Ep. 1760 - Fallout From Iran： Regime Change？
Summary
Did you know something happened over the weekend? Did you know that President Trump tweeted about something that happened on the same night that he announced that the United States had bombed Iran? And why was the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the scene?
Transcript
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President Trump launched a major attack over the weekend.
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Some have noticed that I bear a striking resemblance
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I have many more pearls of wisdom to cast before you.
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and the 13 million workers and families they support,
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have contributed $5 trillion to the U.S. economy.
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Congratulations to our great American warriors.
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Love, thank you for your attention to this matter.
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Then Trump came out and gave these remarks that evening.
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we love you, God, and we love our great military.
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It was also un-Trumpian that he walked out there
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who were there not only for their roles in the government.
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It's kind of odd for the vice president to be there.
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Dropping bombs on Iran was not exactly diplomacy.
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The secretary of defense makes a little bit more sense,
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that this issue, perhaps uniquely in his administration,
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and overwhelmingly does not want to get bogged down
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but there's a tension between those two things.
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And so Trump, I think, brought out Vice President Vance,
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has been more skeptical of intervention in Iran.
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Pete Hegseth, who has been a little bit more hawkish on Iran,
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He's very good at pulling together coalitions of people
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the culture warriors in the Chamber of Commerce,
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he's done a pretty good job of bringing them all together.
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But he seems like he's speaking a little more extemporaneously.
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I think there's a little crack in that bravado here.
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And this is not something that I want to make the hallmark of my administration.
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I think that's why he kept those remarks so tight,
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why he kept an image of a unified cabinet behind him.
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I think the way Trump views the attack on Iran is we had to do this.
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I want to focus on getting the economy spurring again.
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I want to focus on the 250th celebration of America.
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I want to focus on domestic issues, not so much bombing Iran.
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There's a little twinge of uncertainty in his voice.
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And this issue, unlike any I've seen in my lifetime,
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who I think view this as a display of strength.
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Yeah, we told you you can't have a nuclear weapon.
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America, baby, going to send some freedom seeds down the range.
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Unlike these weak prior administrations, Biden and Obama,
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I think to boomers and Gen X, this plays a strength.
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However, I think to millennials and especially zoomers on the right,
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I think millennials and especially zoomers view this as a display of weakness.
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That it displays Trump getting led around by the Israelis, for instance.
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They're being led around by the foreign policy establishment in D.C.,
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being led around by the people who have wanted to bomb Iran for 20, 30 years.
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I'm saying that is how it reads among millennials and Gen Z, especially in the very political,
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very plugged in, very online parts of millennials and Gen Z.
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If you're Trump, you're the man, you're the guy, you're the president.
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You're not the representative of a single generation.
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You are the president of the United States, leader of the Republican Party,
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leader of the conservative movement and leader of the country.
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And so one way to find a via media here on the Iran issue might be to not totally isolate yourself,
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not say Iran can develop a nuclear weapon if it wants to,
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not say I don't believe the intelligence reports that Iran is developing nuclear weapons,
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but to say, OK, we're going to go in, we're going to bomb the facilities,
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which is what Vice President Vance said on ABC News Sunday.
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Well, first of all, we don't want to achieve regime change.
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We want to achieve the end of the Iranian nuclear program, John.
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That's America's objective, and that's what the president has set us out to do.
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The president, in the very tweet you mentioned, or the truth that you mentioned, John,
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said explicitly that he's not trying to take out the Iranian supreme leader.
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And, of course, we took a major step forward with that last night.
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And again, John, I think we have to back up and test some premises here.
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How do you prevent spiraling Middle Eastern conflict?
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Is it through overwhelming military power targeted to an American objective?
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Or is it by sort of walking yourself into these long-term protracted military conflicts?
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I think by choosing overwhelming force and overwhelming force tied to something
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that is important to the American people, that is the end of the Iranian nuclear program,
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we can achieve peace much more fully than if we sort of sit on our hands and hope that somehow
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if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, they're going to be more peaceful.
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That is a stupid approach, and the president rejected it.
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I would say that that is probably precisely my view of the situation,
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that if the security concern has really risen to this level, that Iran is close to or close to
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close to being able to get a nuclear weapon, then America's the global hegemon has to intervene.
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But we don't want to push all the way into Bush-era nation-building, planting a Madisonian democracy
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in Iran, which would be even harder than it was in Iraq, in Iraq where it failed.
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So we are not pushing for regime change from the U.S.
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And it would have played very, very well until President Trump posted about regime change hours later.
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I will get to that cliffhanger in just one moment.
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So J.D. Vance comes out and says, look, we had overwhelming military force.
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This is instead just a strike to achieve a tactical end.
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And then President Trump posts, it's not politically correct to use the term regime change.
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But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make America great again, why would there
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So are the president and the vice president contradicting each other here?
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I think perhaps what you're seeing is Trump leaving a carrot.
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I think what you're seeing and what you've been seeing from the beginning on Iran, going
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back to the 60-day period when Trump, I think, quite sincerely wanted to come to a nuclear
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And then, unfortunately, Trump wasn't bluffing, unfortunately for them.
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I think what Trump is doing here is leaving the Iranian regime a carrot.
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Vance comes out and says, quite rightly, regime change in Iran is not our top priority.
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If we can achieve our strategic ends without regime change, we're happy to do it because
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Trump comes out and he says, look, you're not supposed to say regime change.
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If this regime can't make Iran great again, maybe we need a new regime.
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Now, I think what he's leaving the open as a possibility here is the Ayatollah could make
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But you got to play ball with the United States.
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I think he's I think Trump knows he's he's made deal making enough of his identity for
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the last 50 years that he knows that in order to achieve a deal, you don't only use the stick,
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You have to give people not only a threat, but an incentive.
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If you go along with what I want to do, we're going to reward you.
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The only incentive left that Trump has to offer the Iranians is that he won't destroy their
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So the threat obviously is maybe we will destroy your regime.
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If you play ball, we might let you stay in power.
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Don't call my bluff again, because I'm crazy enough to take you out of power, too.
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And I think in a in a helpful way for the Iranians, Trump is giving the Ayatollah the
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ability to save face here, because what could the Ayatollah say to maintain his legitimacy
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At this point, he's been completely pantsed by the United States and Israel.
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There's very little left of the regime to change in the first place.
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But if the Ayatollah can come out to his people, to his neighbors in the Middle East, to his
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allies in China and Russia and say, look, yeah, they took out most of my nuclear facilities.
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It just gives it gives him something to be to be able to save face.
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But I think it's a credible threat to if the Iranians really don't want to play ball.
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Maybe they say, look, at this point, in for a penny, in for a pound.
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If not, the Americans, the Israelis are going to do it.
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Because even if the Americans don't want regime change as an urgent priority, you know,
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They've said that I think it was the defense minister of Israel said that the Ayatollah can
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no longer be allowed to exist because the Ayatollah struck that hospital in Israel.
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So, OK, look, maybe it's all over and we're not going to play ball.
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But I think Trump is leaving open the possibility.
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Now, some members, turning back to the domestic front, some members of Congress are saying
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that Trump's strike on Iran is illegal or unconstitutional.
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And whatever you think about the strike on Iran, as you know, I've urged a little more
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circumspection and caution on Iran, though I recognize we're a global empire.
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There are more forces at play than just particular ideologies.
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We need to open up impeachment investigations for what?
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Hakeem Jeffries was suggesting this was illegal, unconstitutional.
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So we'll get to whatever their argument is for a second, because I'm not surprised that
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AOC and the Democrats are calling this unconstitutional.
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But you have an ostensibly conservative Republican, Thomas Massey, making the same argument on liberal
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The Speaker of the House, who is from your own party, has really rejected this.
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He says the Article One power of Congress really allows for the president to do this.
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It was a limited, necessary, targeted strike, he says.
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Well, he's probably referring to the War Powers Act of 1973, but that's been misinterpreted.
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There was no imminent threat to the United States, which was what would authorize that.
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And I think that's peculiar to hear that from the Speaker of the House.
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Look, Congress was on vacation last week when all this was happening.
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And frankly, we should have debated this War Powers Resolution that Ro Khanna and I offered
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instead of staying on vacation and doing fundraisers and saying, oh, well, the president's got this
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We're going to cede our constitutional authority.
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OK, look, I don't have anything particular, particularly against Thomas Massey.
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I know they're in this fight now, Trump and Massey.
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Massey is a libertarian, so I have lots of philosophical and ideological differences with him.
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I'm a conservative, so we have a difference of opinion on certain matters of first principle.
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But what he just said here, I've often thought he's an intelligent guy.
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He's a principled guy, even if some of his principles are wrong.
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He says, well, this is such a libertarian argument.
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I know there are many wonderful libertarians who listen to the show.
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But this is such a, this is like the worst of libertarianism.
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This is the utopian, ahistorical libertarianism.
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He says, well, the reason Trump thinks that he had the right to these strikes is because
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The War Powers Resolution, which says that the president can deploy troops and can wield
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And it's really 90 days because you get a 30-day withdrawal period.
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But that's, that's actually been misinterpreted.
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The reason is presidents have done, presidents of both parties have done what Donald Trump did
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on Saturday night since the War Powers Resolution was passed.
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Every, I think every single president, maybe with the exception of Carter.
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What a great presidency that was, Jimmy Carter.
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Basically, every single president since the War Resolution, War Powers Resolution was passed,
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has done at least what Trump did and, and usually more egregious examples of what Trump did.
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At one time, the, the troops in Lebanon created a big, a big problem, the Beirut barracks bombings,
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George W. Bush actually did get authorization, though sometimes he arguably exceeded his authorization.
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What's funny is, George W. Bush was actually among the most constrained in using the War Powers Act.
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Though it was a little bit murkier because there were much older war resolutions or use of force resolutions
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for Obama and Biden, but they basically used it a couple times.
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He's saying, okay, since this war resolution was passed in the 1970s, it has always been misinterpreted.
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Basically, every president of both parties has used it in the wrong way.
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But I, Thomas Massey, I know the true meaning of the War Powers Act.
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And so, I know that it has just been constantly misinterpreted for 50 years because no one asked Thomas Massey.
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Someone should have just asked Thomas Massey, and then they would have been clear on what the law actually meant.
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And that's why what Trump did is illegal and unconstitutional.
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If a law is interpreted by both parties and multiple presidents for 50 years as meaning one thing,
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some random libertarian member of Congress doesn't get to redefine that.
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This is also why people have problems with libertarians.
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And people say, well, listen, these libertarians, they're so principled.
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They sometimes get things wrong in practice, but they're the ones who are truly principled.
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They say, Thomas Massey is the most conservative member of Congress.
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It is not possible at once to be the most libertarian member of Congress and the most conservative member of Congress.
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Because libertarianism and conservatism are different things.
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But even beyond that, well, he's the most principled.
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But I do so out of love, like jilted love, because I was once, I thought like this.
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Who's your favorite libertarian politician of any era?
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I'm not talking about a Republican who likes tax cuts.
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I'm not talking about a conservative who watched Milton Friedman videos.
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I'm talking about a real libertarian like that.
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Capital L libertarians claim this guy is a libertarian.
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Now, name one concrete political achievement that that person has ever done.
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I'm talking not, well, you changed the culture.
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I want like a concrete, actual political achievement.
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For your most favorite, beloved, principled libertarian politician.
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And you can't name one because libertarianism is a utopian political ideology that misunderstands human nature.
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And therefore politics, because man is the political animal.
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I like them, you know, I think generally they have good intentions.
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And Trump has taken that frustration and gone, death con three, to quote Kanye West.
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President Trump had this to say about Thomas Massey.
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Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky is not MAGA, even though he likes to say he is.
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Actually, MAGA doesn't want him, doesn't know him, and doesn't respect him.
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He is a negative force who almost always votes no, no matter how good something may be.
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He's a simple-minded grandstander who thinks it's good politics for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,
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the highest level nuclear weapon, while at the same time yelling death to America at every chance they get.
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Iran has killed and maimed thousands of Americans and even took over the American embassy in Tehran under the Carter administration.
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We had a spectacular military success yesterday taking the bomb right out of their hands,
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But as usual, and despite all of the praise and accolades received,
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this lightweight congressman is against what was so brilliantly achieved last night in Iran.
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Massey is weak, ineffective, and votes no on virtually everything put before him.
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Rand is catching strays during the attack on Thomas Massey.
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There he repeats the same thing, votes no on everything, no matter how good something may be.
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So you're getting the sense, I just love Trump's prose, where it's like stream of consciousness.
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He is disrespectful to our great military and all that they stand for.
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Now he's really ratcheting up the rhetoric here.
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He's disrespectful to our military, all they stand for.
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Not even acknowledging their brilliance and bravery in yesterday's attack, which was a total and complete win.
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Massey should drop his fake act and start putting America first, but he doesn't know how to get there.
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He'll undoubtedly vote against the great big beautiful bill, even though the non-passage means a 68% tax increase for everybody.
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Okay, so here you're getting the sense, hold on.
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Trump's just barrage against Massey and Massey's attacks on Trump, it might not just be about this Iran thing.
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It might be about a little bit more than those bunker busters on Saturday.
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MAGA should drop this pathetic loser, Tom Massey, like the plague.
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The good news is that we will have a wonderful American patriot running against him in the Republican primary,
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and I'll be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard.
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MAGA is not about lazy, grandstanding, non-productive politicians, of which Thomas Massey is definitely one.
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Thank you to our incredible military for the amazing job they did last night.
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Now, I know a lot of people love Thomas Massey.
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At least, not a lot, a lot, but a lot of people, at least online, are really upset with Trump over the Iran bombings.
00:27:50.780
So that's why Trump is coming out really hard against Massey.
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My point, regardless of what you think about the Trump-Massey feud, is you should not be surprised by the Trump-Massey feud.
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In 2016, Thomas Massey, being a libertarian, endorsed Rand Paul for president.
00:28:10.700
And when he was asked what he thought about the state of the Republican primary, this is after Paul got out, I think, he said he's really pessimistic.
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And he kind of grudgingly voted for the Republican ticket, but he didn't want to.
00:28:25.140
Then, around January 6th, the worst day in the history of this or any republic, Thomas Massey and five other Republicans in the House wrote a letter opposing President Trump's efforts to clarify what went on in that election.
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And it was somewhat balanced, but they were going against Trump around January 6th.
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And then, in the 2024 primary, Thomas Massey was one of the first guys to come out and endorse Ron DeSantis and campaign for Ron DeSantis.
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There's a whole backstory to this that goes on much further than the, maybe further than the Iranian nuclear program.
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At least further than this episode in the Iranian nuclear program.
00:29:12.500
So someone asked, they're like, why do libertarians play so well?
00:29:18.080
Why does the internet, why do podcasters love libertarians?
00:29:21.680
And the reason is, libertarians always play really well on the internet.
00:29:26.320
The problem for libertarians is, they play well basically nowhere else.
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That's why I remember, what was it, 10, 15 years ago, there were all these think pieces.
00:29:35.880
The libertarian moment, is this the libertarian moment?
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If you think, this is tough love, but you know, you tune in to hear the truth, okay?
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It's never happened before, it will never happen.
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The reason there will never be a libertarian moment is that libertarianism misunderstands human nature.
00:30:02.500
And views human beings fundamentally as isolated individuals, atomized rather than as what we are,
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which is social creatures, who have not only entitlements and rights, but also obligations.
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So, whatever you think about the Trump-Massey fight, we'll see.
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I'm actually a little skeptical that the GOP could oust Massey.
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But this is an outgrowth of a deeper philosophical debate, which is the debate between conservatives and libertarians.
00:30:39.360
Now, speaking of political debates, Gavin Newsom is thirsty for a debate with J.D. Vance.
00:30:49.360
It's the sacred feast after Juneteenth, but before Juneteenth.
00:30:52.320
First, Gavin tweets out, hey, J.D. Vance, nice of you to finally make it out to California.
00:30:56.840
Since you're so eager to talk to me, how about saying it to my face?
00:31:06.660
Gavin Newsom really wants to be the Democrat nominee for president in 2028.
00:31:16.100
And he's doing pretty well at distinguishing himself from the rest of the field.
00:31:20.660
It's mostly because there is no rest of the field right now for the Democrats.
00:31:29.580
It's maybe the closest other thing they have to a candidate.
00:31:32.240
So, Newsom, just by process of elimination, I guess, is the leading guy in the field for 2028.
00:31:37.900
But notice, Gavin Newsom is trying to launch a 2028 Democrat presidential campaign
00:31:44.320
by imitating what the American right was doing in 2015.
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And on that podcast, he invites on Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and tries to suck up to MAGA.
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The first tactic is, hey, guys, check out my new podcast.
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And then the second tactic is debate me, bro, which is the American rights tactics from 10 years ago.
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00:33:00.740
Now, speaking of California Democrats, a true political achievement from a very prominent Democrat,
00:33:07.240
Nancy Pelosi has outperformed every large hedge fund in the country last year.
00:33:13.400
Her portfolio is the greatest example of financial acumen anywhere in the country.
00:33:20.920
She raked in between $7.8 and $42.5 million in 2024.
00:33:31.180
This is according to reporting from the New York Post.
00:33:33.360
That means that her net worth, along with her husband, is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $413 million, according to financial disclosures.
00:33:43.920
That's pretty big, because her 2023 net worth was $370 million.
00:33:53.740
We have a few examples from reporting of how she made that money.
00:33:56.640
She, for instance, dropped 5,000 shares of Microsoft, which was worth north of $2 million back in July.
00:34:06.240
That was one of their largest sales in three years.
00:34:09.920
That was just a few months before the FTC announced an antitrust investigation into Microsoft.
00:34:18.840
Then the Pelosi's also sold 2,000 shares, worth over half a million dollars, of Visa.
00:34:28.060
Before the credit card company was hit with a DOJ monopoly lawsuit.
00:34:33.260
And then Nancy Pelosi exercised a call option in December that she had bought in late 2023 at a premium of $1.8 million,
00:34:42.680
which allowed the Pelosi's to get 50,000 shares of NVIDIA for $12 a pop, less than a tenth of its market price.
00:34:48.980
So they exploded because of NVIDIA, which means that the couple paid $2.4 million for the NVIDIA investment, and it's now worth over $7 million.
00:35:03.660
I got, you know, a buddy of mine manages my money.
00:35:15.340
I don't care how loyal a yellow dog Democrat you are.
00:35:19.420
No one can possibly look at this and say it's not corrupt.
00:35:25.360
She, Nancy Pelosi, even if she'd outperformed a hedge fund, that's what she can't outperform all the big hedge funds and have it just be chalked up to her financial acumen.
00:35:39.540
And so the Democrats are losing on two fronts right now.
00:35:45.360
Are the Democrats for securing our borders or the Democrats for open borders?
00:35:49.360
Are the Democrats for Israel or the Democrats for Palestine, to talk about this recent issue in the Middle East?
00:35:56.140
Are the Democrats for supporting American labor and protective tariffs or the Democrats for free trade and forget about labor, which plays into the immigration issue too?
00:36:05.580
They don't know what they believe, and they're manifestly super-duper corrupt.
00:36:11.020
Which is why, tying it all the way back to what we're talking about, which is what most people are going to be debating today, the Iran issue, it's why the Iran issue is so perilous right now for Trump.
00:36:22.240
Because Trump has a great domestic agenda, and he's racking up great domestic wins, and he's assembled a great voter coalition that includes disaffected Democrats,
00:36:32.480
who came over with Bobby Kennedy on Maha, but also a lot with Tulsi Gabbard on opposing the forever wars.
00:36:43.520
And if he can go in, bomb Iran, take care of the nuclear problem, and just move on, great.
00:36:50.240
If we get bogged down in a regime change in Iran, so we boot out the Ayatollah, and then what?
00:36:58.680
Does Riza Pahlavi come in, the crown prince, the son of the deposed Shah?
00:37:04.920
Maybe there's an election, and maybe, I don't know, some other party wins.
00:37:10.380
Maybe it's not so easy to change regimes as we sometimes think it is.
00:37:14.640
If he allows himself to be distracted by that, you could lose the domestic agenda at a moment
00:37:24.080
The Democrats have not been this weak in my lifetime.
00:37:26.600
This is unbelievable on the ideology because of wokeism and on the corruption front because
00:37:30.580
of people like Nancy Pelosi and the Bidens and the Clintons are just so obviously corrupt.
00:37:38.940
That's why when his voice cracks a little bit, when he's talking about God, your voice should
00:37:45.460
But that represents a real political uncertainty.
00:37:50.020
If you are not yet a Daily Wire Plus member, now is the time to change that.
00:37:53.760
You get every single Daily Wire show, including this one, most importantly this one, at least
00:38:00.500
By the time the show's, the news could have completely changed at this rate.
00:38:04.260
Plus, you'll get the show ad-free and uncensored.
00:38:06.580
It is more than just early access and premium content.
00:38:09.080
It's about joining a community of people who want the truth, respect tradition, and are armed
00:38:15.060
This is where like-minded people come together to push back, speak up, build something the
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If that sounds like you, join now at dailywireplus.com.
00:38:30.520
It's from Flexible Aspect, who says, breaking news, a federal judge has demanded Trump retrieve
00:38:51.720
What can the executive of the United States do?
00:38:56.660
Most important story, of course, of the last week.
00:38:59.920
JoJo Siwa says that she was pressured to be a lesbian.
00:39:09.100
Her, something like she's a pop culture figure, and she was a lesbian, but she's not a lesbian
00:39:14.880
anymore because she posted a picture, or her boyfriend posted a picture with a guy.
00:39:19.360
She was like lying in bed with him, all nuzzled up, and it wasn't even a girly boy.
00:39:24.000
It wasn't even a guy who paints his nails or something.
00:39:37.140
quote, when I came out at 17, 17, it's a minor, I said, I'm pansexual because I don't care
00:39:49.480
But then I kind of boxed myself in, and I said, I'm a lesbian.
00:39:56.680
As for where that pressure came from, she says, quote, in a weird way, I think it came
00:40:03.460
a little bit from inside the community at times, the LGBT, LMNOP community.
00:40:07.480
From people I know, from partners I've had, you just put in this world where you feel like,
00:40:16.680
And the truth is, man, sexuality is fluid, you know?
00:40:21.580
Clear away the gobbledygook from that statement.
00:40:24.640
She's saying, young people, kids, teenagers at least, become gay because of pressure,
00:40:51.380
No, it's a girl who said she was a lesbian until five seconds ago.
00:40:55.240
Young girl said she was a lesbian as a teenager and now says, actually, I wasn't really a lesbian
00:41:02.380
or the way I became a lesbian is because I was peer pressured into it by the LGBT.
00:41:06.680
I was groomed into it as a teenager by the LGBT community.
00:41:10.700
She is saying exactly the same thing that the religious right and the social conservatives
00:41:14.940
and the so-called homophobes have said for decades.
00:41:26.740
Choose, I know there are liberals and leftists and all sorts of people, LGBT, LMNOP activists
00:41:33.640
Some, some of whom are paid to do that so that they can get clips of me, but, but some
00:41:36.840
of them who watch it just out of their own choice.
00:41:45.260
Either what Jojo Siwa said is right, that kids are groomed by the LGBT community into adopting
00:41:51.380
LGBT identities, into adopting weird sex stuff, or you, you have to deny the lived experience
00:42:01.020
and the self-professed sexual orientation and identity of a young queer girl.
00:42:14.180
Which would the, oh, oh, ah, it's a tough one, huh?
00:42:19.460
Well, it's the former, but, but you could also do the latter.
00:42:25.900
You can also deny people self-identified, uh, sexual identities and, and orientations because
00:42:33.800
We can know these things through reason, and it turns out that the whole sexual revolution
00:42:39.220
We talked earlier in the Trump-Massey fight about false anthropologies, false conceptions
00:42:44.840
There is no falser conception of human nature than the LGBTQ identity.
00:42:54.420
Speaking of weird sex stuff in the sexual revolution, one last point.
00:42:58.940
I know there's some news where people don't, is it good news?
00:43:04.280
Oh, maybe Trump's domestic agenda is imperiled.
00:43:06.800
Oh, there's some, there's some perilous news that's come out, but I've got some unambiguously
00:43:13.840
NBC, of all places, is reporting that the crusade against pornography is attracting a huge coalition.
00:43:26.520
The strange bedfellows driving and winning the war on porn, feminists, religious crusaders,
00:43:30.620
and alpha male influencers, have turned the tide in the decades-old battle over adult content.
00:43:37.040
Once viewed as a fringe moral crusade, the war against porn has ballooned into a multi-pronged
00:43:40.780
mainstream force over the past decade that now counts feminists, religious crusaders,
00:43:44.800
alpha male influencers, and a growing number of politicians among its ranks.
00:43:49.420
And after several key social and legislative wins, the movement faces its biggest test.
00:43:54.240
A Supreme Court ruling this summer is set to determine whether a Texas law, which mirrors
00:43:58.440
legislation in over a dozen states and requires porn sites to confirm a visitor's age or face
00:44:03.800
financial penalties in the name of protecting minors from explicit content, infringes on the
00:44:09.720
Does applying the same rules we've had for porn magazines and newsstands forever, does applying
00:44:20.320
That is, making sure little kids don't get this content.
00:44:24.940
This sounds like the people's, Trump, Trump violated the Constitution by doing what every
00:44:29.340
president has done since the War Powers Resolution, which is obviously within his purview as commander
00:44:36.480
When the framers of our Constitution were writing the First Amendment, do you think they said in
00:44:41.080
this, here we are gathered, gentlemen, to ensure that little children can be groomed into
00:44:47.840
creepy, obscene sex stuff from the very, very youngest ages?
00:44:52.860
We, the people, are here gathered to preserve creepy porn for children.
00:45:00.360
That is why we fought, why we bled the blood of independence in the revolution.
00:45:07.600
By the way, this coalition, Pace, NBC News, is nothing really new.
00:45:13.260
Here is Catherine McKinnon, a radical feminist, not a conservative, not a libertarian even, not
00:45:19.020
just a radical left-wing feminist in 1995, explaining her view of porn.
00:45:26.100
How does your position on this differ from that of the religious conservatives like Reverend
00:45:34.620
Wildman and others who are in favor of censoring pornographic material?
00:45:40.220
Well, it mainly differs because they don't support our ordinance.
00:45:43.920
That is, they don't support our work, don't agree with it.
00:45:49.100
Well, I don't know exactly what you would say about, I mean, we go further because our
00:45:53.560
approach would actually be effective in doing something about it.
00:45:57.360
Their approach is obscenity law, which has been in effect since 1973 and has done nothing,
00:46:03.020
while the pornography industry has somewhere between doubled and tripled in size.
00:46:07.820
Okay, so she says, no, no, no, I'm not like the religious right.
00:46:15.180
The difference between me and the religious right, me, a radical feminist on porn, is I
00:46:22.980
How do the anti-porn feminists, the sex-negative feminists, let's say, contrary to the sex-positive
00:46:29.980
people that we've heard so much about the last 20 years, how do they go further than the
00:46:36.640
Are women and children or men being hurt on the basis of sex?
00:46:42.440
Can you prove that someone is being hurt by this?
00:47:01.600
You've got a dead body hanging in the square after the thing has been accomplished.
00:47:11.820
Okay, now, we have a pornography industry that does all that through a technologically sophisticated
00:47:30.160
That isn't what quote-unquote offends somebody.
00:47:32.080
Charlie, if you heard a woman screaming in the next room by being bounced off walls by a man she lives with, are you offended?
00:47:53.980
And Catherine McKinnon, she's making great points here in the 90s.
00:48:04.880
But the point she's making here is really, really good.
00:48:08.180
She says, I agree with the religious right, but I would go further than them.
00:48:11.340
I say, I agree with her, the radical feminist, but I would go further than her.
00:48:15.080
She's trying to preserve liberal proceduralism.
00:48:19.400
And by saying, look, I'm not calling for censorship, really.
00:48:23.600
I'm just saying there's a difference between offensive content and speech acts.
00:48:29.900
She's trying to draw this hard line between anodyne speech and speech that has effect.
00:48:36.060
So she says, when you've got cross-burning or something, that's doing something.
00:48:41.960
When you've got pornography where it's an enactment of an abuse that then appeals to men and arouses their lusts,
00:48:48.180
by the abuse, that that's actually an act of doing something with words.
00:49:03.460
I mean, our speech is, in many ways, what distinguishes us from the brutes.
00:49:09.460
It is, in many ways, what distinguishes us as humans.
00:49:12.680
Because it means that we, like the angels, are rational creatures.
00:49:20.100
We can use signs and symbols to talk about external realities, objective reality.
00:49:27.160
So we can't communicate through osmosis or telepathy.
00:49:30.200
We need to communicate through the physical world.
00:49:34.340
We need, and you need to be able to hear a sound and then have your physical senses take
00:49:40.120
that sound in, and then your mind can interpret it.
00:49:43.860
And I would go further and say, no, that's all speech.
00:49:49.260
If speech didn't do something, we would just be grunting like baboons.
00:49:56.680
And we don't need to preserve liberal proceduralism.
00:49:59.200
We can, we can, and this brings me to my broader point.
00:50:02.100
My, my broader point, which is something pre-liberal, maybe post-liberal, but certainly pre-liberal.
00:50:12.620
In fact, I think you're more inclined to have good government without all of this liberal
00:50:18.560
You'll have procedure, you'll have due process, you'll have all of those things to a great,
00:50:22.080
greater, much greater degree than you do during, during liberalism.
00:50:25.920
But we need to be able to do good things and not, and avoid bad things.
00:50:30.480
And if your ideology prevents you from doing good things and avoiding bad things, then
00:50:38.880
And I think that's often what people see in the ultimate impotence of libertarianism or
00:50:43.860
the kind of soft liberalism that you see on the American right.
00:50:46.480
And I think that's what's really at stake in, in the Iran issue.
00:50:49.860
There are some ideologues who just want to reduce the Iran issue to a cartoon caricature.
00:50:55.780
You have some people who say, oh, this is just the, the Israelis dog walking.
00:51:00.240
I mean, you have some people on the really, the fringes who say that, you know, this is
00:51:04.460
just the, the Israelis owning our country and using us as their own military.
00:51:09.460
And America has absolutely no interest whatsoever in nuclear non-proliferation.
00:51:13.300
And usually those people just generally don't, don't care for the Jews broadly.
00:51:19.540
Then there's another cartoonish side, which says, well, you know, the only way that we
00:51:24.300
can be free is if we topple the regime in Iran.
00:51:27.100
That's the only, they threaten our free, they hate us for our freedom.
00:51:32.420
And we need to go glass the whole Middle East if we want to have our freedom.
00:51:36.400
But there is this nice place in the middle, which is called reality.
00:51:43.500
And that's where you have to weigh competing goods and where you have to try to have a
00:51:49.060
You have on the one hand, these utopians who say, well, the president can never wield the
00:51:55.060
military as commander in chief ever whatsoever.
00:52:00.480
On the other hand, you might have some people who say the president can do whatever he likes.
00:52:04.900
There is a place in the middle beyond the stupid sophomoric procedural debates of the
00:52:13.960
There's a place in the middle for debating substantive goods.
00:52:16.880
And the way that you should check your ideology is to say, does my ideology permit me to do
00:52:25.820
Does my ideology permit me to avoid what I know is obviously bad?
00:52:34.900
Then get rid of that ideology and live in reality, in the real place of politics where the real
00:52:41.060
decisions are made, where real leaders have to grapple with real issues and competing apparent
00:52:49.580
And it's why it's good to ditch ideology and ground your political views ultimately in God,
00:53:03.480
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