A young man who will be going to federal prison in the new year because he made a meme that no one acted on. Douglas Mackey's legal team is in the process of appealing his conviction and is fighting for his release.
00:00:51.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:06.000Thanks again, Charlie, for having me on to discuss this case.
00:02:11.000So to get your audience up to speed, on October 18th, the federal district court judge in Brooklyn, New York, sentenced Mr. Mackey to serve seven months in prison for violating federal law under allegedly under 18 USC 241.
00:02:33.000So seven months in prison, which will start in January.
00:02:37.000So he was ordered to report to prison in January.
00:02:41.000And importantly, for your audience to know, he asked for the sentence to be stayed pending appeal.
00:02:51.000So his legal team right now is in the process of appealing the conviction to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:03:00.000And so his defense asked for the district court judge to allow the appeal to go forward and for his sentence not to start until all appellate options had been exhausted.
00:03:15.000The judge denied that request and ordered him to report for the start of his sentence beginning in January.
00:03:23.000And another point for your audience to be aware of, again, sentenced on October 18th, on October 17th, Mr. Mackey's wife gave birth to the couple's first child.
00:03:39.000He was not present at the birth of his first child because he was in federal district court the following day in New York City awaiting sentencing.
00:03:51.000And it's just another aspect of this case that's heart-wrenching and troubling on every level.
00:04:02.000The First Amendment problem, the Fifth Amendment problem, and with respect to the conduct of the trial itself, the Sixth Amendment problem.
00:04:11.000And then you compound all of those constitutional issues, which are profound and downright disturbing, and add on top of that the personal impact of missing the birth of your firstborn child and compounded with: hey, you're going to have to report to prison in January.
00:04:33.000So in American history, James, has someone been sentenced to federal prison for a speech crime such as this in the history of the republic?
00:04:44.000Well, this is the first prosecution of its kind, Charlie, under 18 USC 241.
00:04:51.000And again, this was a statute that was passed in 1871.
00:04:54.000It was aimed at preventing the Klan from exercising power and intimidating African Americans who were newly emancipated from slavery.
00:05:07.000No such prosecution has been brought in the history of our country under that statute.
00:05:13.000Now, I mean, can speech provide a predicate basis for criminal liability in other contexts?
00:05:22.000Yes, but as we've maintained in court filings, this is a, or as Doug's defense has maintained in court filings, this is a radical extension of federal criminal liability to really criminalize political speech.
00:05:36.000And that is what this case at its core is about.
00:05:40.000It's why we're asking your audience and others to go to meme defensefund.com to support Doug's legal defense, because this is a precedent that can't stand.
00:05:52.000It has to be resolved and overturned at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:05:56.000And if it doesn't happen there, then ultimately Mr. Mackey's case has to go to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will have to weigh in on it.
00:06:07.000I mean, the issues that are at stake here are just fundamental bedrock issues that go to the core of what it is to be an American, to be able to speak truth to power, as you alluded to in your open, to be able to speak truth to power to the regime itself, which cannot broker and cannot tolerate in some ways.
00:06:29.000And we think that this case illustrates it.
00:06:32.000Dissent and the poking of fun at the political class in this country.
00:06:39.000This prosecution theory, this theory of criminal liability has to be headed off at the past, or there will be other prosecutions.
00:06:47.000And in fact, there's media coverage that took place early on in this case suggesting that the Department of Justice is contemplating just that.
00:06:55.000Other prosecutions predicated on the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
00:07:01.000And Charlie, as we know from the COVID pandemic, today's misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy can be tomorrow's conventional wisdom.
00:07:33.000And by the way, it's meme defensefund.com.
00:07:35.000This impacts every single patriot out there that you could be a young man who now is a father.
00:07:43.000He misses the birth of his son so that these cockroaches, these maniacs, these vermin and swine can bring him in front of a judge to put him in federal prison for seven months.
00:08:01.000Well, Charlie, the government did not put on, not forecast before trial and at trial, did not put on a single witness that said, I saw this meme, I was confused, and as a result, I texted my vote and didn't exercise my right to go to the polls or vote by mail or whatever other legal mechanism of voting was available to that person at the time.
00:08:30.000So, not a single person, not a single confused voter who did not get to exercise their right to vote.
00:08:38.000And yet, Douglas Mackey is going to prison for seven months anyway under this ruling and under the verdict, unless it's overturned on an appeal, which is again why it's so critical that we had the theory of prosecution off of the past.
00:08:55.000And another thing for your audience to know: you know, we talk a lot of this country about our democracy, and people make allusions to it.
00:09:04.000Our democracy, in the case of former President Trump, is under attack in many ways in the ways that he's trying to curtail the influence of the administrative state.
00:09:12.000It's important for your audience to know that Congress repeatedly considered whether or not to create criminal liability around election misinformation and disinformation.
00:09:25.000They considered various proposals to do that and they rejected them.
00:09:30.000It never passed, a proposal like this never passed the House or the Senate and was signed into law by a duly elected president.
00:09:40.000And yet, Mr. Mackey has to report to prison in January anyway, because the administrative state, the deep state, was able to stretch and contort a statute from 1871 to achieve an outcome that was not politically viable or could not be pushed through the Congress.
00:10:02.000And that is really what the regime means when it talks about our democracy.
00:10:09.000It's not about elected representatives voting.
00:10:11.000It's about unelected prosecutors and bureaucrats using statutes to enact its will and impose its will on the American people without votes.
00:10:22.000Christina Wong tweeted on November 8th, 2016: Hey, Trump supporters, skip poll lines at election 2016 and text in your vote.
00:10:30.000Text votes are legit or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday.
00:10:33.000Christina Wong is still making jokes, was never investigated or indicted.
00:10:38.000And Christina Wong continues living a free life.
00:10:41.000Meanwhile, Douglas Mackey did the exact same thing, even less blunt, by the way.
00:12:05.000What will your approach be for appeal?
00:12:08.000Well, Doug's appellate team will undoubtedly raise arguments under the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.
00:12:16.000I mean, as the First Amendment issues have been talked about quite a bit.
00:12:23.000The Fifth Amendment issues relate to the use of a very vague statute.
00:12:29.000Again, as I mentioned in the opening segment, this is a law that was passed in 1871, and it is the text of the statute bars conspiracies to injure, quote unquote, to injure individuals in their exercise of protected rights.
00:12:51.000And so, one of the arguments I'm sure his appellate team will make is that the statute itself is impermissibly ambiguous and vague and attack it on a void for vagueness challenge under the Fifth Amendment for lack of notice under the due process clause.
00:13:10.000The Sixth Amendment issues relate to, among other things, Mr. Mackey's defense not being able to cross-examine a confidential government witness who was allowed to testify basically under SHIELD on the nature of that individual's ongoing relationship with the FBI.
00:13:34.000Under the Sixth Amendment, criminal defendants have a right to cross-examine their accusers in public, in open court.
00:13:45.000And one of the problems, among others, with this prosecution, is that Mr. Mackey didn't get to do that in violation of the Sixth Amendment.
00:13:55.000I mean, this goes back to the right to confront your witnesses in public and open court.
00:14:01.000It goes back to Sir Walter Raleigh, the namesake of my hometown, who was locked away in the Tower of London precisely because he could not cross-examine his witnesses in open court.
00:14:15.000That's why we have the Sixth Amendment.
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00:16:49.000Joining us now is Patrick Raffini, author of a book called Party of the People Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP, pollster for echelon insights, echelon insights, and author of Party of the People.
00:17:04.000Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time.
00:17:06.000Patrick, your book confirms, and or the poll, I should say it differently, the poll this weekend from the New York Times confirms the thesis of your book.
00:17:15.000Tell us about your book and how also the data is confirming your hypothesis.
00:17:20.000So my book is about how essentially the parties, the parties that we knew maybe when I was growing up, have just completely reversed themselves in terms of the Democrats used to be seen as this party of the working class, party of the people, really standing up for the blue-collar worker.
00:17:39.000And really, ever since 2016, that really hasn't been true anymore.
00:17:43.000You've seen this huge reversal in terms of working class voters increasingly voting Republican and voted for Trump in 2016.
00:17:52.000And more so, a lot of these groups voted more so in 2020, including Latinos, African Americans.
00:18:00.000Now, that looks to be, if this poll is correct, it's going to be like that on steroids in 2024.
00:18:08.000When you look at Trump being at 22% of the black vote within eight among Hispanic voters, we really are seeing a realignment in our politics.
00:18:19.000Is it the Republicans' embrace of populist nationalist ideas, or is it a combination of academic fantasy ideas of white liberalism that don't resonate with non-college educated muscular class voters?
00:18:35.000It is definitely a combination of both.
00:18:38.000But I think that, you know, everything that we're seeing out of the college campuses over the last month suggests that the left has really learned nothing about how to moderate their message to appeal to the working class majority of the country who are not interested in these ideas of decolonialization,
00:19:05.000of intersectionality, of things that are only ideas that only somebody with an advanced degree even could even fathom.
00:19:16.000So I do think that they're just continuing to dig themselves a bigger hole.
00:19:21.000And you go back to, it didn't used to be like this.
00:19:24.000You go back to as recently as the 1990s.
00:19:27.000And Bill Clinton, you know, a lot of Republicans didn't like Bill Clinton when he was president, but he is somebody who really moderated his message, said the era of big government is over, signed welfare reform, signed the Defense of Marriage Act.
00:19:40.000All of these things that, you know, you could not see Joe Biden for all his like talk about for all the talk that he is somehow this sort of blue-collar working class Democrat.
00:19:52.000He is just as beholden, I think, to the left as anyone.
00:19:58.000And you just don't see that kind of Democrat anymore.
00:20:35.000So, this idea is the Democratic Party has always been this coalition of folks who are, you know, these liberals, primarily white liberals, and African Americans, Hispanics, minority voters, right?
00:20:49.000I mean, that has always been kind of the core of the Democratic coalition.
00:20:52.000And now we're seeing that break apart, where significant chunks of voters in these minority communities have actually started to break off.
00:21:01.000I know there's been talk about this for decades.
00:21:03.000Conservatives have talked about this for decades, but it actually seems to be happening.
00:21:20.000So, there's no longer the sense that they need to be dependent on the federal government.
00:21:26.000You talk to people, I visited the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and you talk to people down there, and they want to get ahead by their own hard work and are very suspicious of anyone who is on government welfare benefits.
00:21:40.000I mean, that is a really big concern when you talk to people down there.
00:21:44.000You see who talk about like, why is there a Tesla in front of the unemployment office that shouldn't be happening?
00:21:51.000So, it's a very different kind of politics that I think people on the left, and you know, frankly, some people on the right have assumed about these people.
00:21:59.000They're achieving the American dream, they want to get ahead, and they realize the Democratic Party is not helping them get there.
00:22:05.000So, let's just talk peer numbers in the states that matter: Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, maybe Pennsylvania.
00:22:12.000If these trends continue and Republicans get near 50% or at least near an equilibrium within the margin of error with Hispanics and continue to do well with working class whites, but maybe do a little bit worse with upper middle-class white voters, what does that mean?
00:22:30.000How significant is the growth in the multi-class, the multiracial middle class to just get one more vote than the other guy?
00:22:39.000I mean, I think that what Trump showed in 2016 and why the election was so close in 2020 was the fact that this coalition of working class whites and the more African Americans, Latinos, punches above its weight in the electoral college.
00:22:56.000You know, when it comes to the states that actually decide the election, not just the Russ Bell states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, but also states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada.
00:23:08.000You know, those states have tend to have fewer graduates than the blue states, where primarily all these college graduates, people with postgraduate degrees, people who are listening to the crazy ideas coming out of college campuses now, those are concentrated primarily in blue states.
00:23:27.000That's why I think Trump or any Republican candidate would have an advantage in the electoral college by appealing and talking to these voters.
00:23:36.000Yeah, if you look, so the state with the most college degrees is by far, by far, Massachusetts.
00:24:17.000This is a group that has never, you know, they have never had anything handed to them.
00:24:22.000They've had to work for what they have.
00:24:24.000And I think that just they're unified, united by a common sense value system, even if they don't vote Republican.
00:24:32.000And I think that, you know, you particularly talk to, try talking, I think, about the Green New Deal or this green transition idea within these minority communities.
00:24:46.000And the polling is pretty clear on that.
00:24:48.000That when it comes to, you know, people, you know, really saying, you know, all this stuff about global warming is nice.
00:24:56.000And you hear this in focus groups a lot, but it doesn't help me put food on the table.
00:25:00.000And I think the real trigger, as much as, you know, as much as Republicans want to pat themselves on the back for realigning these voters, the real trigger for this has been the absolute failure of the Biden administration to bring down inflation meaningfully.
00:25:17.000And the fact that we've had so much inflation has really hit these voters particularly, really hard in the wallet.
00:25:26.000And these are the voters who are actually paying attention to performance.
00:25:29.000You know, I think if you have a college degree, it doesn't necessarily mean you have more accurate ideas about politics or the world, because I think you're primarily, you're very partisan and you're voting.
00:25:42.000You know, I think you're very committed to existing your existing ideology and whatever information comes out, you know, really just is going to push you in one direction or the other.
00:25:54.000This multiracial populist coalition is very pragmatic, is very common sense, and they can see what's happening.
00:26:05.000Does the working multiracial class you're talking about, if the Republican Party were to go to all of a sudden and nominate like a Mitt Romney or somebody like that, they wouldn't necessarily be on board for that, correct?
00:26:18.000Well, I think that is, it's a little bit, I think we are not going back to that kind of Republican Party.
00:26:24.000That said, I do think that there are a number of candidates running who could, by and large, capitalize on this, on these trends.
00:26:33.000And you see it in a place like Virginia with Glenn Young, you know, who did really well.
00:26:39.000And we'll see, you know, in the election tomorrow, you know, how well his candidates do.
00:26:43.000But I do think that, you know, we are permanently on a trajectory, I think, here where people are going to have to, you know, Republicans are going to have to realize, you know, it's not, you know, it's not going to be the case that you're fully going to go back to where we were before Trump.
00:27:01.000And I think people in the establishment need to understand that too.
00:27:10.000We can make a difference standing for life by giving free ultrasounds with our friends at pre-born.
00:27:15.000In a Dobbs world, states decide about abortion, and so many liberal states are taking extreme stands, even allowing abortion up to literally the second before a baby is born.
00:27:26.000And in California, the demand for abortions has increased 400% in part because the state is inviting women and girls to come to California for the sole purpose of aborting their baby.
00:28:37.000I think you always have to look at the issues that will bridge the divide because you're going to kill two birds with one stone that way.
00:28:43.000But what I do think that right now, people are very concerned about the border.
00:28:48.000People are very concerned about the economy and the state, the continued high inflation, the fact that prices are 20% higher than they were when Joe Biden was inaugurated.
00:29:01.000We used to think about a lot of those issues as base issues, but the failure on those issues has been so great that those are not just base issues anymore.
00:29:12.000Those are issues that really resonate across the spectrum with independents, moderates, and they also resonate with Hispanics and African Americans, too, especially.
00:29:34.000And I mean, so the other question I have for you is that can another candidate other than Trump continue a multiracial type working class coalition?
00:29:45.000We've seen a little bit of evidence of that with DeSantis in 2022, but it hasn't really been replicated.
00:29:51.000It seems as if rural turnout dives a little bit.
00:29:53.000That kind of mystery voter is hard to replicate.
00:29:59.000I think it can in the sense of, yeah, you have seen it.
00:30:04.000You definitely have seen it with DeSantis.
00:30:06.000You've seen it with a candidate like I mentioned Yunkin as well.
00:30:13.000I do think that, you know, in the sense of, you know, I mean, you may have, and when you have candidates like, look, I mean, MAGA was not a huge fan of Brian Kemp, but in Georgia, he carried that state in a landslide, really.
00:30:28.000He carried by eight points and he won in all the places Trump won, but he added back some of those suburban voters.
00:30:37.000So, yeah, I think that any of these candidates, I think, could win.
00:30:42.000I think they each bring slightly different strengths to the table.
00:30:46.000Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not a fan of Kemp, but you're right.
00:30:48.000In some ways, he shows how to win Georgia, which is you don't totally tick off the rules.
00:30:53.000You don't do as well as Trump, but you do better in Buckhead.
00:30:57.000So let me ask you: Echelon has some of the most accurate polling.
00:31:01.000You guys were one of the most five most accurate pollsters in 2022.
00:31:06.000Do you find this New York Times poll to be consistent with what you are seeing?
00:31:10.000Or you know which one I'm talking about, it's one of the weekend or a little bit more, let's just say, exaggerated than the trend.
00:31:19.000Well, I think that, look, I'm going to be cautious and say it's a little good.
00:31:24.000It seems a little good, but it's broadly consistent with the trends you're seeing, which is erosion of the non-white base of the Democratic Party, especially if they really go through with this and really make Joe Biden run again, right?
00:31:41.000So I do think that it is broadly consistent.
00:31:47.000And maybe it's a couple points too optimistic.
00:31:53.000Just being the cautious person that I am on some of these polls, but I do think that we should be paying attention, very close to touch these numbers.
00:32:03.000They are anyone more accurate than Epsilon.
00:32:08.000Patrick, if you were a Democrat and giving advice to Democrats, what would you tell them in one year, well, less than one year to fix this?
00:32:16.000I think that you need to stop listening to the far left.
00:32:22.000And it's happening right now with this Palestine.
00:32:26.000I think that is emblematic of a broader problem is that they are not focused on the middle of the electorate.
00:32:35.000They are purely focused on how can we stop this bleeding in our base right now.
00:32:40.000But I think if they do it by going to the left, they're only going to further alienate that base because that base of people is not these young liberal activists.
00:32:49.000It is African American voters, is Latino voters.
00:32:53.000It is voters who have far more moderate views on issues.
00:32:57.000And if they don't pay attention to that, you know, they're going to have the worst of both worlds.
00:33:02.000Patrick Raffini, check out his book, The Party of the People Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.