
01:01:46.580um you know on entitlement reform i'm you know uh mitt romney and uh paul ryan came close i mean
01:01:52.840they made a very passionate argument and they made some headway in the polls on it but the reality
01:01:57.520was is obama ran those ads shoving grandma off the cliff in a wheelchair literally and you know
01:02:03.720it's it's political kryptonite unfortunately you know the problem is us in a democracy
01:02:08.800well as i say you can uh vote your way into socialism but uh you can't vote your way out
01:02:15.380of it here as latrina reminds us uh as much as that would be nice it does seem to be a
01:02:21.200very difficult issue to overcome uh cherry coke nixon says a wild watching national review type
01:02:27.340sent for the uh barbara ruling logic defies originalism by applying modern meaning to 19th
01:02:34.760century phrases concepts federalists greater than nr i mean look you're a former nr writer
01:02:40.680i don't want to beat up on the publication too much but it is it is amazing to watch almost to
01:02:46.840a man the you know that crew is it just they hate trump or do they they really not see it
01:02:51.820I look, there's a lot of good people at NR, for sure. You know, and then there's a lot of people there that publish things that I disagree with. And they would just argue that they're kind of a big tent publication. And, you know, that's fair. I understand that. You know, and again, I think there should be a diversity of opinions out there.
01:03:10.540the problem i just think is is that to the extent where certain conservatives and again this is not
01:03:15.820an nr specific problem and so again i don't want to beat up on nr um you know differ from where the
01:03:22.220conservative base is on these things in ways that are less conservative or more to the left um uh
01:03:30.140that is uh it's just it's just not representative of where again the base is and it's fine if you
01:03:37.740you want to publish those public publish those uh opinions um there just isn't that much of a
01:03:43.440constituency for them uh anymore on some of this stuff and there's the other issue and i and look
01:03:49.800i've tried to gingerly handle this i wrote a piece recently about um phyllis schlafly and how nr
01:03:55.860handled a particular debate involving her um and i've tried to be gentle about this part of the
01:04:00.780problem is is that nr in particular part of the their mythology is that remember uh william f
01:04:06.680Buckley was the guy that kicked out the Birchers and, you know, and there's this issue and whether
01:04:13.100it's fair to the current version of NR or not, and, you know, might be very unfair in certain
01:04:17.760ways, that these conservative institutions are preserved as gatekeepers of, you know, what is
01:04:22.480acceptable thought among the base. And clearly there are issues where they've been very bad on
01:04:29.680this. Now, having said that, one issue that NR has consistently been great on editorially for
01:04:35.320decades and decades is immigration. Um, and R has frequently published many pieces, um, where they
01:04:42.720have just basically lambasted the wall street journal editorial pages for being radically
01:04:47.640pro immigration. So, um, at least on this one issue, they may publish Andy McCarthy or whatever,
01:04:54.360um, you know, saying, well, they, the Supreme court did this birthright citizenship in good
01:05:00.480faith, yada, yada, yada. And that may be frustrating to a lot of people, but if you go
01:05:04.060back and you look at their in our history of editorializing on immigration they've been good
01:05:08.620at this they've been good on immigration restriction at a time when it was not necessarily
01:05:12.640popular to be so yeah i think either way the point is is really that i just think national reviews
01:05:19.300becoming irrelevant in either direction good on the issue bad on the issue i just think it's
01:05:23.840it's increasingly less influential uh than other publications but well the issue is it's like
01:05:29.340things like political magazines in general are kind of, you know, that's becoming an issue.
01:05:35.480But the other problem is that, and look, I'm on Twitter, you know, I get payments from Elon Musk
01:05:41.200every month, you know, whatever, make of that what you will, I'm just being honest. But it's also
01:05:46.600true that we are not having sustained public arguments about stuff anymore. And that's one0.88
01:05:51.980reason why things like, you know, braindead socialism is winning. And we need to have an
01:05:57.360elite class that is actually reading in depth and we need to have you know the more intelligent you
01:06:02.280know citizens among us that are making the effort to read essays and other things like that and
01:06:06.860understand this stuff and that's just not happening you know regardless of where you think nr is
01:06:11.600editorially or not um i'd be i'd be happy if people were actually reading nr cover to cover
01:06:17.760every month and disagreeing um like you know because that would at least advance the argument
01:06:23.660in certain ways, but that's just not happening.
01:06:26.400People just aren't engaging on that depth.
01:07:02.000Actually go and and, you know, crack the spine of the book and grasp that you can't really be a part of the debate until you have that context.
01:07:10.080Otherwise, you're just spitting out other people's talking points.
01:07:12.740But thank you for praising the Federalist.