The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 83 ｜ How to Fix SCOTUS ｜ Alan Dershowitz

00:00:00.000 On paper, my guest today is somebody in this modern political climate I shouldn't get along

00:00:05.740 with. He voted for Hillary Clinton. I can't stand her. He endorsed Joe Biden. I think Biden's the

00:00:12.020 most corrupt politician in our history. But he was also a lawyer on President Trump's legal defense

00:00:18.000 team. Defense. Wait, how's that work? What? It doesn't work in today's politics unless your

00:00:24.960 reasons are based on the Constitution and not the political winds of the day. So who is this guy?

00:00:30.580 Well, I think he's the Forrest Gump of American judicial history, because you look you go back

00:00:36.020 and look at pictures of any big, important court case and you'll see him somewhere in the background.

00:00:40.720 He has represented notorious clients. Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Harry Reams, Harvey Weinstein,

00:00:47.860 Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. It has made him a target on both the right and the left,

00:00:53.380 but he describes himself as a civil libertarian. And that is why he and I won't agree on things,

00:01:00.580 but can have a really fascinating conversation. This, I think, is my favorite podcast yet.

00:01:08.860 This is a conversation that you do not hear anymore. Today, Alan Dershowitz.

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00:02:40.740 How are you, Professor? I'm doing good. You're looking wonderful. Yeah, so are you.

00:02:49.560 You know, it's really a strange thing

00:02:51.960 that somebody as outspoken as you are, somebody who has been involved in so much,

00:03:00.560 and clearly somebody who is a Democrat, Hillary Clinton supporter, et cetera, et cetera.

00:03:06.180 I have no issue at all thinking that we're not going to have any issues, that you and I,

00:03:14.660 even though we disagree on so much, are not going to have an unpleasant conversation.

00:03:20.940 Why is that? I'm sure that's right. I'm sure that's right. Because I think that we know how

00:03:26.780 to converse. We're both the intelligent, principled people who understand that reasonable people have

00:03:32.860 different views based on their backgrounds, based on their heritage, based on how they grew up,

00:03:39.220 based on a range of other issues, regional, gender, religious, you name it. So America is about

00:03:48.100 talking to people with different views. So is that something that we fail to teach? Is it, I mean,

00:03:57.000 define civil libertarian, because that's what you say you are, right?

00:04:01.080 A civil libertarian, yeah, is neutral and says free speech for all, not free speech for me,

00:04:07.720 but not for thee, due process for all. A civil libertarian is not result-oriented. He cares much

00:04:13.660 more about the process, the marketplace of ideas, fairness, than about results. Civil libertarians

00:04:20.480 don't necessarily have to be people of the left. I don't regard myself as a person of the left. I

00:04:25.640 regard myself as a centrist, civil libertarian. Some of my views are more left than other views,

00:04:34.020 but I don't think of myself as a leftist. I think of myself as a civil libertarian.

00:04:38.280 So when you, because that's the way I would describe myself, like, for instance, the SCOTUS

00:04:44.160 pick, um, I don't, I don't care, uh, that they vote the way I want them to vote. I want them to

00:04:53.040 look at the constitution and interpret it as it was written. Sometimes that'll work in my favor.

00:04:59.360 Sometimes it won't, but that's the only way that it doesn't become a legislative branch.

00:05:05.820 Well, that's the way justice Scalia saw it. I was close to justice Scalia. I knew his father

00:05:11.880 as a professor at Brooklyn college. And so we formed a bond. Uh, we disagreed. He came to my

00:05:17.360 class the first year he was a justice and we had a two hour debate over originalism and constitutional

00:05:22.900 interpretation. Um, look, every scholar I know believes that you start out by looking at the words

00:05:29.120 of the constitution. When I stood on the floor of the Senate, opposing the impeachment of president

00:05:33.360 and Trump as a liberal Democrat, the only previous time I was on the floor of the Senate

00:05:37.160 was defending Alan Cranston, the very liberal Senator from California. But when I stood on

00:05:42.100 the floor of the Senate, I said, I'm here to defend the constitution. It provides for grounds

00:05:46.400 for impeachment, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors in the house had failed

00:05:51.980 to charge any of those criteria. They charged them with these vague concepts of abuse of power

00:05:58.020 and obstruction of Congress, which were rejected by the framers of the constitution, uh, as

00:06:03.140 making us much more like the British parliamentary system. So I always look to the text of the

00:06:08.500 constitution first, but sometimes the text is open-ended. Give you two examples. There's a

00:06:13.580 provision of the constitution that says you have to be 35 to be president. It means 35. You can't

00:06:19.240 interpret it. If you're 34 and a half and you're brilliant and mature, you can't be the president.

00:06:23.160 Um, and then there's due process, equal protection, cruel and unusual punishment. Those are open-ended

00:06:31.540 terms. Those are subject to interpretation. Another example, when the due process clause was passed

00:06:37.060 in the 1860s and the 14th amendment, not a single person voting for that would say that it meant

00:06:44.840 desegregated public schools, black children going to school with white children, unthinkable.

00:06:51.480 The 14th amendment never would have passed if people had said it means a black man can marry a white

00:06:58.200 woman. God forbid. And now of course, everybody acknowledges that we can't have segregated schools

00:07:05.860 in America. We can't stop people from marrying people of a different race. We've just interpreted

00:07:11.140 equal protection differently. And I think the framers invited us to do so by using a term

00:07:17.480 like equal protection. It doesn't say Martin Luther King's dream that people will be judged by the

00:07:23.640 quality of their character rather than the color of their skin. Maybe it means that, but it uses an

00:07:28.400 open textured term like equal protection or take, take the term cruel and unusual punishment.

00:07:34.480 What is cruel and unusual back in 17 something where they used to put, uh, put, put things through

00:07:40.780 the ears of people and cut off fingers and torture would now be regarded as cruel and unusual punishment.

00:07:47.560 So then how are you for gun control? Because that's shall not be infringed.

00:07:56.600 Okay. I'm very conflicted over that. If I were a framer of the constitution, I would not put the

00:08:02.380 second amendment in the constitution. We are the only constitution that provides for the right to own

00:08:07.600 guns as a fundamental constitutional right. I think it would have been better off as a legislative right,

00:08:12.040 but I lost that debate. They put it in the constitution. I'm now a supporter of the second

00:08:17.720 amendment. I don't want to change it. I don't want to change one word of it because I'm afraid that if

00:08:23.300 I get to change the second amendment, other people will want to change the first amendment and the

00:08:27.980 fifth amendment. So I am committed to preserving the bill of rights, every single word, every comma

00:08:34.280 and every space between the words. Why would you not as a framer knowing what they knew back then?

00:08:41.420 Or are you saying from your position today, you wouldn't put it in, but if you were them,

00:08:47.240 you, you wouldn't have put the second amendment in. It's a very good question. I can't put myself back

00:08:53.360 in what I would have thought if I lived in the frontier and needed a gun. Uh, I probably would

00:08:59.100 have written something that said, you can use guns for, uh, self-defense and protection. You can use

00:09:05.100 guns for, um, uh, hunting and sport. Um, maybe I would have imposed somewhat greater restrictions or

00:09:13.780 ability of the state to impose constraints based on mental illness, based on prior criminal record.

00:09:19.920 I would have tinkered with it, but in the end, probably living back in 1793, I would have said,

00:09:27.320 you know, I don't want the government to take away our guns. Um, that gives the government too much

00:09:31.280 power. Let me, let me explore a little further with what's happening. The America that I've grown up

00:09:37.060 in, uh, we didn't, I mean, you could have a gun. You should have a gun. If you wanted one,

00:09:42.960 you have to be responsible, but I didn't really need a gun. Most of my life, we're entering a time now

00:09:50.720 where, um, the police is, uh, is being defunded, um, is Seattle. The response times are going to be bad.

00:09:59.900 You've got real danger in the streets. Um, when, when you have, when you have that and a possible

00:10:11.160 hostile government, both sides are saying the other side is Hitler. Um, when you have those things,

00:10:18.460 that's what they were really asking for. They were saying, well, when you can't, you have to

00:10:25.380 protect yourself when nobody else could get there and a government out of control.

00:10:31.220 Yeah. Well, first of all, neither side is Hitler. Let's bless our blessings. We are not,

00:10:36.600 we don't have Stalin. We don't have Hitler. We don't have Mussolini. We have people who fundamentally

00:10:41.360 disagree with each other. And we have people who are encouraging others to go to the streets

00:10:45.340 and sometimes engage in violence. Michelle Goldberg, an op-ed writer for the New York Times,

00:10:51.440 urged people to go to the streets and she didn't distinguish between violent and nonviolent

00:10:56.260 demonstrations to protest President Trump naming a nominee to the Supreme Court. So, you know, we're

00:11:02.240 seeing a greater increase in violence. I lived through the sixties. Of course, there was violence

00:11:07.100 in the sixties, a lot of violence, bombs and universities and, and military recruiting stations.

00:11:12.600 And assassinations. And I have been threatened. My life has been threatened repeatedly by all sides of

00:11:21.000 the political spectrum. I have been threatened because I brought a lawsuit against the Cardinal

00:11:26.800 Glemp of Poland 25, 30 years ago. I was threatened because I defended the president of the United States.

00:11:36.040 I was threatened because I supported the First Amendment. So I've been threatened and people have

00:11:41.880 advised me to get a gun. Uh, and I'm not going to disclose whether I have or not because that

00:11:47.760 affects my, my security. But if I wanted a gun, I should have a right to have one to protect my

00:11:54.340 family. Just recently, I got a call, uh, that said, enjoy your last night. Uh, you will be dead

00:12:01.000 tomorrow. I called the police. I called the FBI. We traced it. We found the person in Canada. He was a

00:12:06.600 kid, 16 or 17 years old. And he was not arrested, but he was warned. Uh, but, uh, I had a very

00:12:13.880 sleepless night and my family were very nervous. And at that point in time, I think a number of

00:12:19.740 people in my family, uh, said, uh, where do you keep your gun? Where is it locked? Uh, but I won't

00:12:24.120 tell anybody. Uh, but, but talking about how do you stop a government? We're the only ones that have

00:12:30.080 this right. And that has really stopped the government from going too far one way or another,

00:12:36.260 because, you know, as Washington said, it's the government's like fire. Uh, you better fear it or

00:12:43.100 it will control you. You control it or it control you. So look, we go ahead. Had, uh, 200 and almost

00:12:50.480 50 years of experience with this and we've done very, very well. We had a civil war to be sure. We

00:12:56.000 couldn't resolve the issue of slavery peacefully, but we've resolved every other issue peacefully.

00:13:01.620 We had some terrible decisions in the United States, Plessy versus Ferguson, allowing for

00:13:05.960 segregation, detention of 110,000 Japanese Americans in detention centers, McCarthyism,

00:13:13.040 a range of other issues, but we have self-correcting mechanisms. And I think we will get self-correcting

00:13:19.000 mechanisms here as well. You know, it's distressing when you hear both sides of the political spectrum say,

00:13:25.360 you know, this election may result in violence. If so-and-so wins, we're going to take to the

00:13:30.880 street. If so-and-so wins, we'll take to the street. Well, you know, taking to the street is

00:13:35.060 okay if it's just with signs and protests, but it's not okay if you start using violence or,

00:13:42.200 or threats of violence and violence begets violence. And those with the biggest guns win. And

00:13:46.920 I'd much prefer to live in a country where those with the best lawyers win. And I'd rather take the

00:13:52.280 cases to court and let the Supreme Court decide the case. Look, Bush versus Gore was a monumental

00:13:57.780 decision in American history, not because of what it decided. It was wrongly decided in my view,

00:14:03.560 but because Al Gore said, I accept it and I will not contest the decision of the United States Supreme

00:14:10.140 Court. He might well have contested it. It was five to four along party lines. It was the wrong

00:14:16.100 decision based on the history of the Eagle Protection Clause. But he and Richard Nixon before him,

00:14:21.420 you've got to give Richard Nixon a lot of credit. He was beaten by Ted Kennedy in an election that he

00:14:26.480 believed to the day he died was unfair. He thought that Illinois was bought. He thought that a number

00:14:31.780 of other states, West Virginia, a number of other states were bought. And in the end, he told his

00:14:37.020 advisors, although I think I may have won this election, I'm not going to contest it. America is

00:14:42.740 more important than my future as president. So we have two presidential candidates who've done that,

00:14:47.840 losing candidates who've done that over time. Now we have a president who hasn't committed himself

00:14:53.760 to accepting the results of the election. Look, he has a perfect right to challenge the results of

00:14:59.080 the election in court. And that's what I think he's really saying. It is. And he's been misinterpreted

00:15:04.040 to believe that he believes something else. I don't believe that. Look, he's planning legal

00:15:11.060 strategy. Both sides have war rooms. They're planning legal strategy. And you're going to see a lot of

00:15:16.440 litigation. That's why it's going to be very interesting to see who the fifth member of the

00:15:20.100 Supreme Court is, whether the president gets to get the nomination, whether the nomination goes

00:15:25.500 through before the election. These are very complex and difficult issues. I'm writing a new book on that

00:15:30.840 about the whole confirmation process. So here is I want to come to the confirmation here in a second,

00:15:35.700 but I want to stick on the election for a second. The the problem that I have, because we were just

00:15:41.960 talking about this before you and I sat down, I was talking to somebody out in the hallway

00:15:45.500 about what Donald Trump said, et cetera, et cetera. And and I agree with you. I think he's saying I'll

00:15:52.820 challenge it and I'll see. But, you know, in the end, he would respect the the view of the system,

00:15:59.360 I think. And I would, too, if it was an Al Gore situation and I was on the losing side of it,

00:16:06.480 I wouldn't be happy about it. But that's the way it works out if it was fair. And the problem is,

00:16:14.580 is that you've got people saying on both sides, Donald Trump said, well, we'll see. We've got some

00:16:20.540 things we have to look at. We question you have Hillary Clinton coming out and saying he should

00:16:26.260 never give in, never give in. He should never concede. When you have that on both sides in such

00:16:35.160 a volatile thing. Alan, how do we come back together? Well, I think we come back together

00:16:41.340 through the institutions that the Constitution sets up. If you read Hamilton, the most brilliant

00:16:47.020 of our founders. I mean, Hamilton today, you read the Federalist Papers. There are very few words that

00:16:53.080 have to be changed. Just the most brilliant analysis of our Constitution in Federalist 78. He talks about

00:16:59.700 that. He talks about how the judiciary, we have trusted the judiciary ultimately to make decisions

00:17:06.460 when there's conflicts between the executive branch and the legislative branch, or where the executive

00:17:11.380 branch claims too much power or the legislative branch takes too much power. We have allocated to

00:17:16.820 the judiciary. And until very recently, the Supreme Court was the most respected institution

00:17:22.340 in the United States. And if it renders a decision like Bush versus Gore, the American people will want to

00:17:29.220 see it followed. What I worry about is now we have a four to four split in the Supreme Court. We don't

00:17:34.580 know. Justice Roberts may go with one side or the other. If the president appoints a partisan now,

00:17:41.600 a strict partisan, and that partisan casts the deciding vote for the president in a contested election,

00:17:48.980 there will be some who will say the thumb was on the scale. I will not be among them because it's the

00:17:57.280 process. And again, as you said, you win some, you lose some. As a civilitarian, you focus on the

00:18:03.580 process. So I trust the Supreme Court, even though I've lost in the Supreme Court, and I've won in the

00:18:09.060 Supreme Court. But I trust the process, just like I trust the electoral process. My candidates don't

00:18:14.100 always win. They win about half the time. The other half, I'm upset. I mean, we had a big party in our

00:18:20.020 house to celebrate Hillary Clinton's victory. And there's still the champagne is still there.

00:18:24.700 Right. So so let's go to the Supreme Court on that. Do you see the nominees that he has,

00:18:32.980 the three women that he has laid out so far? Do you see them as partisans?

00:18:37.980 I'm very worried about one aspect of Amy Coney Barrett's judicial philosophy. I'm not worried

00:18:48.080 about her religion. We can't enter ever, ever under any circumstances disqualify a person because

00:18:53.820 of religion. The Constitution, the text of the Constitution says no religious test shall ever be.

00:18:58.580 And I think that Senator Feinstein was wrong when she turned to her when she was being confirmed for

00:19:06.420 a judgeship and said, the dogma is heavy in your life. That's a statement that could be interpreted

00:19:13.780 as an anti-Catholic bias. It's not a dogma. It's a deeply felt religious, spiritual connection to God

00:19:21.760 through her own eyes. And she's entitled to those views. It was very reflective of the 1850s and the

00:19:28.600 anti-Catholicism that was happening back then. It was right. And of course, in the 19th,

00:19:36.420 17, when Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court and half the leaders of the bar said,

00:19:41.520 we can't have a Jew on the Supreme Court. Those days hopefully have gone forever. But here's the

00:19:46.120 problem I have. And I think it just should be explored. She has written that she believes there

00:19:52.500 is a right to life. Now, she's never said specifically there's a constitutional right to life.

00:19:58.840 But if she believes that the Constitution protects the right to life, the implication are that New York could

00:20:05.280 not pass a statute allowing a first trimester abortion. Because if there is a right to life,

00:20:11.280 a constitutional right to life, then the state has no right to kill a fetus who has the right to life.

00:20:17.280 So she has to be questioned. I think her answers will be that's her personal view.

00:20:22.540 But right now, under O versus Wade, there is no right to life. There is a right to choice in the

00:20:28.060 first trimester, conflicted in the second, not in the third. And that she'll follow the law.

00:20:34.440 That's what Justice Scalia said. Of course, that's what John Kennedy said when he ran for

00:20:38.840 president. And I suspect that's what she will say. But she has to be questioned about that.

00:20:45.280 Okay. So not because she's a Catholic, but because of what she's written about the right to life.

00:20:49.560 But that doesn't make her a partisan. I mean, there's, I believe there is a right to life. And

00:20:56.220 I, I get very, I'm like you with the second amendment. I get very squishy because I don't

00:21:02.020 want to be the judge there. You know what I mean? I just, yeah, no, I agree with you. Look,

00:21:06.540 my dear friend, my, Oh, go ahead. But, but that's not a, that's a deeply held issue.

00:21:11.940 A belief that's not partisan. That's, that's not a partisan. I'll give you some,

00:21:18.080 I'll give you some evidence on that. My dear late friend, Nat Hentoff, who I really learned

00:21:23.120 civil liberties from, he was the great defender of free speech. He was just the paragon of a civil

00:21:29.680 libertarian. He believed in a right to life. He's a liberal Democrat, an atheist. He believes in the

00:21:36.780 right to life because he thinks that by allowing abortion, you trivialize and demean human life.

00:21:41.940 And that it's the first step on the road to killing people. And so he felt very strongly,

00:21:49.500 he got, he was not allowed to serve on the board of the American civil liberties union

00:21:53.560 because he held those views. He held them as a secular liberal leftist Democrat. So I agree with

00:22:00.600 you that views on abortion are not partisan. I have friends who are liberal Democrats, but they're

00:22:07.220 evangelical Christians who are very religious Catholics. Some of my Catholic friends as strongly

00:22:14.380 oppose the death penalty as they do abortion because they think both demean human life. So I

00:22:20.740 agree with you. It's not a partisan view. It could be an ideological view, but it crosses party lines.

00:22:26.160 For the most part, Democrats support a right to choose and many Republicans oppose a right to

00:22:32.380 choose. But it's not a partisan issue inherently. I agree with that. From working hard to playing hard,

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00:23:48.940 Where would the mistakes be, uh, be made here on in the next couple of weeks on either side that you

00:23:58.380 would think, because we have to come out of this with people having respect for the Supreme court and

00:24:05.780 whoever the nominee is, if they are made to look like this is just a puppet, then the whole election

00:24:13.360 is going to be in question. I agree with you. And Hamilton said that, uh, in the same federalist

00:24:18.920 paper, he said the judiciary alone can never hurt individual rights. But when the judiciary is seen

00:24:25.080 as in partnership with the executive branch or with the legislative branch, they can do much damage.

00:24:31.500 So the judiciary has to remain independent. Look, the mistake was made years ago. Um, I'm writing a

00:24:38.680 book about it and I go through all the mistakes. The first mistake was the way the Robert Bork matter

00:24:43.480 was handled. The second mistake was the way the Clarence Thomas matter, uh, was handled. The third

00:24:49.480 mistake was the Democrats getting rid of the cloture and filibuster for judicial nominees. The fourth and

00:24:56.160 final and most serious mistake was the Republicans getting rid of the, you know, the nuclear option

00:25:01.280 and getting rid of the super majority requirement for confirmation of Supreme court, uh, justices.

00:25:09.120 And then the Republican refusal to allow the Merrick Garland nomination to go through eight months,

00:25:15.760 eight months before the election. And now the same Republicans are coming back and saying, well,

00:25:20.820 it's only six weeks, but this is different because we control both the Senate and the presidency.

00:25:25.760 That's a hard sell for many Americans. And I think a lot of Americans will say, look,

00:25:31.380 a plague on both your houses, uh, two hypocrisies don't make a principle just like two rights don't

00:25:36.200 make a wrong. So I think a lot of mistakes have been made. And in my book, I try to argue for how

00:25:41.520 we can restore the legitimacy of the nomination process. Look, this has been long in coming.

00:25:48.100 When John Adams was about to leave office, Jefferson was about to be president. He nominated all these

00:25:53.760 midnight judges. He stayed up until midnight signing these commissions so that his federalist judges

00:25:59.760 would dominate the judiciary for the next 25 or 30 years. People didn't live as long as they do today.

00:26:06.340 Uh, you know, thankfully Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who I knew since she was a young law professor

00:26:10.340 at Rutgers university, you know, God gave her 87 good years. Uh, well, maybe 85 good years. Uh,

00:26:17.600 she's had a lot of bouts with cancer and illness and she lost her husband, but, uh, you know,

00:26:22.460 she was on the top of her game mentally until, until 87. If justices now are appointed at 38,

00:26:28.840 one of the people on the list is 38. She could serve for 50 years. I'm in favor of term limits

00:26:34.040 for Supreme court justices. I would like to see that change. 20 years is long enough

00:26:38.220 to serve on the bench. And I like that better than retirement, because if you have a retirement age,

00:26:44.020 say 75, that still incentivizes the president to pick young people, people in their thirties.

00:26:49.080 You shouldn't be a justice to the Supreme court in your thirties. Uh, Oliver Wendell Holmes got on

00:26:54.020 the court at 60. Brandeis, 60. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 60, maybe 50. Okay. But not 35. And so

00:27:03.200 if you can serve 20 years, then it doesn't matter how old you are. They'll put you on the court at

00:27:09.000 50 or 60, even maybe 65. I'm a little too old. I'm 82. So I'm not running for any judicial positions,

00:27:16.340 but there are people in their sixties who would make great judges.

00:27:19.840 Isn't it amazing that, um, society starts to devalue people at 60, 65, um, and looks towards

00:27:28.620 youth. But without explaining, at least to me, I completely agree at 30. I don't care who you are.

00:27:37.740 At 30, you should not be a Supreme. You have to have life experience and wisdom,

00:27:42.720 but we don't generally look for that. I agree with you. I think wisdom is the main criteria for

00:27:49.240 being a judge and the judges I know who have been the best judges, not only a smart, you know,

00:27:55.220 having taught at Harvard 50 years, smart as a dime a dozen wisdom is difficult and wisdom sometimes

00:28:01.620 like good wine takes a little bit of aging. Uh, let me quickly just go on a couple of things here.

00:28:08.460 Immigration, in terms of DACA, which was more constitutional, what Obama did or what Trump

00:28:16.380 did? You always ask the hard questions. Um, I think they were both constitutional. You know,

00:28:22.940 when you live by the sword, you die by the sword. When presidents impose unilaterally executive orders,

00:28:28.860 it opens it up to being rescinded by the previous president. Uh, Obama, instead of having a treaty

00:28:35.140 with Iran, which never would have passed the Senate, he imposed a deal on the American people

00:28:40.100 against the will of the Senate, against the will of the house, against the will of many people in

00:28:44.200 his own white house, against the will of the American public. And then he, then he complained

00:28:48.900 when president Trump undid it. But you know, if you had a treaty, you couldn't undo it. But if you have

00:28:54.560 an executive order, you can undo it. So probably both are constitutional. I think one is right and

00:29:00.840 one is wrong. I'm in favor of DACA, at least limited. Look, I come from a family of immigrants.

00:29:07.200 Let me tell you a story about my grandfather. Maybe it'll tell you why I'm so biased in this

00:29:10.560 direction. My grandfather was as poor as anybody could be. He had a little house in Williamsburg

00:29:16.540 in Brooklyn at a time when Williamsburg was not the fancy neighborhood. And he discovered that we

00:29:20.920 had 29 relatives in Czechoslovakia who were about to be murdered in the Holocaust. And they all sought

00:29:27.060 exit visas and they couldn't get them because they didn't have jobs in America. My grandfather

00:29:31.380 went to everybody in the neighborhood and said, you have a house, you have a basement, you now have

00:29:35.160 a synagogue. You need a rabbi, you need a rabbi's wife, you need a ritual slaughterer, you need this,

00:29:40.320 you need that. Sign affidavits. And he got 29 affidavits signed and on the eve of the Holocaust

00:29:45.860 rescued every single member of my family in Czechoslovakia. Probably half of them were illegal immigrants

00:29:50.900 because they, you know, probably one was 12 years old and he was going to be a rabbi. But nobody cared

00:29:56.580 because you had to save these people. And so I'm sympathetic to people who try to cross the river

00:30:03.320 to make themselves a better life. On the other hand, I'm also sympathetic to people who played by the

00:30:07.880 rules. And so I want to be generous and I want to be compassionate, but you can't have just massive

00:30:15.240 illegal immigration. You have to have a reasonable approach. Again, Alan, this goes back to a different

00:30:21.620 dialogue than what we're having. I mean, you and I are having, I agree with you. If I say this all

00:30:27.520 the time to my conservative audience, put yourself in their shoes. You are in Mexico. You got a drug

00:30:34.060 lord running things. You can't get a job. Maybe you're, you, if you do have a job, you're never

00:30:39.640 going to improve your station. Your kids aren't going to get a good education. And right across that

00:30:45.480 river is a place where all of that goes away. And yes, you have to break the law, but they don't

00:30:51.160 really seem to care that much about it anyway. So yeah, I would absolutely cross that river. I

00:30:58.600 would come North to America every time. But, and not only that, but they're living in a country,

00:31:03.880 which is totally lawless, right? They have never been taught respect for the law. They want to come

00:31:08.340 to America where they can respect the law. Correct. And, uh, you know, I had a, an Uber driver the other

00:31:13.920 day who I picked up and, um, he, uh, seemed very smart and he was a doctor in Venezuela.

00:31:21.400 And of course, in Venezuela, you can't live your life decently. It's a tyrannical regime. And he

00:31:27.740 came to America and he came, uh, legally, but he still has relatives there. And the guy's Uber

00:31:33.760 was like a salon. He had, you know, he had water, he had drinks, he had this, you could see this guy

00:31:41.540 and he was a doctor. He was a medical doctor and driving an Uber because he wanted to become a

00:31:46.780 nurse in America. I gave him a $50 tip. I was so struck by, I said, this guy is my grandfather.

00:31:54.120 Yeah. A hundred years later, this guy's going to make it. He's going to contribute enormously to

00:31:58.800 America. He's what America is all about. Yeah. I, I, I had, um, I was going in for something that

00:32:05.920 had to draw blood and I had a phlebotonist, um, drawing my blood and he had a heavy, uh, Eastern

00:32:12.760 Europe, um, uh, accent and the nurses were in and then he came in and the nurses left

00:32:19.740 and his personality changed a little bit when the nurses weren't there. And he started to open up and

00:32:24.880 talk to me a little bit. And I said, where are you from? And he told me, and he talked about how

00:32:28.440 his life was oppressed over, you know, in Eastern Europe. And he had come over here to America,

00:32:33.740 but he was a heart surgeon in Eastern Europe, a heart surgeon. And he's now drawing my blood

00:32:40.180 and it was just charming. It was amazing. He was charming. Um, and the nurses came in and they said,

00:32:48.420 Ivan, can we pick it up a little bit and kind of rolled their eyes. And I thought, do you even know

00:32:54.840 who this man is? Do you, do you even have any concept? So I think immigrants make us better.

00:33:01.000 It's really important, et cetera, et cetera. But you said something that I never hear from anyone

00:33:07.480 when we're actually trying to solve something. And that is, but you can't just have the wild

00:33:13.840 West. There has to be, if you want to, I'm for more people coming in. I just want to know who they

00:33:21.880 are, why they're here. I agree with you. We need the rule of law. I'll tell you a wonderful story

00:33:27.260 about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Last time I had lunch with her, you know, we grew up not far from each

00:33:31.880 other in Brooklyn. We're approximately the same age. She's a few years older than me.

00:33:35.920 She famously said, ask the question, what's the difference between a bookkeeper in the Garment

00:33:42.800 District and a justice of the Supreme Court? And her answer was one generation in America.

00:33:47.600 And I said to her justice, um, what's the difference between a bookkeeper and a Harvard

00:33:53.000 law professor? And she said, one generation, my mother too was a bookkeeper in the Garment District

00:33:58.000 like her mother. And they both produced children who, you know, made great successes in the United

00:34:03.580 States. That's the American dream. But now, you know, you can be disciplined. If you talk about the

00:34:09.580 American dream in some context, if you talk about meritocracy, if you talk about equality,

00:34:15.180 you have to instead talk about identity politics. It depends on what your race is, what your gender

00:34:20.820 is, you know, and we have different rules based on different identities. That's not America.

00:34:27.200 America is Martin Luther King, where we're judged by the quality of our character, not the color of

00:34:32.520 our skin or our gender or anything else. Isn't the politics of today of the critical race theory,

00:34:44.100 isn't that pushing us way, way back into the dark ages? I mean, yes, it is. I have California,

00:34:53.240 California passing a loss or trying to pass a law that says we can discriminate is terrifying to me.

00:35:01.820 I don't care what color you are. That's terrifying. I agree. I agree. I have another book will be out

00:35:07.220 fairly soon about the cancel culture and about how the cancel culture wants to cancel meritocracy.

00:35:12.680 It wants to get rid of meritocracy explicitly. People should not be judged by the merit. They

00:35:19.800 want to make sure symphony orchestras no longer audition potential players behind the screen.

00:35:25.420 They want to know if you're a woman or a man. They want to know if you're black or white. They want

00:35:29.260 to know if you're Asian. They want to know everything about you. No, I want to know if you know how to play

00:35:34.240 the violin. And, you know, when I want a surgeon, I want a surgeon. I always have a rule. I want my

00:35:41.740 doctors to be short, fat, ugly, poor, and even maybe smell a little. Why? Because I know they've

00:35:49.600 made it on the merits of their medical care. They've not made it because they're charming and handsome

00:35:54.900 or rich. So that's the kind of doctor I want. And, you know, I just want the doctor who's the best.

00:36:02.360 Let me go back. You know, you looking at your life, you have to at times go, I can't believe

00:36:08.280 this has been my life. This is crazy, right? Well, I would have said that five years ago. What a great

00:36:13.800 life. I mean, I started with nothing. My parents hadn't gone to school. I was the first member of my

00:36:18.580 family to go to college. And then five years ago, a group of lawyers got together and with a woman

00:36:25.820 and decided to conspire to try to destroy my legacy in my life by falsely accusing me of having sex

00:36:32.580 with a woman I never met. Fortunately for me, they left behind a trail of lies. They try to suppress

00:36:38.880 emails in which she admits she never met me. They try to suppress a book manuscript where she described

00:36:43.720 who she had sex with and said she didn't have sex with me. They try to suppress a

00:36:48.560 telephone call between me and her lawyer in which the lawyer said it was impossible for me to have

00:36:53.500 met her and she was wrong, simply wrong. They try to suppress another tape recording of her best

00:36:58.200 friend where she tells her best friend and her best friend then tells me on tape that she was

00:37:02.740 pressured to falsely accuse me by her own lawyers. And yet, because this accusation is still out there,

00:37:09.540 people believe it. I mean, I have the most overwhelming evidence that I never met this woman. This is a

00:37:14.260 woman who has lied about so many people. She has a history of lying. People don't

00:37:18.480 care. If you're accused today, you're guilty. So my legacy has suffered. My life has suffered.

00:37:25.060 I'm in litigation now up to my neck. I'm suing them. They're suing me. I'm suing a lawyer.

00:37:30.280 He's suing me. Legal expenses are mounting. I am, you know, fighting for my reputation. I will win

00:37:36.340 because in the end, the truth comes out. But it has taken an enormous toll on me. I'm 82 years old

00:37:42.740 and I'm spending too much time trying to prove a negative, to prove that I never met a woman

00:37:47.880 who has falsely accused me and many others of improper conduct.

00:37:53.720 You're suing CNN for like $300 million?

00:37:58.500 Yeah, it's all going to go to charity. I'm suing them because they doctored a tape.

00:38:03.820 I said on the floor of the Senate, if a president does anything unlawful or illegal,

00:38:07.800 he can be impeached. But if he just does something because he's partly motivated by a desire to get

00:38:13.280 reelected, that's not enough to impeach him. They edited out the part where I said unlawful,

00:38:19.140 illegal. And they then had their commentators say, Dershowitz said a president can do anything

00:38:24.480 unlawful or illegal. Exactly the opposite of what I said. They doctored the tape. So I am suing them.

00:38:30.700 Why? I'm not accusing you of looking for a big payday. Why the number $300 million?

00:38:39.860 Well, my lawyer came up with that figure, but it's money I want to give to charity. I have a lot

00:38:43.840 of charities I would like to give it to. I would like to give it to organizations that support real

00:38:48.600 free speech, organizations that support victims of real sexual abuse, but also that support victims

00:38:55.240 of false accusations. So, you know, it's a figure that my lawyer says reflects the value of my

00:39:02.820 reputation, the value of my integrity. And I don't want to diminish that value. People can make fun of

00:39:08.560 the figure, but let's see. I'm not making fun of the figure. I like the idea of the figure being huge

00:39:16.760 and I wish it was, I wish it was bigger and I wish they had to pay bigger fines for things like this

00:39:21.340 because you can't, they're not the only ones that have edited tape to suit their, their needs or, or

00:39:30.680 leave facts out on the table. And, and that's really dangerous, really dangerous.

00:39:36.680 This is, you know, this is worse than just editing it a tape. It's as if I said the following, it's as if I

00:39:41.760 got on the floor of the Senate and said, I do not believe a president can do anything illegal.

00:39:48.840 I do not believe a president can do anything illegal. And they left out, I do not believe.

00:39:54.100 And they just said, a president can do anything illegal, says Dershowitz. That's what they did.

00:39:59.760 They took my words. They took out the words illegal and unlawful. And they had me say the exact opposite.

00:40:07.720 Then they got Joe Lockhart, the former press secretary to get on television and say,

00:40:11.440 Dershowitz says a president can do anything criminal. He's like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

00:40:18.500 So don't you think I have to sue them?

00:40:20.480 Yeah, I do. I'm not going to let people get away with that.

00:40:22.900 I personally do. Let me, let's kind of go back to the, to the case you were talking about with the

00:40:32.680 woman and go through it with, with Epstein, because you and I talked, I don't even know,

00:40:38.980 almost a year ago when this first came out and you said you had all of the goods on the,

00:40:44.540 the woman. Um, and, but the problem with this one is, and, and again, this is a cancel culture.

00:40:51.240 You're just assumed guilty. Um, the problem with this one is, uh, is it's, this guy was such a bad

00:41:00.800 guy and you were there and helped broker the deal for something that was crazy in Florida.

00:41:10.640 And I think that's my job. Yeah. Yeah, I know that's, you know, that's my job. I'm proud. I'm

00:41:15.260 proud of what I did. Uh, if you don't like the deal, complain to the prosecutor, complain to the

00:41:19.960 court. But the one thing the defense attorney has as an obligation is to make the best deal he

00:41:24.820 possibly could. The reason we got this deal is they had overwhelming evidence that he had done

00:41:29.300 terrible things at a state level from the state point of view locally, but they didn't have a

00:41:34.600 federal case against him because they didn't have any evidence that he had transported underage women

00:41:39.860 and at the state commerce. And so I presented the legal argument that they didn't have the state

00:41:45.480 case. And so we settled the case by having him plead guilty to state charges, but not federal charges.

00:41:51.200 You know, you can complain about that and I'm prepared to defend my actions, but don't accuse me

00:41:57.720 of having sex with somebody who I never met in my life. I can tell you categorically since the day I

00:42:04.040 met Jeffrey Epstein, I had sex with one woman, my wife. I touched only one woman. I'm not a flirt.

00:42:10.980 I'm not a hugger. I'm not that kind of a guy. I love my wife. And these accusations are provably

00:42:19.040 false. And I've proved it, but nobody wants to hear the proof. The 92nd Street Y, this great

00:42:24.460 organization that had me and Elie Wiesel speak every year has canceled me. They say, we know you

00:42:29.620 didn't do it, but we don't want trouble. That's what the McCarthy people used to say. We don't want

00:42:34.420 trouble. That's why we're not putting you on television. We're not putting you on the radio.

00:42:38.180 And they won't put me in the 92nd Street Y because of a false accusation, which they know is false.

00:42:45.500 You know, defending somebody that is unpopular. I've done that. O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson,

00:42:52.320 you know, you name it. I've had Klaus von Bülow. That's been my life, defending unpopular people,

00:42:57.700 particularly people that nobody else will defend. And I'm going to continue to do it.

00:43:01.320 Some people think I did much worse defending President Trump, but I'm going to continue to

00:43:06.880 defend people when I think their constitutional rights or their legal rights have been violated.

00:43:10.920 Just a side topic here, just for a second, because I'm curious.

00:43:15.860 You remind me of John Adams, who went and defended the British, which he didn't want to do,

00:43:22.780 but he believed that you should have the best defense. Does that play a role on how you pick

00:43:28.820 people? Because you really pick really nasty.

00:43:32.380 Well, I picked some good people, too. I mean, I've defended a lot of human rights people,

00:43:36.320 a lot of First Amendment people, Natan Sharansky in the Soviet Union. I've defended other and I've

00:43:41.820 defended a lot of women. I would say that I do half of my cases pro bono free. I would say 90%

00:43:47.500 of my cases are people who you would find to be very decent. But the most highly publicized ones

00:43:53.560 tend to be on the other side. I defended Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. I defended, you know,

00:43:59.560 so many other people. I defended a woman who was locked up in a mental constitution by her husband

00:44:04.760 who wanted her money. So, you know, I've done a variety of cases and I'm hopefully if the good

00:44:10.980 Lord gives me the energy at age 82 to continue, I'll defend even more bad people. That's my job.

00:44:16.640 It's important. Not only did John Adams do it, Abraham Lincoln did it, Clarence Darrow did it.

00:44:21.140 I'm not comparing myself to any of those people, but I have learned from them. Abraham did it in the

00:44:26.540 Bible. He says to God, far be it from thee. How would you do justice, injustice when God said he was

00:44:34.420 going to kill all the people of Saddam? Abraham said, what if there are 50 innocent people and

00:44:39.580 God agreed with them? If Abraham can defend the sinners of Saddam, I can defend Jeffrey Epstein

00:44:45.080 and O.J. Simpson and Klaus von Bulow.

00:44:46.920 So where do you go? Where do you go next with this case to clear your name?

00:44:52.720 Well, I'm going to be in court. We're going to litigate. We're going to have jurors make the

00:44:56.240 decision. They'll hear all the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. We have emails from her

00:45:02.560 essentially saying she never heard of me. Who is this guy? Somebody had to tell her who I was.

00:45:07.060 Oh, I'm the guy who defended Klaus von Bulow. They made a movie about it. It's called Reversal of

00:45:11.100 Fortune. You should put him in your book because he'll help you sell your book. We have that email.

00:45:15.360 Wow. And then she puts me in the book. Then she puts me in the book as somebody she did not have

00:45:19.540 sex with. What could be clearer? How they can even bring this lawsuit is absolutely shocking.

00:45:26.220 So who's behind it? Why is that happening? David Boies is behind it. He is a lawyer who's had

00:45:34.980 more ethics charges than any prominent lawyer in modern American history. He's been charged with

00:45:41.440 so many violations of legal ethics. He is behind it. He has been funding it. He was hoping to use me as

00:45:50.400 a lever to extort a billion dollars from Leslie Wexner. Here are the facts. They accuse me in

00:45:59.380 public. At the same time they accuse me in public, they go to Leslie Wexner in private and they say,

00:46:04.740 we can do to you what we've done to Dershowitz. We can accuse you of having sex with this woman who

00:46:10.420 you probably never met. And if you don't want to be accused, there are ways of resolving this.

00:46:16.480 So that's one of the issues. Do you have evidence of that? We do. We have evidence that

00:46:23.140 that they met at about the same time. We have evidence that she accused the same woman accused

00:46:31.960 Leslie Wexner not only of having sex with her on multiple occasions, but making her wear Victoria's

00:46:37.060 Secret type lingerie. Can you imagine what that would have done to the company if it had been

00:46:40.840 exposed at the head of the company? Leslie Wexner, the head of Victoria's Secret, was making a young

00:46:45.720 woman wear Victoria's Secret type lingerie to have sex with him. And so they went to him with that

00:46:52.440 information, threatened to expose it. And then we'll we'll see what happened, whether or not there was

00:46:59.520 a payoff, whether or not there was maybe they concluded she was lying. But if she was lying about

00:47:05.780 Leslie Wexner, why do they believe she's telling the truth about me? All of this will come out at the

00:47:10.220 trial. I'm looking forward to presenting all of this evidence from day one. I didn't want to suppress

00:47:15.900 any evidence. I want everything out, every photograph, every video, every witness. The

00:47:21.000 other side has tried to deep six all the evidence. They failed to disclose the emails. They failed to

00:47:26.280 disclose the manuscript. They tried to hide the tape recordings. Now it's all coming out and they will

00:47:31.500 be exposed and I will be vindicated. Let me switch to Keith Ellison. Sure. You said that you would

00:47:41.620 cancel your party membership if Keith Ellison was appointed party chair. I applaud you for that,

00:47:48.560 sir. Why did you see him as such a threat? I didn't see him so much as a threat. I saw it as a reward

00:47:59.260 or a failure to condemn his close connections to Louis Farrakhan, who's one of the most bigoted

00:48:05.480 people in American history. Right. I mean, he is a guy who has said the most terrible things

00:48:11.260 about Jews, about gays, about so many other people, about white people. And Ellison had a close

00:48:19.760 association, which he has not completely told the truth about. And so I thought that putting a person

00:48:26.560 like that at the head of the Democratic Party would send a terrible message. Look, I'm toying

00:48:31.040 around with that issue right now. I don't like the squad. I don't like the members of Congress who

00:48:37.360 have expressed bigoted views about Jews in Israel and about other people. And I think the Democrats

00:48:44.080 have a problem. The Republicans have done a much better job marginalizing extremists. There were a few

00:48:51.500 on the Republican side, and they've marginalized them. The Democrats have embraced the extremists,

00:48:57.400 and that's what worries me. Did you put me in that category back in the day?

00:49:01.940 No, no, no. I never thought of you as an extremist. I did think of Pat Buchanan in that category. And

00:49:09.320 there were one or two members of Congress that were taking off important positions. They were stripped of

00:49:15.240 their chairmanship. The Democrats did the opposite. They made one of these bigots a member of the

00:49:20.500 Foreign Relations Committee. So I'm wondering how, because I think I know a lot of Democrats. My

00:49:26.080 family was Democrat. You know, my grandfather and grandmother, and, you know, they were FDR Democrats.

00:49:33.760 And I think there's a lot of people that have voted Democrat their whole life, but they now see this

00:49:41.720 anti-Americanism, this really bigoted kind of approach and an openness or a willingness to

00:49:54.020 to stand with people who say there's nothing good about America and it should be destroyed.

00:50:01.300 That is... I hate that.

00:50:02.920 Right. I mean, what has happened to the Democratic Party? And is it going to... Is that who they are?

00:50:10.800 I mean, what...

00:50:12.060 I hope not. And one of the reasons I remain a Democrat is I want to make sure that it remains

00:50:18.420 a centrist party. I think nominating Joe Biden instead of nominating some of the others who were

00:50:24.820 running showed that the Democrats, at least many of the Democratic Party, want to move away from the

00:50:31.140 margins and toward the center. But we'll have to wait and see. And we'll wait and see who, if he gets

00:50:37.380 elected, who he appoints and how he deals with, if he's elected, it's not a foregone conclusion at this

00:50:43.060 point, how he deals with the squad. You know, all politicians want to have it both ways. They

00:50:50.680 don't want to alienate any of their base. On the other hand, they don't want to embrace people who

00:50:55.720 are extremists. And we'll wait and see how that develops. But for me, it's a work in progress. If I

00:51:02.980 remain a Democrat as long as I think the Democratic Party has the hope of remaining a centrist party,

00:51:08.360 which can have bipartisan support for Israel, bipartisan support for American values. And I

00:51:14.220 could never vote for a candidate who puts America down, who says that America was built on racism,

00:51:20.500 America was built on bigotry. Every country has had its bigotry, its racism, its history of oppression.

00:51:28.060 We've mostly done a pretty good job in overcoming it. We're not perfect. And we still have a long

00:51:35.260 way to go. But we should not be defunding the police. We should not be knocking patriotism.

00:51:43.400 I'm a patriot. My grandmother, who came from a shtetl in Eastern Europe, used to take me to stand in

00:51:49.140 front of the Statue of Liberty on July 4th and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and recite the national

00:51:55.720 anthem. She was such a super patriot because she saw from whence she came and she loved America.

00:52:01.760 And believe me, that was contagious. And it spread to my father and me and my family.

00:52:08.200 We believe in America. So why is there such reticence to disavow Antifa or say black lives do matter

00:52:21.380 and peaceful protests are good? But there's an underbelly of black lives matter that is that

00:52:27.840 black lives matter Inc. Is a declared Marxist organization that's separate from what the

00:52:36.280 average person is doing. Why is I agree with you? Go ahead. I've written about that. I wrote a piece

00:52:41.680 in the Boston Globe saying that black lives matter should stop saying the things it says in its platform

00:52:50.120 that I support the concept of black lives matter. But the organization, unless it changes its platform

00:52:57.300 and eliminates some of the most objectionable things that most people don't know about.

00:53:02.260 And when I talk to my son, for example, about it, he says, well, there's no such thing really

00:53:06.480 as black lives matter organization. There are like 12 people who write the platform.

00:53:10.560 It's a concept and you should support the concept. And I do support the concept.

00:53:14.360 But I strongly oppose using the concept in any way as a cover for the kind of bigotry that's reflected

00:53:22.620 in the black lives matter platform. And Antifa, we've had people say that those are white extremists.

00:53:30.940 They are white extremists, but they're the that they're right wing, right extremists. That's the latest.

00:53:36.480 We know who these people are, mostly white. I think they're using the plight of the African-American to

00:53:44.960 foment their revolution. But you have people that say they're not a problem. You have people refusing

00:53:52.800 to disavow them. You have these these I don't even know if you can call them Democrats out in the West

00:54:01.540 and in some cities that are are seemingly bowing down to them.

00:54:07.120 Isn't it wrong? Yeah, I mean, it's wrong. Antifa is a terrible organization.

00:54:12.920 It's a terrorist organization. Basically, it believes in violence.

00:54:16.800 They would say to you, Alan Dershowitz, they fought against Hitler.

00:54:21.440 How could you possibly how can you possibly say that?

00:54:25.080 The communists fought against Hitler, too. And I don't support the communists.

00:54:29.000 Just because you're the enemy of my enemy doesn't make you my friend. I have to

00:54:33.940 have something in common with you. And I have nothing in common with Antifa.

00:54:39.300 It's a violent organization. It has protested my speeches because I support Israel and I support

00:54:46.340 decency and centurism and peaceful protests. And so they've protested my speeches. That's fine.

00:54:54.800 They can protest them, but they threatened violence and they use violence. And I think

00:55:00.280 they have to be looked into. And the legitimate protests have to be separated from the illegitimate

00:55:06.440 protests. There's never an excuse or a justification for using legitimate causes to justify looting or

00:55:13.720 violence or threats of violence.

00:55:15.180 So this is one I wrestle with a lot. I am a federalist. I want the least amount of government

00:55:26.860 as possible. I want the most control as close to my house as possible, the least in Washington.

00:55:35.660 Um, and if you are sitting there, let's say I live in Minneapolis and my police is being cut.

00:55:45.820 I'm worried about things. My, my city council seems to be okay with all of this stuff. My mayor does.

00:55:53.460 My governor's not doing anything. I could see myself in that situation going, where's the federal

00:55:59.140 government? Cause I'm a U S citizen too. Where is my protection? But I don't want a federal government.

00:56:05.640 I don't want the federal government to be able to come in outside of the state, uh, unless invited.

00:56:14.180 What do you do? How do you solve that?

00:56:17.280 Well, I wish we could invite, uh, Jefferson and Hamilton into this conversation. As you know,

00:56:22.280 Hamilton was the great federalist and Jefferson was the democratic Republican, but Jefferson

00:56:26.940 was the state's rights guy. He wanted to keep everything close to the states and Hamilton

00:56:31.620 saw the need for a bigger federal government. Uh, he rejected, of course, the articles of

00:56:37.340 Confederacy. He wanted a strong central government that's now changed somewhat. And you know, the

00:56:43.380 answer is you can't do it in the abstract. Uh, we have to do it in the particular. There is a role

00:56:48.520 for the federal government. When the rioters try to close down federal courts or federal buildings

00:56:54.920 or threaten federal employees, the federal government has the right to send their people

00:56:59.340 in. Otherwise they need the consent of the state. They need the governor, uh, or the mayor to invite

00:57:04.940 them in. We do not have a federal police force and we should never have a federal police force.

00:57:09.760 That should be a local matter. So, you know, whether you're a federalist or an anti-federalist,

00:57:15.280 a Democrat, Republican, I think we can join in knowing that we have to have a system of checks and

00:57:21.880 balances where the federal government has a function. State governments have a function.

00:57:26.820 Municipal governments have no function. Alan, you, we are on the same page, I think on this. Um,

00:57:34.120 but I, uh, you and I both know if things get out of control and your local and state are, are going

00:57:44.160 along with people who are saying, tear the country down, burn it down. I agree. Isn't there some sort

00:57:51.060 of insurrection in there? I mean, without getting the, how do we do it without confusing and blurring

00:57:58.320 the lines? Cause I don't want the feds to be able to do it, but there's gotta be some trigger.

00:58:04.660 I agree with you. I've written about this. The constitution speaks to it. It talks about the

00:58:09.660 federal government guaranteeing every state, a Republican form of government Republican with a

00:58:13.500 small R obviously. Um, and it also talks about in cases of insurrection and, uh, suspending the writ

00:58:19.720 of habeas corpus is interesting that the United States constitution doesn't mention the word

00:58:23.760 martial law, which is in the constitution of a number of other States and States have declared

00:58:28.460 martial law over time. Uh, the Hawaiian islands declared it after Pearl Harbor. Uh, we never have

00:58:33.700 had martial law. We came close to it during the civil war when the president suspended the writ of

00:58:38.500 habeas corpus and essentially was overruled by the United States Supreme court. So, you know,

00:58:44.240 we have to keep the balance struck. Our government is a process. You know, we're not like other

00:58:50.380 countries where sovereignty resides in the King or in the prime minister. In our case, sovereignty is a

00:58:55.820 process. It's a system of checks and balances. It's a system of separation of powers. No one

00:59:01.640 institution has all the power. The courts may have the last word subject to the public accepting it.

00:59:07.120 But what is, what is the definition of insurrection? What, what is that trigger? That line? Is that a

00:59:14.200 bright line or is that just subjective? It's not a bright line. We had a few insurrections early in

00:59:20.460 our history and Jefferson wrote about them, uh, and talked about, you know, insurrections every so

00:59:27.800 often or the blood of liberty. Yeah. All of that. Uh, but we've been blessed other than the civil war.

00:59:35.200 Um, you know, we had draft riots the way we handled, uh, for example, uh, Irish immigrants

00:59:41.500 coming to the United States during the civil war. We just made them into cannon fodder. We sent them

00:59:47.320 off to be killed. Uh, there were riots obviously. And, uh, we understand that. Uh, but, um, a balance

00:59:54.920 has to be struck and the constitution tries to strike the balance, um, with a variety of provisions,

01:00:00.260 ultimately leaving it to the courts. Is it a perfect system? It's not. But as Churchill said

01:00:04.980 about democracy, it may be the worst system, except for all the others that have been tried over

01:00:09.280 time. Uh, when we, uh, we look at COVID, uh, Donald Trump, uh, I mean, honestly, uh, one of the things

01:00:20.280 I was against Donald Trump in 2016, and I have been impressed on some things. I hate other things.

01:00:26.040 Um, uh, but, uh, the one concern that I had, in fact, I said it in 2016, that this guy's going to

01:00:34.640 get elected and he's a power guy. He's just a power guy and he's used to being the CEO and he'll just

01:00:41.820 administrate, which is not our system. And I worried that there would be some sort of a collapse or

01:00:48.260 catastrophe at this time. And he would become more FDR than FDR. He has shocked me, even with the

01:00:59.240 invitation from the left of, you've got to just tell these companies what to do. You have to tell

01:01:05.720 the States what to do. You have to have a national mandate. He's refused every step of the way.

01:01:12.040 is, is we're now talking about Biden saying, I am going to do a national mask, uh, deal. Do you have,

01:01:22.680 does the president have the right to do those things or is Donald Trump doing what the constitution is

01:01:28.460 saying? The president has no authority to make laws. People confuse the president with the commander

01:01:37.300 in chief of the country. He's the commander in chief of the armed forces. He can tell a private what to

01:01:41.860 do. He can tell a general what to do. He can't tell you what to do. He can't tell me what to do.

01:01:46.040 He is not our commander in chief. He is the president. He can enforce the law. He can't

01:01:51.080 make us wear masks. He can't make us not wear masks. The legislature does that subject to approval by the

01:01:57.480 courts, but the president administers the law. He has no lawmaking authority. That's true of governors

01:02:02.580 and mayors. So then where are we getting, Oh, this has to, the, where are we getting these? Like for

01:02:07.120 instance, Texas, we're not in session. So everything that has happened has been done through the

01:02:12.440 governor. Where are we getting, where are they getting this authority? It's, it's not really

01:02:18.080 there unless the legislature has authorized the governor to act in cases of emergency. Generally,

01:02:23.720 governors have no lawmaking authority. The governors can't make you close your shops. They can't make

01:02:28.640 you open your shops. They can't keep people from going to church. All they can do is, is, is enact,

01:02:36.200 is enforce the laws. That's what the executive does. Now, in some states, the legislature has

01:02:42.920 authorized the governor to take such actions. So the governor is acting as an agent of the legislature

01:02:48.320 in that situation. But our system of checks and balances, separation of powers, doesn't give

01:02:54.360 presidents and governors the authority to make law, particularly to make law that carries with it

01:02:59.780 punishment. So there's a big issue of whether executive authorities can tell people what to do

01:03:05.760 if the legislature hasn't passed a law. I will tell you that I think the greatest lawsuit that I've ever

01:03:13.800 seen, just this ripe lawsuit, just hanging low on the tree, is the federal government telling people,

01:03:22.880 you must close your business, and, and then not paying them. I mean, some are getting loans, but wait,

01:03:32.300 I don't need a loan. I was doing fine with my business. How does this not end in an absolute nightmare?

01:03:39.780 How many people have been wiped out? With, with what authority? Well, I think there will be lawsuits

01:03:47.480 under the takings clause of the constitution. The constitution says the government may not take property,

01:03:52.580 without just compensation. And when they tell you to shut down your business,

01:03:58.500 they are taking your property in the interests of other people, in the interests of the government.

01:04:03.560 And we shouldn't be putting all the economic burden on small businesses, which I'm afraid of what we're

01:04:09.860 doing. And I hope small businesses can survive because small business has been the essence of the

01:04:15.720 American character. I like the fact that Google and American Express now have ads on television

01:04:21.040 saying, please support small business, because I think small business, a lot of them are in real

01:04:25.900 trouble and they should be supported. We can't put the genie back in the bottle with tech. I don't want

01:04:32.840 to put the genie back in the bottle. I think tech is amazing. I think what's on the horizon with

01:04:37.420 artificial intelligence, with discovery, with everything is amazing. Yeah. It is also the greatest

01:04:45.220 danger I think mankind has ever faced. I agree with you. I agree with you. I think, you know,

01:04:50.780 that in the end, all these science fiction movies about robots taking over the world and machines

01:04:56.540 taking over the world, we already know our privacy. The younger generation of people, my children,

01:05:02.380 my grandchildren, seem to have much less concern about privacy than our generation had. They put

01:05:08.460 everything online. They know that everything they do is subject to being captured by high tech. You

01:05:18.100 know, I get all these emails about telling me what books to read based on what books I've already

01:05:22.440 read. I'll never forget when I went to the Soviet Union in 1974, I arranged for a young man who was about

01:05:29.980 to be drafted into the army and who was an anti-communist. I arranged for him to come to America and live

01:05:35.580 with me and take care of my children. I was a single father. And so he moved into my house and

01:05:40.340 he helped me take care of the children. I walked him to Harvard Square and he said to me, what's that?

01:05:45.140 And I said, that's a bookstore. He said, a bookstore? You can actually go in and buy a book and they

01:05:51.840 won't keep a record of it? I said, yeah, just pay the five bucks, give it to him. Nobody knows you

01:05:56.940 bought the book. He couldn't believe it. He said in the Soviet Union, if you want to read a book,

01:06:02.280 the government is going to know exactly what book you've read. And here in America,

01:06:07.080 you can buy a book and nobody will know. We take these things for granted. And they're so important

01:06:12.680 today. Can you buy a book without a record being kept? I'm not so sure. Right. And but the problem

01:06:17.700 here is, is that people don't see a problem with it because they've never experienced a problem.

01:06:23.000 And I think these companies Google the founders. I don't agree with people saying, oh,

01:06:28.840 the founders didn't see this. The founders didn't see a lot of stuff, technology, et cetera.

01:06:33.640 But the principles were the same. The one principle that I don't think they grasped at the time was

01:06:40.760 that a corporation could become more powerful than a sovereign state. Agreed. Or that social media

01:06:50.480 could become more influential than the New York Times, NBC, CBS, CNN. And they're less subject to control

01:06:58.280 because the FCC doesn't regulate them. One of the great First Amendment constitutional issues that

01:07:03.940 our children and grandchildren are going to face is how to deal with the increasing power of social

01:07:09.860 media and our desire not to censor them through government agencies, but the need to make sure

01:07:17.060 that they are accountable somehow. There was a very interesting thing that happened just this week.

01:07:21.740 A woman named Lila Khalid, who was a terrorist who hijacked two airplanes, was invited to speak,

01:07:27.960 of course, at San Francisco State University. They wouldn't invite me to speak or you to speak,

01:07:32.360 but they'll invite a convicted terrorist to speak, a person who hijacked an airplane.

01:07:36.840 And Google and Facebook refused to carry it and YouTube. And they canceled her. And they said,

01:07:44.560 we're a brand and we're not going to put terrorism as part of our brand. First Amendment people are up

01:07:51.540 in arms. It's a great question. Should they do it? Shouldn't they do it? They're private.

01:07:56.120 Do they have a right to make that decision? Aren't they just like telephone company in the taxi cab?

01:08:01.100 They have to take first people who come. Or do they have the discretion to determine that they don't

01:08:06.380 want to promote terrorism? Very hard question. And if we have another two hours someday, Glenn,

01:08:12.560 have come back. We'll debate that issue. I would I'd actually love to spend more time. I have so

01:08:17.500 many questions for you. I've really enjoyed this. Let me just ask you just some quick things just for

01:08:24.060 snapshot of Alan Dershowitz. Sure. Well, do you ever wrestle? Have you ever wrestled? You don't have

01:08:30.900 to give me the details with defending someone you were like, this guy's guilty. No, not that he's guilty,

01:08:39.080 but I don't defend people who are in the business of crime. I don't defend people who that's their job

01:08:44.060 being the mafia or drug dealers. I don't defend fugitives, people who have tried to escape justice.

01:08:50.580 But the fact that you're guilty or may be guilty, you know, I've been shocked. I thought Klaus von Ullo

01:08:56.960 was probably guilty when I took his case. And it turned out he was not. There was no crime. I've had the

01:09:03.700 opposite. I've taken cases where I was sure the person was not guilty. And then I discovered

01:09:07.580 that probably he was guilty. So, you know, my job is to defend the most unpopular people,

01:09:15.880 the people who nobody else will defend. Because for years I had tenure and I couldn't be fired.

01:09:21.360 So I had a special obligation. By the way, I'm discussing a lot of these issues now. You know,

01:09:27.360 I have a podcast. We're competing. I have a podcast now called The Dershow. My son came up with that

01:09:33.320 name. Dershow. Or in fact, maybe it's called It's ITZ, The Dershow. And, you know, you can get it on

01:09:40.540 Apple and Spotify. And I've been having a lot of fun talking about these issues. And a lot of people

01:09:45.500 call in with this question. Do you ever have, do you ever lose sleep over defending? Let me tell you

01:09:50.780 what I lose sleep over. I defended two young boys on death row who were about to be executed and they

01:09:55.740 were innocent. And their father had committed the crimes for which they were being executed.

01:10:00.440 I saved their lives. But let me tell you, I didn't sleep for months before that. Losing somebody

01:10:06.840 to the death row. I've never done it. I've never lost somebody to the death row. I've won 23 out of

01:10:12.100 my 27 homicide related cases. I've had a very good record in that regard. But I don't worry. I don't

01:10:19.340 lose sleep over defending somebody who's guilty. I would lose sleep if any of my clients ever went out

01:10:24.080 and did it again. I've never had that experience. But I do lose sleep when I represent innocent people

01:10:30.140 who I might fail and they might be convicted and they might be executed or spend the rest of their

01:10:35.500 life in prison. That's what really keeps me up at night. Last two questions. And it's the same

01:10:40.320 question. I want you to play it both ways. I think I believe you're an optimist. You believe

01:10:46.920 that America is going to heal. Let me give you my definition. So in Israel, they say a pessimist is

01:10:54.440 somebody who says, oh, things are so bad, they can't get worse. An optimist says, yes, they can.

01:11:00.140 Exactly right. I'm an optimist. Things can get worse.

01:11:03.800 But I hope. By the way, you bring up Israel and this is on one of my notes and we just didn't get

01:11:08.240 to it quickly. The peace in the Middle East that Donald Trump has brought about going.

01:11:14.580 It's amazing, right? It's amazing. And it's going to get better.

01:11:18.320 I played a teeny, tiny, teeny, tiny role. I met with some of the Arab leaders in the Gulf.

01:11:26.040 I went to the White House. I helped work a little bit on the peace plan. You know, for me,

01:11:30.580 bipartisan means the person I voted against, Donald Trump. I support and praise when he does the right

01:11:37.500 thing. This peace process was the right thing. And the president, I supported Barack Obama. I condemn

01:11:42.640 when he does the wrong thing. Right. The deal with Iran. Right. So that for me is a bipartisan. And to be an

01:11:47.760 American, you criticize the people you voted for, you praise the people you voted against,

01:11:52.720 depending on the merits. Put it in the scale of of historic.

01:11:59.320 It's very historic. You know, in some ways, it's less immediate than Egypt and Jordan,

01:12:05.260 because Egypt and Jordan had attacked Israel and killed many, many Israelis. And there was peace.

01:12:10.720 These countries had never attacked Israel. But this could spread throughout the Arab world and

01:12:15.320 throughout the Muslim world. Oh, I think it's going to. And it can really normalize Israel's

01:12:19.520 relations in the Middle East. You know who gets the most credit for it? You know, people say

01:12:23.220 Trump, he gets a lot of credit. People say the Emir get a lot of credit. Nataniel gets a lot of credit.

01:12:28.160 The credit goes to Israel as a country. It made itself indispensable. It has become so strong

01:12:33.180 economically, scientifically, technologically, militarily, the rule of law that every Arab country now

01:12:39.520 realizes you're far better off align yourself with a stable, successful, strong country like Israel

01:12:45.720 than with Iran or any of the other countries. OK, here's the scenario. It's 15 years from now,

01:12:53.920 you're dead. And America did not rediscover who she really is. We continue down the path of

01:13:03.040 of the road we're on. What does this place look like? Well, first, I'm coming back. If America

01:13:11.740 is destroyed, I'm not staying dead. I want to be part of the process of rebuilding it. No,

01:13:18.100 it could happen. It could happen. I don't think it's going to happen. I think, as learned in hand,

01:13:24.720 the great judge once said, when liberty dies in the hearts of men and women, no law can save it.

01:13:29.860 And the opposite is true as well. When liberty lives in the heart of men and women,

01:13:34.840 no law can destroy it. And I really do think that we are a country steeped in our commitment to liberty,

01:13:41.500 our commitment to due process. You know, we have arguments, we fight with each other.

01:13:46.000 There are extremists. But at the center of this country, at the core of this country,

01:13:50.600 Democrats, Republicans, centrist liberals, centrist conservatives, we share a common commitment

01:13:56.420 to decency and goodness and American values. So I'm an optimist. I don't think 15 years from now,

01:14:02.280 when I'm 97 years old, that we will be a dramatically worse country than we are today.

01:14:10.540 Hopefully, we'll be a better country.

01:14:12.560 A more perfect nation. Alan Dershowitz, thank you very much. God bless.

01:14:17.400 What a pleasure. What a pleasure to have intelligent, thoughtful conversations. Thank you.

01:14:21.160 Thank you.

01:14:26.420 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:14:33.160 can be discovered by other people.

The Glenn Beck Program - September 26, 2020

Ep 83 ｜ How to Fix SCOTUS ｜ Alan Dershowitz ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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