In February, Ilya Shapiro sent out a tweet questioning President Obama's decision to limit who he would be considering for the soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat based on their race and their sex. The tweet received immediate pushback, and Shapiro apologized. But it wasn t enough for the vultures who demanded that Georgetown revoke his employment contract.
00:00:00.400Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.640Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.
00:00:16.840We begin today with an exclusive interview, a victory for free speech, and an important defeat for the cancel culture mob.
00:00:24.580We first told you about the case of constitutional law expert Ilya Shapiro back in February.
00:00:30.800He had recently been hired by Georgetown Law, but just days before he was scheduled to start his new job, Ilya sent out a tweet questioning President Biden's decision to limit who he would be considering for the soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat based on their race and their sex.
00:00:48.920The tweet received immediate pushback, and while Shapiro repeatedly apologized, saying he had phrased it inartfully, there was a reference to, quote, a lesser black woman, it wasn't enough for the vultures who demanded that Georgetown revoke his employment contract.
00:01:05.200Four months of investigation of his tweet followed until Georgetown finally said yesterday that he could start the job he had been hired to do, with some caveats.
00:01:17.560Today, Ilya officially begins his job as Executive Director of the Center for the Constitution and Senior Lecturer at the Georgetown University Law Center, and this is his first interview about it.
00:01:34.140Ilya, thank you so much for being here.
00:01:47.760The university did not say, yes, I'm protected by their excellent freedom of expression policy.
00:01:53.580They just said, oh, we forgot to look at the calendar.
00:01:56.800And it turns out I was not an employee when I tweeted, so all of these policies they've been investigating me under don't apply.
00:02:04.060Kind of ominous, indicating that if I or some other faculty member in the future were to have an errant tweet, then that might be a whole other story.
00:02:14.600So let's go back for the viewers who haven't been following this as closely as some of us who are, you know, in this atmosphere, this sort of center, center right media atmosphere, because it's caused quite a firestorm for us.
00:02:27.140I mean, all of us have been outraged by what they've been doing to you.
00:02:56.260I was still at Cato at the time where I was vice president and director of their constitutional study shop and commenting on the Supreme Court because that's my area of expertise.
00:03:06.020You see my my books behind me, Supreme Disorder, Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court.
00:03:12.680And that evening, I was still upset about President Biden's decision to limit his pool of candidates by race and sex.
00:03:20.420He said that it would be a black woman, as he promised during the presidential election campaign.
00:03:26.660And, you know, not best fault, not following best practices.
00:03:30.920I was doom scrolling on Twitter that night in my hotel room.
00:03:33.980I happened to be on a trip in Austin, Texas, and was just getting upset about commentary and thinking about, you know, what have we come to that, you know, with the racial preferences that have invaded all of our lives have now come to even high public office.
00:03:53.740It's anathema to, I think, how people should be treated.
00:03:56.660I thought to myself, you know, the best person for this job, if I were a Democratic president, would be the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, Judge Jackson's colleague, Sri Sri Srinivasan, who happens to be an Indian American immigrant.
00:04:09.420Excellent judge, was on President Obama's shortlist for the spot that eventually went to Merrick Garland.
00:04:14.600And I said, well, by operation of logic, that means that everyone else is less qualified.
00:04:19.320And if, you know, President Biden said it was going to be a black woman, so I said, well, I guess we're going to be based on today's hierarchy of intersectionality, as I cheekily put it, we're going to end up with a, quote, lesser black woman.
00:04:32.780And those three words are what got me in trouble.
00:04:34.520I, of course, meant less qualified black woman, because everybody by operation of logic was going to be less qualified than the person I thought would be the most qualified.
00:05:07.580This firestorm is detracting from the point I want to make that, you know, that 76 percent of Americans agreed with that all candidates should be considered.
00:05:45.160It was I think National Review of Rich Lowry had a piece saying in any sane world, you're taking down that tweet and explaining what you were trying to say would have been the end of this.
00:05:58.460It's not sworn testimony before the Congress or Supreme Court brief where you think things out very carefully and have it reviewed by five different people.
00:06:07.700So it's Twitter is a stupid late night tweet who I mean, who hasn't sent something out on Twitter that they'd like to have back.
00:06:14.820But the vultures, as you say, saw an opportunity and they were excited to get you.
00:06:19.640Now, just by way of background, can you explain like your own politics and what this constitutional center that you were hired to be the executive director of at Georgetown do?
00:06:30.820Because these are these are more right leaning organizations.
00:07:18.220Like I like to say that, like most immigrants, I do a job that most native born Americans won't.
00:07:23.300And that's defending the Constitution.
00:07:25.700So after a cup of coffee and big law, which was not that much fun, I came to the Cato Institute and wrote briefs for the Supreme Court,
00:07:34.620edited the Cato Supreme Court review, did my own writing, both academic and popular, gave a lot of speeches.
00:07:40.820I've been doing media for a long time.
00:07:43.300And after nearly 15 years at Cato, which is the nation's premier libertarian think tank, I thought, you know, how can I have more impact or have a new challenge?
00:07:52.580And Randy Barnett, who's become a friend and a mentor, thought that it would be a good fit to have someone of my profile, my skills, my network come to the center and especially be the public face,
00:08:04.380get more engagement from judges and practitioners and publications and media and all of that to push the importance of the Constitution
00:08:13.960and originalist analysis, looking at the Constitution by what the original public meaning of its provisions are.
00:08:21.660A lot of people call that conservative, but it doesn't have to be.
00:08:24.600There are progressive originalists or living originalists.
00:08:27.600There's all sorts of different stripes.
00:08:28.980So it's more academic and nerdy in certain ways, but still very relevant to the discourse and certainly to the Supreme Court,
00:08:37.940where now a majority for the first time do call themselves some flavor of originalist.
00:08:44.960It kind of reminds me of the Kevin Williamson situation with the Atlantic, where the Atlantic's like, let's hire Kevin Williamson.
00:09:32.700But you point out in your Wall Street Journal op-ed, which had late last night, this is an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone, except perhaps the instigators of the Twitter mob that launched this tempest, particularly the first few days, which were truly terrible for me and my family.
00:09:49.620Yeah, my wife had actually warned me a couple of days, a couple of days before my tweet.
00:09:54.260We were out celebrating her birthday and she said, you know, you're joining an academic institution now.
00:09:58.420You have to be careful, particularly about race and sex.
00:10:01.520And then I sort of step in it, which doesn't mean that my tweet is a firing offense or disciplining offense.
00:10:06.460But I opened the door for my political enemies to go after me.
00:10:12.960And that's and that's a one way street.
00:10:14.500I mean, lots of law professors and other professors on the left say all sorts of things way more outrageous than than than than what I did, even interpreted in its worst light.
00:10:25.300And yet Georgetown did did nothing for them.
00:10:29.740So I woke up that morning in that Austin hotel room and saw what was going on and I felt sick to my stomach and especially come around noontime when the dean issued his statement.
00:10:44.280I thought, OK, I'm going to get fired.
00:10:46.520I was transitioning jobs from from Cato to Georgetown.
00:10:57.320I've you know, it was honestly, Megan, the probably the second worst day of my life, the worst being when my mom passed when I was in college.
00:11:06.380I really thought, you know, I I worked hard my whole life.
00:11:12.700Went to the right schools, built a platform for myself as a inserted myself into the national conversation about many important issues on the Supreme Court and the Constitution, public affairs, lots of different things.
00:11:25.560And with one bad tweet, I had just I had just killed that.
00:11:32.580And it was just the most horrific, horrific feeling.
00:11:36.440And as I worked with my allies and friends over the over that day and the coming home and in the coming days, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, FIRE, which I told them is now my my favorite nonprofit organization.
00:11:51.820I'm going to be number one fundraiser.
00:11:56.360Other other folks, just so many people came out of the woodwork, good friends, you know, acquaintances who I hadn't seen or talked to in 10 years.
00:12:32.940So I had four days of hell and I couldn't sleep.
00:12:35.360There were physical manifestations in my health, my wife as well.
00:12:38.980I mean, we try to keep things from our from our kids.
00:12:41.020They can sense when when something's bothering mommy and daddy.
00:12:44.320And then it became purgatory and it was kind of a roller coaster of emotions.
00:12:49.060You know, I made the best of of that situation going, you know, became sort of an inadvertent poster boy for for cancel culture and whatnot.
00:12:57.120But great personal and professional instability.
00:13:01.280And today I'm with you the day after that purgatory ended.
00:13:05.440Uh, I'm not sure we're quite in heaven at this point to push the metaphor even further.
00:13:10.220Uh, but those first few days you asked me about, I, I really, I mean, it was, um, you know, we talk politically and we try to frame things and I had good crisis PR advice and things like that.
00:13:21.780Uh, but the, the personal toll was just visceral.
00:13:25.860Yeah, I, I can relate and I think it's, we skip over that too quickly in these situations, no matter how they end.
00:13:34.920You know, I've said before one other time in this show, when I had my show canceled at NBC, I had the same feeling, the sleepless nights, like this stunned feeling of what just happened to me.
00:13:46.800Is my career entirely gone, all, everything I've worked so hard for, you know, nothing matters, only, only this one moment seems to matter.
00:14:07.100Um, but anyway, he offered me antidepressants and I refused, Ilya, because the one thing I was certain of was Andy Lack was not going to put me on antidepressants.
00:14:18.720Like I, for me, that was the hard line.
00:14:40.040These are, people don't understand the like deep emotional toll these decisions can have.
00:14:47.500And, you know, it's not so much the Twitter mob, you know, I've, I've, I've had attacks and, and, you know, the kind of snark that the, the, the surreality of all of the online stuff.
00:14:59.180It was the fact that I might be unemployed, that my reputation would be destroyed forever over a tweet.
00:15:10.880Yeah, that was, that was, that was, that was pretty horrible.
00:15:14.640So then you have, so it's what, it's one thing if it's just like the Dean who's looking to see why a, and you're like, okay, you know, it's like your boss is basically looking to punish you for a little while, you know, just to make himself look like he cares.
00:15:29.260But you had the Black Law Students Association at Georgetown demanding that your employment be rescinded.
00:15:36.600We pulled up that statement and it's, forgive me, but they demanded the revocation of your employment contract and that the college condemn your quote racist tweets.
00:15:47.640At Georgetown Law, Black students are haunted by the shadow of imposter syndrome.
00:15:52.360Shapiro reinforced this phenomenon by reducing Black women's accomplishments and so on, it goes on.
00:16:00.080But that stuff hurts too, because now you've got whole groups of minority coalitions coming together to basically condemn you as racist without any appreciation for the context or the apology or the, you know, everything that you said thereafter.
00:16:14.700Well, that's why the Dean acted as he did, why he first condemned me and then why he put me on administrative leave and launched the investigation.
00:16:28.460Because as administrators around the country are, they're afraid of student activist groups, which by no means represent the majority.
00:16:37.960I mean, the majority of students, especially at a ladder climbing, you know, legal professional school at a place like in Washington, D.C.
00:16:48.020Like Georgetown, the vast majority just want good jobs and get networked and what have you.
00:16:53.100But the the very vocal minority who is, you know, are cowing their classmates often, you know, peer pressure to sign letters and make denunciations.
00:17:05.040It's kind of a Maoist sort of unhealthy campus culture.
00:17:11.640And we've seen around the country in different contexts that if administrators from the beginning stand up for due process or free speech or other policies that are well considered and well written, and most schools actually do have on paper good policies, then they put down the unrest fairly quickly.
00:17:33.560But if they if they if they try to kowtow, it's it doesn't help them, frankly.
00:17:40.620And I think Dean Traynor is probably facing that right now.
00:17:49.100And now, as I'm, you know, writing my Wall Street Journal op-ed and talking about getting ready to go and host a diversity of thought in my classroom and that everyone's welcome and will be treated equally.
00:18:00.040Obviously, he's being pilloried by those same woke activist groups.
00:18:05.660I don't know if you if your producers found the latest Black Law Students Association tweet and statement from late last night.
00:18:13.020But if anything, it's even more strident than than what you just read.
00:18:17.940Yeah, they're essentially saying we never we never, you know, we're basing our complaints on him being an actual Georgetown employee.
00:18:24.800They're not satisfied. They they they want to scalp and, you know, and they have a demand for the dean to define exactly where the line is between conservatism and racism, as if that's the spectrum.
00:18:35.680At a certain point, they criticize the dean for calling my tweets as attacking females, black females, where there's some there's some nomenclature dispute over female and woman.
00:18:48.380I might have to consult a biologist to understand what that's all about.
00:18:51.780Well, there are none, especially on the sitting Supreme Court.
00:18:54.820And the the justice who was then later nominated doesn't know either.
00:19:37.360It didn't have anything to do with really your an objection on your part to race or to gender.
00:19:43.900It was that you were getting somebody lesser than the guy I think you should choose.
00:19:47.900And it's sad that this guy won't even be considered because he doesn't have the right, you know, gender and he doesn't have the quote, right, even though he's a member of a racial minority group and an immigrant.
00:19:57.280But yes, but not the preferred, not the preferred.
00:20:00.460So this is where things got really crazy.
00:20:03.500So this whole story has already gotten so out of hand.
00:20:06.220But then I'm sorry to laugh, but you've got to laugh a little.
00:20:10.560Then they had like sit-ins at Georgetown Law over you.
00:20:15.380And we played some of this because National Review got their hands on some of the tapes.
00:20:19.060And it was just you couldn't believe your eyes.
00:20:20.840We're like, yeah, I think I made Nate Hokeman's career there at National Review, the young young writer who's like on the Shapiro beat the last few months.
00:20:37.540He was front and center in all of this.
00:20:39.660He this is actually from from Nate, from Nate Hokeman's reporting.
00:20:45.800A chastened looking trainer spent more than an hour answering questions from what appeared to be the Black Law Students Association leadership team in a closed auditorium.
00:20:54.760The dean, striking an apologetic tone, echoed the language of the activists in the crowd, assuring the assembled students.
00:20:59.900He was appalled by the painful nature of Shapiro's tweets and promising to listen, learn and ultimately do better.
00:21:10.020And we have actually clips of that where one of the students demanded reparations for the time they missed in class to attend the sit-in and a free lunch.
00:21:27.100In terms of coming back to the reparation things, because this is great, but we have to do so much work to catch up for all this stuff that we missed.
00:21:34.580All I'm saying is, I don't know if it's a couple of dinners or lunches.
00:21:38.500But that would help us, because we, like, we can't, I can't go home for lunch now because I need to study.
00:21:45.640I have to, I have to make up for this class that I lost.
00:21:49.400It doesn't have to be something that takes a year to figure out.
00:21:52.480It's like, we know our Black students or whatever group is hurting, and we're going to give them things today, whether it's snacks, whether it's counseling, whether it's whatever.
00:22:00.380But a part of that trust is to see an immediate reaction to what we are saying.
00:22:29.720I think you would think in legal, in a legal career, you're going to face more challenging issues than a speaker who offends you or a tweet that you think, you know, correctly or not is racist.
00:22:47.540You're going to have to hold it as you get berated by federal court judges, by opposing counsel, 100 percent by jury jurors who, after the fact, go out and publicly say you sucked.
00:22:58.140You know, like, you've got to hold it together, people.
00:23:01.280But tell that to this group, because here they are demanding this dean to give them a place to cry over your tweets.
00:23:08.020It is really, really hard to walk out of class or a meeting in tears, and you should always have a place on campus where you can go and feel like you're not then also under people's eyes and observation.
00:23:22.900Maybe you don't want to answer a question of what's going on or what's wrong.
00:23:26.300And if you're finding that you're not getting the person you want to talk to or not getting the space that you need, reach out to me any time, any time so we will find you space.
00:23:39.360So that's Dean Traynor, who's totally into the cry rooms, correct?
00:24:29.780I bet you Dean Traynor's got some things he's said or written that he doesn't want thrown back at him.
00:24:35.660You know, Megan, one thing I've learned through this ordeal is that we as a society, I think, have lost our understanding of grace and of seeing your political enemies or social enemies, for that matter, not simply as, you know, we now see them not simply as wrong, but as evil.
00:24:57.340Uh, and everything is unforgivable, uh, and in an academic context, uh, so many things, everything's racist or sexist or offending, um, the latest hierarchy of intersectionality is, uh, as I, as I cheekily put it.
00:25:14.680So it's, you know, perhaps my eyes weren't sufficiently open as I was transferring to Georgetown from, from Cato, because I think if I had stayed at Cato and made the same sort of commentary, um, not, you know, the same thing wouldn't have happened.
00:25:29.360There would have still been a bit of a Twitter storm.
00:25:31.060Uh, but you know, Cato wouldn't have fired me or investigated me.
00:25:35.940Um, that's right now they were silent, uh, after this all happened.
00:25:40.280And, and that was telling, that was telling and disappointing after nearly 15 years of service and purportedly being an institution that supports the freedom of speech, you would think they would have plenty of reason to come to my defense issue statements.
00:26:08.920I mean, one of the gifts of going through something like this is as you point out, you find out who your friends are and you find out who your friends aren't, you know, and that list is significant as well.
00:26:18.100It's better to know, you know, I'd rather know this person was only attached to me because whatever they thought I was famous or powerful, or, you know, in your case, powerful and well-known and sought after and respected.
00:26:31.120And then the second you've got a bruise, they run.
00:26:46.060Which isn't to say that my, my many friends and former colleagues at Cato didn't reach out, you know, personally.
00:26:51.380Uh, I must say it's not that, you know, everyone affiliated, uh, with the institution has, uh, pledged some sort of omerta, but there, there is some, um, and it's been noticed in legal circles and libertarian circles, um, there.
00:27:04.580Well, that's the thing is like, that's the test is it's like when your friends are down, number one, do you kick them?
00:27:09.900And number two, do you at least stay out of the Twitter, Twitter mob, right?
00:27:15.240Like that's the, but, but ideally defend them.
00:27:17.360I mean, that's the ideal is to actually say a word.
00:27:20.020And I listened to those guys on national review, talk about this at length in the podcast saying, yeah, okay.
00:27:25.940We all get that, but you got to look at this guy.
00:27:28.620Like you got to know who this person is.
00:27:30.120You got to, you got to like examine the man and see like this, you've devoted your life towards constitutional scholarship.
00:27:36.840Like this is a worthwhile task and you're not some bomb thrower, you know, some flamethrower.
00:27:42.960No one wanted to acknowledge that or give you the benefit of the doubt in any way.
00:27:47.920One of the other things on the students, which kind of stood out to me because you mentioned fire, uh, and I love fire.
00:27:53.140They're a great organization and, um, they stand up for free speech on, on campus.
00:27:57.860She, she pressed the Dean to send out an email attacking the critics of the black student law association.
00:28:04.780And she said, quote, something that's important is to remind our classmates that are attacking us, that they are only here because our ancestors were sold for them to be here.
00:28:16.380And I think that's a very important fact that is not talked about explicitly enough because we are still being attacked.
00:28:21.920So I would just appreciate in whatever message that's going out to the student body that our classmates are explicitly reminded, do not attack the people who were sold for you to have this opportunity.
00:28:31.780That needs to be something that these people are reminded of because they continue to attack us as if it is not on our backs that they are even here.
00:28:41.140This woman is talking like she is a modern day slave.
00:28:47.640Like we have slavery right now and she's enslaved at Georgetown law, one of the most elite privileged institutions in the world.
00:28:56.900And that she is, no one is allowed to criticize her or her colleagues in the black student law association group because there's a history of slavery in the United States.
00:29:07.380Well, victim status is a form of privilege to turn the tables on the way the discourse works.
00:29:16.540And I mean, I really wish things didn't work that way and everyone was just treated based on the strength of their arguments, their intellect, you know, what they contribute to the community, what grades they get, what institutions they build, all of those sorts of things.
00:29:37.620But, you know, we're told from some institutions that considerations of merit are racist in and of themselves or operation of logic or the scientific method.
00:29:52.180You know, you see those side by side statements.
00:29:54.640It's what you just read could have been read effectively by a white supremacist organization.
00:30:02.020It's the horseshoe theory where the the most identitarian on the left from the the racial minority groups match their rhetoric.
00:30:14.760You know, the 69 project, the 19 project or what have you, with the most strident white supremacist racist organizations in their racial essentialism.
00:30:24.260And I think it's really a negative trend that has certainly infected academia, but obviously has spilled out into the greater world.
00:30:32.000It's like this idea from a Georgetown law school student, somebody who's, you know, one of the leaders of the legal profession in years to come to suggest that she cannot be criticized because she's black and there's a history of racism in the United States that you may not criticize her or anyone in this group is insane.
00:30:55.300I mean, it's deeply disturbing to me, and I can't wait to see how it goes for her when she gets out into the real world and starts actually practicing law, because there's a whole slew of criticism coming her way.
00:31:20.620It's just it's not beanball or maybe not so much anymore, Megan, because.
00:31:25.300These sorts of attitudes have certainly crept into the major law firms and general counsel's offices of corporate America.
00:31:32.900It's the the the the legal industry as a whole, you know, from the ABA setting out credentialing requirements for law schools that now incorporate certain diversity rules and equity rules and what have you through how affirmative action and racial preferences are practiced in in different settings.
00:31:53.540You know, I'm not so sure necessarily that, you know, that kind of attitude necessarily will result in negative repercussions.
00:32:48.380Yeah, especially with the end of term Supreme Court decisions and even more when the students are back on campus this fall when the Supreme Court takes up the Harvard affirmative action case.
00:32:58.120And I'll be giving public comment, including probably to you in a way that they won't like.
00:33:05.340Look, when I when I took this job, when when Randy Barnett and I started talking about how to move the center into its into its second decade, it's now celebrating 10 years now.
00:33:14.280But we want to elevate its presence as an energy center for originalism, for constitutional interpretation.
00:33:19.720I thought that this would be an opportunity to for me to kind of have a different sort of impact with students have being based in an academic institution rather than an explicitly ideological think tank.
00:33:35.380And then for the students and judges, practitioners who I get involved in programming to learn from me and to to expand upon originalism and and and and have hopefully a better constitutional judicial conversation.
00:33:51.460Whether that is going to be feasible now, you know, the proof will be in the pudding.
00:33:56.760And Dean Traynor expressed to me, as I wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that he wants me to succeed.
00:34:03.740And as long as I behave professionally, that he will have my back.
00:34:10.300I don't I still don't think that tweets are firing offenses, but we'll see what whether we can make a go of this.
00:34:21.940University has policies against disrupting events, disrupting classes.
00:34:26.020You know, if I'm ceaselessly protested in my new role and the law school does not enforce its rules against that sort of thing.
00:34:34.540Well, that won't be a that won't be something that that's feasible and we'll have to figure out where to go from there.
00:34:42.060And also, you know, with the various friends that that have come out in my support and allies, I've gotten some interesting offers and things to do and ways to spend my time.
00:34:50.880So I think I'll end up all right out of all this, which doesn't justify the process.
00:34:59.000And and I'll I hope to make a go of it.
00:35:02.780But if it becomes the environment becomes truly hostile, which is ironic because I've been accused by of creating a hostile environment by the the diversity administrators who are investigating me, then I'll have to see what the next step will be.
00:35:19.960I know, because it's one thing to send out a tweet that wasn't perfectly worded.
00:35:25.820It's another to be punished, as is very likely going to be the case for your viewpoints, for your genuine, genuinely held viewpoints on, as you point out, for example, the affirmative action case or any other or the growing DEI commitment that we see at all these institutions.
00:35:42.820Something fire, Greg Lugiana's organization, we had him on the show, has been pushing back again, saying you cannot mandate that you cannot mandate that professors seeking tenure commit to DEI and certain expansive programs.
00:36:28.420We have an equally compelling obligation to foster a campus community that is free from bias and in which every member is treated with respect and courtesy.
00:36:39.960I'm committed to continuing to strive toward both of these indispensable goals.
00:36:44.880The problem is that respect, courtesy and anti-bias could mean anything.
00:37:08.240I mean, you you you say that I might be persecuted for my viewpoint or as just happened with Josh Katz, a professor at Princeton who was stripped of his tenure and fired.
00:37:21.700You know, some pretext will be generated to punish someone for their viewpoint.
00:37:27.240So the next time, you know, might not be a tweet.
00:37:30.200It might be something that I've already said to you, taken out of context, some clip that emerges this fall during the Harvard affirmative action case.
00:38:10.400I certainly respect what what you've done professionally.
00:38:13.280I think, you know, I've developed certain skills in conveying ideas and translating the highfalutin academic theories down into as my as my judge who I clerk for, I like to say, got to chew it up for the little goats to eat it because I think it's important.
00:38:29.180I think it's important for the American people to understand what the Supreme Court is doing, how our law works, how the different branches work, because we have a real crisis in our public discourse.
00:38:40.100And if I can contribute to alleviating ignorance and fostering more civil discourse, that's what I'm that's what I'm all about.
00:38:47.900At the end of the day, if someone wants to take disciplinary action against me or, you know, the next cancellation campaign, what this process has taught me is that I think I'm going to be OK.
00:39:00.460I have enough friends, I have enough of a profile at this point that I think I might be OK.
00:39:06.180Now, it might not be the planned career transition that I had in mind.
00:39:10.160But, you know, the real problem with cancel culture, with people who are really brave are those who don't have the sort of platform that don't have Megyn Kelly asking to interview them, that don't have the Wall Street Journal saying, yeah, we'll take whatever comment you have after this decision is made.
00:39:28.400And that includes professors. It's not, you know, before we even get to the average people that get fired or doxed or boycotted for contributing 20 or 100 bucks to some politically incorrect cause, that's terrible enough.
00:39:44.700But even other professors or high ranking business people that don't have a platform per se and lots of horrible things happen to them.
00:39:54.920So, you know, as long as I have the ability and and the the analytical capacity to bring something to the table that folks like you want to hear about, I'm going to keep talking.
00:40:07.800You know, they're not going to shut me up.
00:40:09.560You know, next time I slip up and say something poorly, you know, I'll own up to it always.
00:40:20.580And as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident, said, live not by lies, let the lie triumph, but not through me.
00:40:31.580So you are not going to be able to hold me down.
00:40:35.760You know, I'll be careful with my with my with my tweets and I have a whole new approach to Twitter these days anyway.
00:40:41.920But but but even beyond that, I think it's important to talk about what's going on in our public life, honestly and forthright, forthrightly.
00:40:50.280And if someone wants to lie about that and slander you, you know, that's on them.
00:40:59.480Yes. I know they're going to make you do DEI training, implicit bias, cultural competence and non-discrimination training.
00:41:05.820Yeah. All that stuff clearly susses out or converts the real racists.
00:41:10.020I mean, it's like all the studies have proven that actually that actually makes people more racist if it's implicit or it's like, you know, sort of this quiet, simmering bias.
00:41:23.280But the universities won't listen and you must make yourself available to meet with student leaders concerned about your ability to treat students fairly.
00:41:30.760I'm sure that will be a joy for you, Ilya.
00:41:33.960I actually wonder whether they'll want to meet with me.
00:41:37.240You know, the university folks I've talked to said it doesn't necessarily have to be a town hall.
00:41:41.000It just might be, you know, if someone wants to arrange a meeting or whether it's the Black Law Students Association or just anyone.
00:41:46.420I don't know if they're going to want to come to, like, office hours or a, you know, reparations lunch or something like that.
00:41:54.140And I predict you're going to get the gal who's like, you remember, how did she put it, that it was my back on which you're even here.
00:42:02.720Do not attack the people who were sold for you to have this opportunity.
00:42:11.660I want to, you know, and to be clear, my my classroom, my programs are open to all.
00:42:17.320And I can promise that everyone will have the freedom of speech and be treated equally and fairly.
00:42:25.820Yeah, well, we're definitely going to be watching that piece of beer next chapter with great interest and 100 percent rooting for you.
00:42:34.140But while I have you here, I want to take advantage of your legal mind, if you don't mind.
00:42:38.340I've seen some of your writings recently on guns.
00:42:41.400Last night, President Biden made a big speech on guns, seeming to suggest he wants to bring back the assault weapons ban that was in place from 94 to 04, or at least that piece of it that bans high capacity magazines and on and on.
00:42:56.220Sort of similar rhetoric to what we've heard from him for many years now.
00:42:59.140And I mean, you tell me what your view of it is, because right now there's a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on guns that most people expect to go in favor of Second Amendment advocates.
00:43:11.700They're not tightening gun laws right now.
00:43:13.600They're not restricting their interpretation of the Second Amendment, or so we believe in oral argument.
00:43:18.140And so and nor is there the political will for an assault weapons ban.
00:43:33.520No studies show that there was less gun violence attributable to the assault weapon ban, whether there's more mass shootings.
00:43:42.420Yes, we have seen more mass shootings in recent years, although since the ban ended nearly 20 years ago, it's hard to compare, you know, 94 to 04 to to recent years because there's a lot of other things going on.
00:43:56.560But more broadly, most crime in this country is not mass shootings and it's not committed with so-called assault weapons.
00:44:05.460And by the way, the way assault weapons seem to be defined as semi-automatic rifles.
00:44:10.060That's pretty much all rifles that aren't, you know, shotguns.
00:44:14.660It means you you pull the trigger and each time a bullet comes out.
00:44:20.300And there's a whole, you know, miss misapplication of words here.
00:44:26.720But also, you know, more people get killed through people's bare hands and and feet than than rifles.
00:44:36.460In 2019, I just pulled up a statistic.
00:44:39.240There were about 14000 people murdered in this country.
00:44:42.440Nearly half of them were with a handgun.
00:44:45.440Fifteen hundred of them, about 10 percent with knives, four percent with hands or feet and about three percent with rifles.
00:44:52.220And that doesn't distinguish between semi-automatic rifles and, say, a single shot, a 22 rifle.
00:44:59.000So anyway, this is all trying to reach for easy solutions for tough problems or problems that are simply insoluble because they're cultural or they they have complicated roots.
00:45:12.920And, you know, the most the latest horrific shooting at the at the elementary school seems to be a complete breakdown of not of the background check system.
00:45:24.680He passed his background check, but of the police standing around, not going in with an active shooter situation, contrary to the training that they just received.
00:45:33.960So before we pile on new legislation that has little chance of changing things, why not enforce our existing rules or against sales to straw purchasers or felon in possession?
00:45:47.140By the way, those existing rules and laws will disproportionately affect racial minorities.
00:45:53.380These are tough issues to deal with, particularly in the debates over, you know, George Floyd and and police misconduct and and what have you.
00:46:04.440But there are no easy solutions. And certainly certain things that Biden is proposing may be more and better red flag laws so that people who are seemingly crazy or a threat to themselves or other people.
00:46:17.520They have to be narrowly drawn with plenty of due process protection. So they're not locked out of your rights forever and sort of things.
00:46:23.940You know, certain things there are there's room to discuss. But the assault, the so-called assault weapon ban, that's that's a cosmetic thing that really, you know, most as I said, the most common handgun used in crime is a handgun.
00:46:40.480And nobody's talking about that because it can't be done. And that's the best gun for for self-defense as well.
00:46:46.140And the most deadly school shooting ever was committed with handguns at Virginia Tech. The guy had two of them and unleashed, you know, carnage.
00:46:53.540And that was a failure of the background check system because he actually had a record of mental illness that was disqualifying that did not get into the record system.
00:47:02.520So, again, existing rules are there and there's a failure of existing structures.
00:47:06.980Yeah. Quickly, before I let you go, got to ask you about Supreme Court.
00:47:11.100And by the way, I'm not a gun nut. I have never owned a gun.
00:47:14.000You're Canadian. I'm a constitution nut. Call me a constitution nut. But, you know.
00:47:19.480Supreme Court leaker. What the hell? Only this week, the marshal asked for the cell phone records of the clerks.
00:47:27.260I'm starting to lose faith in the marshal, Bilya. How about you?
00:47:30.940This infuriates me. I'm losing even more faith in Chief Justice John Roberts.
00:47:35.640If he really wanted to come to the bottom of this, as he expressed his outrage when it happened a month ago, then, you know, you ask for all the phone records and the email records of the clerks, of the justices, of the staff that had access.
00:47:49.020You know, and not not because it's a criminal investigation and but because this is a very serious threat to the functioning of the Supreme Court.
00:47:58.500This is an unprecedented circumstance.
00:48:02.280You know, the leaker needs to be caught. The leaker needs to be punished.
00:49:08.680We're going to talk about all things royal and beyond.
00:49:12.560A spectacular celebration happening in the United Kingdom, where they are marking Queen Elizabeth's 70 years on the throne.
00:49:24.860She was seen beaming with pride yesterday on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, along with Prince Charles, Prince William and all the other senior royals.
00:49:34.400Last night at dusk, she led an incredibly moving ceremony at Windsor Castle.
00:49:38.400She pressed a small globe, which set off a river of lights across the lawn.
00:49:44.100You can check it out on our YouTube channel later.
00:49:47.440It also signaled the beginning of a chain reaction of lighting ceremonies across the UK and the Commonwealth.
00:49:52.960However, she did not take part in today's church service at St. Paul's Cathedral, the palace, saying that she had felt some, quote, discomfort during yesterday's festivities.
00:52:19.900That officially makes her the longest reigning monarch ever, right, in Great Britain's history.
00:52:25.860Yes, she's the longest reigning British monarch.
00:52:30.420In Canada, they say she's the longest running monarch of the British of the modern era, because back when it was still New France, Louis the whatever it was actually reigned for 72 years.
00:52:44.620So she's got a couple of years to go yet to be the longest as as this idiotic way of looking at it in Canada goes.
00:52:52.000But in the UK, she's she's the longest running.
00:52:59.540She was that's when her father passed.
00:53:01.540So, I mean, the things that this woman has seen and been through and the fact that she's still we're running tape of her, you know, in black and white coming out when she had just been coronated.
00:53:11.560And the fact that she's still walking out in that balcony, Mark, and to the beloved British people below really says something about her commitment to this role and to her country.
00:53:23.340Yeah, she was first on that balcony on V.E. Day in 1945 when the Germans surrendered and she came out with her father and mother onto that balcony.
00:53:37.240And then she and her sister slipped out of the palace among the crowds of on the streets of London.
00:53:43.980And that's how she's now been on that balcony for almost 80 years.
00:53:49.420She's she's been on the Canadian $20 banknote since 1935.
00:54:35.500I don't want to send your previous constitutional scholar, get his head exploding or anything.
00:54:42.780But I actually think it's a design flaw to have a combined head of state and head of government.
00:54:48.600It's very necessary to have something that's bigger than politicians or your politicians start getting all queenly.
00:54:55.120I mean, Nancy Pelosi is far more queenly than the queen is in terms of putting on airs and graces and expecting to be flown around.
00:55:05.180You wind up even with an hereditary political class.
00:55:08.300The only reason anybody gives money to Hunter Biden or to Jim Biden is because they're the son and brother of the connected president.
00:55:16.900Same same reason anybody gives jobs to Chelsea Clinton.
00:55:21.180Nobody wants really to pay $4 million for a speech by Chelsea Clinton on diarrhea in Africa, but it's because of the proximity to power.
00:55:30.600So you end up with all these pseudo-monarchical things.
00:55:34.380And one of the things I love, especially for Republicans, there's a lot of Republicans in Australia and Canada.
00:55:41.080But the great thing about if you have a monarchy is it arouses a certain chippiness in their subjects.
00:55:48.140So people are always, you wind up with far less corruption.
00:55:52.660When William and Kate were in Canada, the Royal Canadian Air Force, which was flying them around, decided to refurbish the accommodations and buy them a couple of comforters.
00:56:03.660And so the press all complained, why do Canadian taxpayers have to pay for these pampered little princelings to fly around our country?
00:56:11.940And the lady from the RCAF who'd bought the comforters said she'd gone to Canadian Tire, which, as its name suggests, is a very basic kind of store.
00:56:21.160And they'd had a great deal on two comforters for $120.
00:56:25.200And it was such a great deal that she'd bought a second set for herself.
00:56:29.720And so I think actually having people running around calling themselves duchesses and prince actually keeps the citizens on their toes, too.
00:56:39.200So you'd never be able to get away with your stupid 48-car motorcade like the president has here, because people would just be resentful of it.
00:56:47.280I've never considered the monarchy in this way, but I like it.
00:56:55.840No, no, in fairness, you know, George Washington, that George Washington, and there was some talk at the time that he would be known as his most excellent highness or whatever.
00:57:11.600But the fact is, since then, you've wound up with a monarchical presidency and ludicrously, you know, the Queen got stuck in traffic yesterday on the way from Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace.
00:57:55.480And now you've got people, you know, acting like they're entitled to that, although that's a problem we have across industries here in America.
00:58:01.580Just go back and read Rosie O'Donnell's book where she talked about how thanks to her fame and celebrity, she got to the point where she believed she could just run the red lights because she was so famous.
00:58:12.860Okay, so let's talk about the significance of what we're watching, because I don't think most Americans totally understand, like, what's the jubilee, what's the trooping of the colors, and what does it mean that, you know, only the senior royals were on the balcony, notably absent were the Megxit couple.
00:58:30.260So just put it in perspective for us, what's happening and what we're looking at.
00:58:34.540Well, we're celebrating basically an extraordinary 70-year reign.
00:58:40.220If you think about it, in U.S. terms, Harry Truman was in the White House.
00:58:48.060Chairman Mao had just taken over in China.
00:58:51.880There is nothing that survives of 1952 except this woman, and she survived in an industry in which, for the last century, it's been taken as inevitable that crowns don't survive.
00:59:06.460You know, all her cousins in the German Empire, in the Russian Empire, her more distant ones in the Habsburg Empire, you take the Ottoman Empire, they're all gone.
00:59:18.160And she's somehow managed to cling on and cling to, you know, an awful lot of valuable real estate all around the world.
00:59:27.400And that's, I think that's helpful, too.
00:59:29.660I think it's, I was, I mean, I don't want to do a lot of name dropping or whatever, but I was at Buckingham Palace.
00:59:35.720I think I can tell this because I think I'm the only guest still alive.
00:59:39.580I was at Buckingham Palace for a small private dinner a few years ago.
00:59:43.940And at the end of it, we're all sort of relaxing and in the easy chairs and kicking off our shoes.
00:59:51.580And somebody said, started one of those after dinner conversations on who's the most impressive person you ever met.
00:59:58.540And the Queen's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, said, oh, I would have to say, after a bit of thought, he said, I would have to say Vincent Massey and Sir Robert Menzies.
01:00:07.360And Vincent Massey was Canada's governor general in 1952, and Sir Robert Menzies is the longest serving Australian prime minister.
01:00:15.620And I can guarantee you that nobody else in that room had given those guys a thought in several decades.
01:00:24.260It's the seven eighths below the surface.
01:00:27.600It's what Abraham Lincoln called the mystic chords of memory.
01:00:32.240And it's a lot easier to bring those to the surface under a monarchical system.
01:00:37.660How is it that you were invited to go to Buckingham Palace for a dinner and to just hang with the royals?
01:00:44.620Well, I'll tell you, my assistant in New Hampshire, who was very New Hampshire focused, she was a little bit interested in stuff from Maine, not so much in Vermont, and no interest at all in Massachusetts.
01:01:03.940But the telephone rang one day and she picked it up and she's going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
01:01:09.500And then she puts her hand over the mouthpiece and goes, some palace on the phone for you.
01:01:15.000And it was because the Duke of Edinburgh had read a column I'd written on the European Union and wanted to hear more about it.
01:01:36.120And I quite liked being the only mister in the room.
01:01:39.520Well, can you tell us, because I read this in preparing for the interview, about how you had sort of boned up on how to say hello to the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's husband, Prince Philip, and it didn't go exactly according to plan.
01:01:56.260I took the precaution because I love genuine republicanism.
01:02:03.700You know, I fell in love with New Hampshire because everything's decided at town level.
01:02:08.460So if you don't like the school district policies, you can call the guy up in the evening and yell at him about it, which is, you know, tough.
01:02:17.340It's not something that cabinet secretaries in Washington have to put up with.
01:02:47.180I go and I change into my evening dress and I'm all running a bit late.
01:02:52.280And I get to the palace and I'm ushered in by the footman.
01:02:56.640And the Duke of Edinburgh is on the other side of the room.
01:03:00.040And so instead of remembering to walk up to him and bow from the neck and go, Your Royal Highness, I just did the New Hampshire thing where I stuck out my arm and went, Hi!
01:03:09.440And he was a bit startled, but he went, Hi!
01:03:18.040And I feel I sort of felt bad about that when he died, because the last time I had to bow to the neck was about a year or two back for dinner with the Queen's Viceroy in Ottawa.
01:03:33.520And so there I was completely on top with all the fawning and groveling, and I did bow from the neck.
01:14:45.540People don't mind George Clooney being George Clooney, but they resent Meghan Markle, the most mediocre actress, who can't really carry off the pretense of wanting to do everything for the little people, who doesn't understand basic things like inserting herself into a gun shooting in Texas is in the most ghastly bad taste.
01:15:06.840They get that these people are just talentless self-promoters and they're sick of them.
01:15:54.300I mean, to me, I really think it's indicative of a deep character flaw that you can even think about yourself and your image in a moment like that.
01:16:04.800Yes, I don't even understand how you can be crass enough to think like that, whether whether you're talking about Beto or about the Duchess of Sussex, because it just instinctively you should know that this incident is about the grieving parents.
01:16:24.800It's about the police who stood in the corridor.
01:16:28.940These are the people who need to be in the picture.
01:16:36.900You might want to give money to support those families.
01:16:40.860You can do all that without getting on a plane.
01:16:44.580And I'm absolutely astonished at seemliness, which is a word we don't hear terribly often these days.
01:16:53.800But I'm absolutely astonished at the way people have no idea anymore about what is seemly and what is not.
01:17:02.260And that alone to me would be a disqualifying act, because if she were to return to being a working royal and there was to be a, you know, some kind of mining disaster in Australia or whatever, you certainly wouldn't want her doing the same thing there that she's just been doing in Texas.
01:17:21.780Well, I know there's a lot of people speculated after Megxit that this couple, the two of them, would be the downfall of the queen.
01:17:31.240You know, somehow this would be the end of the royal family.
01:17:35.660And, you know, that that's clearly not going to be the case.
01:17:40.020Like the other, the senior royals seem to have withstood Megxit just fine.
01:17:44.500And as I was thinking about it when you were talking about the queen and how how long she's been on the throne, there's been a lot of tumult.
01:17:51.860Obviously, the Diana nightmare was probably way bigger than Megxit.
01:17:56.880The speculation that somehow Meghan Markle will be the downfall of the royal family?
01:18:01.180Well, I think it it fundamentally misunderstands what a royal family you have a royal family because you're a constitutional monarchy, which is a system that Britain invented.
01:18:17.740And in fact, I think if you look at the Freedom House rankings of the free, freest nations on the planet, seven of them are constitutional monarchies.
01:18:26.880So it's not a bad system of government to live under.
01:18:31.260You know, it's I was listening to what Ilya and you were talking about earlier about the Supreme Court nominations and and so forth.
01:18:39.660And Ilya, although he was briefly Canadian, he couldn't actually make a living in Canada as a constitutional scholar, because under the Canadian theory or the English theory, the queen is the state and the state is the queen.
01:18:55.080And that's the beginning and end of it.
01:18:56.480If you look at the Canadian Constitution, I think it's paragraph nine, says executive power, it's headline and it goes, executive power shall be vested in her majesty.
01:19:12.800Where's the mention of the prime minister or elections?
01:19:15.940And there's no mention of any of that in the Canadian, the Australian, whatever constitutions.
01:19:20.840And it's because the it's a system of government and the fact that they occasionally go to a pop concert or the Duke of Edinburgh is informed at the James Bond premiere that Madonna is singing the title song.
01:19:37.580And he turns to the Queen and says, I told you we should have bought the earplugs.
01:21:39.000Across the Connecticut River from me is what they call the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
01:21:43.740They're all Democrats who vote for Bernie Sanders because Bernie Sanders doesn't mess with their gun rights.
01:21:51.060In Coos County, in far northern New Hampshire, they vote Democrat because they want bigger government checks to spend at the gun shop.
01:22:01.480There are not Democrats, rural Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire.
01:22:08.700They are not going to go along with any of this.
01:22:11.600It's not going, none of it's going to happen.
01:22:13.800A lot of what he talks about has happened.
01:22:16.260There's laws on, you know, the big problem with any society is that if you have a small number of laws, they tend to be observed.
01:22:26.320Then when you pile on law upon law upon law upon law, background checks and all the rest of it, what happens is that they all go unobserved.
01:22:36.060I mean, this guy sailed through a lot of the laws that are already in place, as with most of these mass shooters.
01:22:45.400The fact is, politically, judicially, none of this is ever going to happen.
01:22:50.560Politically speaking, you were talking about it from the court's point of view, but the political reality is this, that since in the last two years, things have got a lot more dangerous on the crime front.
01:23:03.160I travel with a gun in my glove box, just tootling around, which I never did before, but I've done for the last two years, simply because I've seen enough of these things where people are just out on the streets in broad daylight and they're suddenly attacked.
01:23:18.800But this is no, culturally speaking, this is not a time when anybody is going to mess with American gun rights.
01:24:39.800But the fact the fact of the matter is that these this is this is just filling up airtime on MSNBC and has no actual reality.
01:24:49.520And I think also, you know, I don't want to be cruel or hard hearted about this, but that and I think the school the school thing is, well, I mean, my neighbors all say, oh, yeah, I was at school in the 70s and I used to take my gun to school for show and tell.
01:25:10.340And we all thought it was cool and didn't mean we were going to shoot up the place.
01:25:13.680But the reasons for why we have an atomized society in which in which loners sit and fester until the point they reach where it seems like gunning down large numbers of people is a is the logical form of self-expression.
01:25:39.360And in a country this large with this many guns, you cannot have you cannot actually devise a regime that will protect one group of people from another person.
01:25:55.520The level at which it's talked about is completely shallow and preposterous.
01:25:59.620And I would imagine that a lot of other Western societies, countries that haven't had such great gun cultures, they're going to find that actually they they'd like to be packing heat these days rather than America adopting continental ways.
01:26:14.620Well, I'm looking at, you know, his his other suggestions.
01:26:17.880We should raise the age to purchase these these so-called assault weapons from 18 to 21.
01:26:22.300Perhaps he's unaware that that's already been struck down.
01:26:25.220The Ninth Circuit, the very liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already said, and in at least one case, that's unconstitutional.
01:26:50.380If you buy a Glock and the Glock is manufactured poorly and it misfires because of the manufacturing defect, you can 100 percent sue the gun manufacturer.
01:26:59.720You just can't blame someone's random gun violence on the gun manufacturer.
01:27:06.380That's that's not something special to the gun lobby.
01:27:35.160And this is this is, again, one of the I think one of the problems in the system that you you wind up with a guy like this.
01:27:42.800None of us know who's actually running the United States government, but it's clearly not him.
01:27:47.620Because as we just heard, he wasn't even informed of the baby formula shortage until until late April.
01:27:57.520So that you have. So you have a guy who they just say you should really you should go out.
01:28:02.920I think this is, again, the defamation of the presidency, because you can say what you like about McKinley or Chester Arthur or whatever.
01:28:11.240But they didn't live in a in a culture where, oh, something's happened.
01:28:16.500Go out there and say something to everybody just for the sake of saying something.
01:28:21.440This is this is absolutely but nothing, nothing Joe Biden says on anything, whether he's threatening regime change against Putin or anything else is taken seriously anymore.
01:28:33.640So these are just this is just presidential dinner theater and is rather pathetic in that respect.
01:28:40.560Well, there's a there's a question about who's calling the shots there and who's pushing these crazy policies that he either has no chance of getting through or that won't do anything to address the problem he's purporting to tackle.
01:28:53.500And and that leads me to my next question, because I heard I saw and read about National Review's Jim Garrity wrote this up today, and it was from a Charlie Sykes podcast.
01:29:04.580This is a conservative, never Trumper, Charlie Sykes, but he had a very interesting exchange with a Washington Post columnist, former reporter James Homan about student loan, quote, forgiveness.
01:29:16.500Right. It's not really forgiveness. It's it's a transfer of wealth from the working class to rich, elite university graduated professionals.
01:29:26.780And the only requirement is that, according to what he's thinking of, is that you make less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
01:29:35.400OK, so you can make one hundred and forty nine thousand dollars a year and qualify for this, quote, forgiveness or three hundred thousand as a married couple.
01:29:41.840And and and you might get this debt forgiven or paid for by, you know, a trucker who didn't go to college because he decided didn't need to or didn't want to take on debt.
01:29:51.220Now you're going to have to pay for somebody else's debt. So the question Charlie Sykes was asking this reporter, James Homan, who's done reporting on it, is why is he doing that?
01:30:00.200This is insane for him to be pushing this right now. And the number he's reportedly getting ready to settle on is ten thousand dollars a person.
01:30:06.760And for the first time, there was a real answer based on this guy's reporting. Listen to this exchange.
01:30:14.260I mean, seriously, where does Joe Biden think this groundswell is going to come from, except for this small group of highly entitled college graduates who dominate college graduates who dominate the staffing and the inner workings of the Democratic Party?
01:30:32.220I've asked. I've repeatedly asked people and I've asked a lot of people in the White House this question.
01:30:39.060And essentially the answer is this is the fault of Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock.
01:30:43.880What? Stacey Abrams has been browbeating the White House on this and says that this is the only way she can win, that this is going to be a base turnout election.
01:30:53.760This isn't about persuading people in the middle. It's about getting the base to turn out and the base isn't going to turn out if they don't do this.
01:31:00.100And they have all sorts of stats about how a lot of graduates from HBCUs have all this data.
01:31:07.100And so there are a lot of people very close to the president who privately understand that this is a complete disaster for them.
01:31:14.000But the president is being pulled really hard by these woke leftists who believe it's all about the base.
01:31:24.720And that's just they just don't get it because they haven't spent time in, you know, in the wow counties or in Apple Valley, Minnesota.
01:31:38.780No, that's just insane to be doing it for Stacey Abrams.
01:31:44.960So the fact that there is a problem with American education, there's too much of it.
01:31:49.720People in 1940, the average American had an eighth grade education.
01:31:54.920That's the America that won the Second World War and emerged as the dominant power on the planet.
01:32:00.440So when people think of the America's glorious 1950 moment, that that was built by eighth graders.
01:32:07.580And now we encourage everybody to stay in school to 28th grade to do, you know, transgender and colonialism studies at a cost of a quarter million bucks.
01:32:21.300And if you then and if you decide to do student loan forgiveness, people think, oh, yeah, I was a bit I thought maybe I should just leave the front door and go to work.
01:32:31.860But maybe if they're offering student loan forgiveness, I should do transgender and colonialism studies, although not just for four years, maybe for six, seven, eight years.
01:32:41.040That's the way to make an already decrepit system that is far worse than, say, China's even worse.
01:32:50.220So it's the biggest structural defect in America today is the education system, as we've seen over the last two years, where, in effect, the system has been prepared to traumatize children rather than actually bring them back into the classroom to teach them.
01:33:08.300So then to reward what is absolute and I agree with 1940 America, I think K-8 is the most important education you get.
01:33:18.560If you screw that up, you can stay in school till you're 37, 48.
01:33:22.940It's not going to make any difference.
01:33:25.120So I'd like us to get K-8 back to being passingly respectable again.
01:33:29.780But if you encourage if what this does is encourage absolutely the worst and most unnecessary element of the American education system, as you say, it's transferring its trans it's it's a wealth transfer to from the poor to people considerably richer than them.
01:33:51.700And in that sense, it's the perfect Democrat policy.
01:33:54.340And there's something else in there that's revealing.
01:33:57.260So Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, who's senator from Georgia, thanks to that election that happened, both are black Americans concerned about the black vote.
01:34:08.880That's really what he's saying, that they that students who have graduated from historically black colleges and universities, HBCUs are not ready to turn out for Democrats in the midterm elections or possibly beyond, and that he needs to pay for their votes.
01:34:25.240That's basically what that reporter was saying.
01:34:27.460And we've seen him losing support with Latinos, with black voters, and now there's a there's a five alarm fire.
01:34:37.720And these two lawmakers, well, one aspiring and one existing, are sounding the alarm saying, you better do what politicians do best, which is go buy some votes with some taxpayer dollars to motivate people to go and support the team blue comes November.
01:34:54.800Yeah, yeah, it's very what we live in a very weird moment because the Democrat Party would not be doing what it's done the last year and a half if it was thinking rationally.
01:35:09.580You know, basically everything that can go wrong now has go.
01:35:13.640Oh, you can't afford to gas up your car.
01:35:16.600You can't find any formula milk for your baby.
01:35:19.860You know, everything that can be screwed.
01:35:23.540And at the same time, we've got open borders.
01:35:25.980So there's six million people coming in between now and September who will be able to help push the gas prices even higher and make the formula milk shortage even worse.
01:35:38.920And the Democrats have if they were thinking rationally, they wouldn't be doing any of this.
01:35:44.320And their whole theory that you can build a coalition of the fringes that will, in effect, make their punitive policies not matter.
01:35:56.400There aren't the numbers for that unless they're planning on, you know, serious big time electoral theft, in which case none of this matters.
01:36:05.600But the fact is no rational person would govern as they've governed these last 18 months.
01:36:12.280Hmm. Well, let me ask you quickly about immigration, because I know you were saying something about how in Great Britain, they're encouraging people not to have sex.
01:36:22.300Meanwhile, like it's a total open border there and here.
01:36:25.960Maybe we're focusing on the wrong problem.
01:36:29.180Yeah, I just think this actually is the, you know, it's the biggest story of our time.
01:36:33.680I mean, anyone who's ever crossed into the United States from Canada, where they check every little thing, you know, and they forbid you from bringing in kinder eggs for your kiddies and all the rest of it.
01:36:46.140And then you have the contrast with the Rio Grande, where everybody just walked.
01:36:49.940It's a continuous stream of people just walking in.
01:36:53.040At some point, it doesn't have to go on that long for it to have really demographically transformative consequences.
01:37:01.280And these days, when you're looking at, I think, 40 percent of the planet's jobs being eliminated by artificial intelligence, nobody really needs mass immigration anymore.