00:05:50.580And when you think about having a college roster at $80 million, if you're a student-athlete, that in theory sounds great, but that's only in two sports.
00:05:57.840Really, the majority of that $80 million are, you know, he's talking about Alabama.
00:06:01.460I mean, there's not that much in basketball, I promise you, at Alabama.
00:06:04.300So unless you pick football, you're left behind, and that's the reason why you're taking this action now
00:06:10.140and why Saban was saying what he was saying at the time.
00:06:12.840Well, and there's only a handful of powerhouses
00:06:15.220that generate and can dominate football.
00:06:18.940And so if we don't act, I think within five years,
00:06:23.160we will see 30 to 50 colleges that have a football program
00:06:30.340And the rest of the schools, their programs will be obliterated.
00:06:34.000And there are a lot of reasons that's tragic.
00:06:36.400One is just sports brings us together.
00:06:38.240Sports is so much fun. Look, we're divided on so many issues today. We scream at each other.
00:06:44.200We're like it really is hard to find common ground. And yet you can go cheer on your alma mater and you can be there with people of different parties, people of different races, people of different religions, and you're all standing together.
00:06:55.540That's really important. Every bit as critical as that is is colleges. College sports is an amazing avenue for education for millions of young men and women.
00:07:07.900And until I really started diving in to this topic and working to save college sports, I hadn't really focused on how college athletics is something that is unique in the United States.
00:07:20.220No other country has anything remotely resembling what we have here with college sports.
00:07:26.320There are today more than a half million college athletes right now.
00:07:32.360Every year, athletics enables kids, many kids from low-income homes, many minority kids who otherwise might not have had a chance to go to college.
00:07:45.520It enables them to go to college to study, to get a degree, to learn skills, to learn hard work and discipline and teamwork and sportsmanship.
00:08:03.260It made me better in my job that I did afterwards.
00:08:05.980There are so many young men when I was at Ole Miss that said they literally believe they would either have been dead, they would have been in a gang.
00:08:13.980if it wasn't for sports, keeping them out of trouble in high school.
00:08:17.620And then they said if it wasn't for college and getting that college education,
00:08:21.180they would have immediately been into bad stuff on the streets.
00:08:23.800They said that sports actually saved their life.
00:08:26.640And not only saved their life, a lot of them,
00:08:28.700they were the first member of their family to ever go to college.
00:08:31.860And they went because they were an incredible athlete.
00:08:50.980If Congress doesn't act, we will end up with hundreds of thousands of those college athletic positions going away.
00:08:59.580And those kids, many of them having no chance to go to school, to go to college, to get those skills, those life skills that set them up for success.
00:09:09.020And look, the way I approach this, I didn't worry too much about the top 1%.
00:09:14.640I didn't worry about the Michael Jordans or Arch Mannings.
00:09:18.320I worried about the 99% of college athletes who are never going to play pro ball, but it's giving them opportunity.
00:09:24.500Every day in Ontario, a shelter worker will help someone fleeing violence.
00:09:28.660A child therapist will help a kid in crisis.
00:09:31.520A support worker will help a person with disabilities live a full life in their community.
00:09:35.560They, and countless other workers, show up for Ontarians every single day.
00:09:40.640But the Ford government's cuts have left workers with no choice but to go on strike.
00:09:44.900Today, workers are on the picket lines fighting for their communities and the services we all depend on.
00:09:50.100Now it's our turn to show up for them.
00:09:52.180Visit worthfightingfor.ca to show your support.
00:09:54.860Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on Demand?
00:11:41.260We sat in a conference room six, eight hours a day negotiating provision by provision by provision.
00:11:46.320We introduced it with Cantwell and myself, a Democrat and Republican, and also with Eric Schmidt, a Republican from Missouri, and Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware.
00:11:57.160So we had two Democrats, two Republicans on the bill.
00:11:59.600and we've seen phenomenal support for it so the acc has come out emphatically in support of it
00:12:07.020the big 12 has come out emphatically in support of it um condoleezza rice at stanford has come
00:12:13.220out emphatically in support of it at the hearing pete bavacqua the athletic director at notre dame
00:12:18.260testified strongly in support of it gordon gee testified at the hearing uh former president of
00:12:24.580west virginia university also vanderbilt uh has been a president actually five universities he
00:12:29.580He testified that this is a crisis and this bill is the only hope to save college sports.
00:12:35.760And we've had already, we've had over 130 signatures from leaders at more than 65 universities come out in support of the bill.
00:12:47.080And importantly this week, President Donald J. Trump came out strongly in support of the bill.
00:12:51.780He sent a truth social that I want to read to you.
00:12:56.580College sports, a great American institution that produces our many athletes, leaders, and Olympic dominance, is a total mess.
00:13:03.760And everyone is saying that it must be fixed.
00:13:06.420After unending lawsuits and crazed rulings, there are virtually no limits anymore.
00:13:10.900And soon most colleges won't have sports because each and every one of them will be bankrupt, never to be heard from again.
00:13:18.040Women's sports and the Olympics itself are in the most danger from this catastrophic situation.
00:13:24.400College sports are turning into pro sports, except with absolutely no rules, a result no one wants.
00:13:31.700University presidents, conference commissioners, student athletes, coaches, and athletic directors all complained to me that it has become a disaster.
00:13:40.500After years of no action and that schools were losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, they compared it to a freight train that can't be stopped.
00:13:51.820That is why a few months ago I convened a roundtable,
00:13:55.160bringing together a world-class team of some of the best sports executives,
00:13:59.300student athletes, and political leaders in our country.
00:14:02.420The goal was to find a bipartisan solution to fix the problem.
00:14:06.660Based on these meetings and the expertise of the leading authorities,
00:14:11.060But I always said that the best solution was to get a bipartisan act through Congress
00:14:16.580to my desk in order to save a long and embarrassing road through hell for these institutions.
00:14:25.880I'd like to thank Senators Ted Cruz, Eric Schmidt, Maria Cantwell, and Chris Coons, among others,
00:14:31.520for introducing the Protect College Sports Act. This law resolves many of the most urgent issues
00:14:37.960challenging our universities and student-athletes, stops the chaos, and most importantly,
00:14:43.840it may be the last chance to save college sports and colleges themselves before it's too late.
00:14:50.900The House has worked long and hard on this issue as well, and I'm very grateful to Speaker Mike
00:14:55.140Johnson and Leader Steve Scalise for their work to fix this very major problem. I urge the House
00:15:01.180and Senate to come together to pass a final bipartisan law that I can sign this summer
00:15:07.100that reflects the views and input of both chambers.
00:15:11.000And in all caps, we have to save college sports.
00:15:15.700Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
00:15:19.820The support we're seeing is really significant,
00:15:22.780and I think we're going to see, I hope and believe,
00:15:26.440a big bipartisan vote in the Senate behind this bill.
00:15:29.760What's the timeline now, and how much is there going to be people pushing
00:15:33.460since now this has become so, you know, such a big discussion to try to change things at the
00:15:38.500last minute? Is that going to be a problem? And what does that look like? Oh, look, that is going
00:15:42.900on. And there are there are a handful of people that are criticizing and throwing rocks. But I'll
00:15:48.160tell you, most people are shocked that we could actually find a bipartisan compromise. And listen,
00:15:55.060one of the one of the natures of that, that means that I had to give quite a bit and the Democrats
00:16:00.440had to give quite a bit to find a common ground because we can't pass this bill unless you get
00:16:06.180at least 60 votes in the Senate. That means you need at least seven Democrats. There are only 53
00:16:11.820Republicans. And my objective, frankly, is to get a lot more than 60 votes. I'd like to see a big
00:16:17.840bipartisan vote come out of the Senate. The House has tried several times to fix this problem.
00:16:24.660And unfortunately, every time they've tried to take up a bill, it's failed in the House. And so
00:16:28.500I think the Senate has got to step in because the clock is ticking. And I will say that there's a
00:16:36.060real risk also of the biggest players coming together to form a super league. And I think
00:16:42.800that would be disastrous for everybody else and not good for fans. Let's take my home state of
00:16:49.060Texas. Look, my home state of Texas, if Congress does nothing, in three to five years, I am certain
00:16:56.820that the University of Texas will survive, and I'm certain A&M will survive. They're so big,
00:17:01.400they have such a big donor base, an alumni base, that they'll survive no matter what happens.
00:17:06.880But it's not at all clear that the other players in Texas survive. It's not clear that TCU or SMU
00:17:13.020or University of Houston or Rice or Texas Tech or Baylor, all of the different programs in Texas,
00:17:19.620they could go under in the status quo. And I think that would be a terrible outcome if we
00:17:24.300lose historic programs all over Texas, not just football, but when you lose football,
00:17:30.360football pays for all the other sports. So when you lose football, you end up losing the entire
00:17:36.120array of sports. That would be tragic, and we can't let it happen. Yeah, you're absolutely
00:17:40.960right there. If people want to get behind this legislation, is this one of those where they
00:17:45.120talk to their senators and their congressmen? Who do they need to contact quickly? Look,
00:17:49.060the first order of business is your senator, and urging your senator, whether you're
00:17:54.180senator is a Republican or Democrat, urging your senator, get behind this bill, the bipartisan
00:17:58.560Protect College Sports Act. There's an urgency. I am hoping to move quickly on this. I'd like to
00:18:04.900get a big vote in the Senate. Once we get it out of the Senate, then the next step will be the
00:18:08.500House. But calling your senator, going on social media, speaking out and saying that sports,
00:18:15.300college sports should be saved, that's really valuable. There was obviously a massive victory
00:18:20.540that happened in this country with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
00:18:23.960But what it really meant was the issue of abortion would go back to the states.
00:18:28.480And that is where the real fight has actually begun.
00:18:31.780Now, over the past 50 years, Americans United for Life has filed more than 200 legal briefs
00:18:37.940and also helped create at least 400 pro-life bills in over 40 states by writing model legislation.
00:18:46.140They are consulting with state legislators and defending their own laws and other pro-life statues in court.
00:18:53.600Now, AUL's dual-front approach of writing and defending legislation has proved an effective one
00:18:59.480that could become even more impactful as pro-life state legislators move to enact protections for pre-born babies and their mothers.
00:19:08.700Now that the legality of abortion has returned to the states, that is where you come in.
00:19:15.140You and I have the opportunity to overturn pro-abortion laws and advance pro-life legislation that attacks the most vulnerable in our society, from the womb to the tomb.
00:19:27.860Together, we can shape the future of our nation through life-affirming legislation in every state.
00:19:34.700Now, a gift of just $25 helps hold abortion providers accountable
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00:21:06.220There's nothing, almost nothing about Justice Alito out there,
00:21:09.520even though his own colleagues will tell you he's this giant on the court.
00:21:14.080And he has a particular approach to originalism that I think is interesting for this current moment we're in,
00:21:20.220that doctrine about how you interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning.
00:21:25.800There are a majority of justices who self-identify as originalists.
00:21:29.240originalists. He's a little different than some of his colleagues. So I wanted to explore that.
00:21:32.900Yeah. And I also wanted to look into that Dobbs leak and dig into what happened there and who
00:21:38.140people thought was involved and more on that. That's a million dollar question, right? Like
00:21:43.360what happened there? What did you find out? I did talk to, I interviewed nearly 100 people
00:21:47.980for the book, including former clerks, staff, justices. And the number one thing I took away
00:21:54.880from this is that the investigation itself was incredibly poorly done. They waited a very long
00:22:00.600period of time to even begin digging into things. They didn't have a good understanding of how much
00:22:05.620access clerks had to the draft decision outside of the court building. There are truly like a
00:22:13.740million different ways it could have been leaked, but the questions weren't hard-hitting enough.
00:22:17.360So instead of saying, what has been your contact with this journalist who published this, or do you
00:22:23.860or does any member of your family or a friend have contact with this person?
00:22:27.380They pretty much just said, did you leak it?
00:22:29.980And if they said no, then they said thank you very much for coming in.
00:22:33.700There's no way you're going to find out answers when that's the level of investigation.
00:22:37.100So why do you think the investigation was shoddy?
00:22:41.220It certainly is not something that the marshal of the Supreme Court is used to having to do.
00:22:45.960As you know, the culture of the court is such that it's unthinkable that you would leak something like this.
00:22:53.160And it's not that it wasn't possible for people to leak previously a draft decision.
00:22:57.920They just had the type of moral character that would prevent them from doing it.
00:23:01.880And the chief, of course, is very adamant when clerks begin and other staff begin about the importance of the integrity of the court and not leaking any information whatsoever.
00:23:11.380So I think it was just this is not something that this that the marshal had done previously.
00:24:58.960There was no accountability for this leak
00:25:00.720that was unimaginable, as Senator Cruz just put it.
00:25:04.440what would what would be different the next time if anything at all i do i do think that there was
00:25:10.560something singular about this situation abortion and the court has always been difficult that's
00:25:15.840actually where a lot of the leaks have happened previously as well and even the person who did
00:25:20.960the leak until he or she admits it we probably won't know who did it it's you know again it was
00:25:26.060something that could be done very easily without detection so i don't think it would be i don't
00:25:31.320see it happening again. But there is still time actually to think about whether there should be
00:25:37.560a better investigation into this, including whether there's any role for an outside investigator,
00:25:44.360law enforcement investigator. One of the things I think is interesting is that after the leak of
00:25:48.480this decision, you had attacks on the lives of the justices. You had organized and coordinated
00:25:54.000protest activity. You had the fire bombings of the churches and the pro-life pregnancy centers.
00:25:59.380It is illegal to do this, do something with the intent to affect the outcome of a decision.
00:26:04.180And yet the Biden Justice Department did nothing, refused to follow federal law.
00:26:08.960Look, one of the things that really bombshell facts that you report in this book is you report Justice Kagan screaming at Justice Breyer so loud that the walls were shaking over Dobbs.
00:26:22.620Well, after the leak happened, again, the lives of the justices are immediately threatened.
00:26:27.620You have justices having to be moved to secure locations, Amy Coney Barrett having to put on a bulletproof vest in front of her children.
00:26:34.420We also had the situation where she recently was the victim of a swatting attempt where someone tried to get her house swatted.
00:26:40.520And you had Justice Kavanaugh, of course, with an assassin outside of his house.
00:26:45.200Well, prior to that happening with Justice Kavanaugh, some of the justices asked the dissenting justices to please wrap up their dissent so that the decision could be released.
00:26:54.580Until a decision is released, it's not final.
00:26:56.980So if one of the justices were to die, that would mean Dobbs was not handed down.
00:27:01.260And let's just underscore that point because if one of the justices were to die, this is an area where passive voice doesn't really capture it.
00:27:12.080To really underscore it, that means if one of the justices in the majority were to be murdered, suddenly Dobbs cannot issue and Roe versus Wade is not overturned.
00:27:24.940And so the assassin who came with plans to murder Brett Kavanaugh and the other conservative justices could have changed history.
00:27:34.800And every day that there was a delay, there was an added risk that someone would murder one of those justices.
00:27:40.900So a request was put forth by Alito and also by Justice Gorsuch.
00:28:17.900And they do in exchange for getting other decisions done later.
00:28:21.840But they include this gratuitous footnote that was completely unnecessary for another decision that really wasn't going to be handed down for another several weeks.
00:28:30.740And so during that period of time, before it was finally handed down, I think it was June 23rd, that was when Kavanaugh actually had the assassin outside of his home.
00:28:39.520And this slow walking, which I report in Alito, the book, was also confirmed, I think, this year as a tactic that is being used by the liberal justices.
00:28:48.420We learned that they were also slow walking that Calais decision, that Voting Rights Act decision, in the hope that if they got it out too late, then state legislatures could not respond to the decision.
00:29:00.320Well, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson was quite vocal and wrote about wanting to delay that decision with a very explicit, I think, objective of preventing state legislatures from acting and redistricting.
00:29:12.880And it's one of the most partisan disputes we've ever seen at the court, her effort to have a real impact on the election in November.
00:29:25.280And I will point out that Justice Alito actually responded to her by pointing out this is a case that we heard in October, and it was not the first time they heard it.
00:29:33.980They heard it the previous term as well, pointing out that every other decision from that term had already been released, that this slow walking was political.
00:29:44.260Handing down a decision that needs to be handed down is not political.
00:30:42.660This brings up a bigger question I wanted to ask you about, Molly,
00:30:46.320And that was about the idea now that every time a decision comes down that Democrats don't seem to like, they want to either completely remake the court, pack the court.
00:30:56.720Does that concern you, especially as you were writing this book, how much now they're saying, oh, nine, maybe we'll move it to 15 or 18 or whatever the number is they want next?
00:31:04.640This is a huge threat to the court and rule of law, what we're seeing happening from the left.
00:31:09.180And I actually go into this in detail in the book, showing how coordinated the attacks on the court are, how well-funded they are.
00:31:16.360To just use one example, ProPublica, which is a left-wing media outlet, raised $53 million with the express purpose of going after Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.
00:31:29.240And at the end of the year, they reported on their 990 form what they had done with $53 million.
00:31:34.780I mean, can you imagine how many reporters and researchers you can hire, you know, high-level people?
00:31:41.580They don't publish that many stories, but the whole goal was to attack the integrity of Alito and Thomas, two men who actually have a great deal of integrity.
00:31:49.320be. But this was done as part of the Democrat lawfare efforts that are going on to pressure
00:31:55.760the court into agreeing with some of the more extreme lawfare efforts that they have had
00:32:00.920in play, whether it's kicking Trump off the ballot or having uneven prosecutions of conservatives
00:32:06.840versus liberals. And you see it with now so many prominent Democrats calling for the actual
00:32:13.520packing of the court. This isn't about having a thoughtful discussion about the number of
00:32:17.640people on the court. No, no. If they get power, they will do this. Yeah, packing for political
00:32:21.400outcome. And I'll just point out, conservatives were not in power on the court for decades,
00:32:26.420and many bad things happened. And they never once resorted to undermining the integrity of
00:32:30.880the court. They said, we're going to put a lot of effort into electing senators who will confirm
00:32:35.780good justices, electing a president who will nominate good justices, and building up the
00:32:40.880network of people who understand what a proper, coherent conservative judicial philosophy is.
00:32:45.580And the left doesn't want to do that work. They just want to burn it down.
00:32:49.440They want power and by any means necessary. And they view the court as an extension of political power, not not an institution that actually is supposed to follow the Constitution or follow the law.
00:33:01.240And in fact, they view the court as an avenue to end run democracy because many of their most extreme policies are very unpopular.
00:33:11.720And so it's much easier to get a handful of unelected judges just to force it on the whole country than actually to engage in the difficult and messy business of democracy, of convincing your fellow citizens you're right.
00:33:23.920But it strikes me that there are a lot of very similar themes in your book on Justice Alito that are in my upcoming book on Justice Clarence Thomas.
00:33:35.740My book is coming out in August, and like you, I spent a lot of time interviewing Justice Thomas as you did with Justice Alito.
00:33:43.400And one interesting bit of history is Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were both classmates in law school at Yale Law School.
00:33:52.220They didn't know each other, but they were classmates. And there's a funny story Justice Thomas told me when I was interviewing him for the book where he said when he got when he was at the court, when Alito went to the court, he asked him, he said, Sam, why weren't we friends in law school?
00:34:08.840And Justice Alito responded, Clarence, you were scary.
00:34:14.940And Justice Thomas erupts in his signature just belly laugh, which is, as you know, infectious.
00:34:23.060Tell us a little bit about what made Sam Alito into the great Justice Alito.
00:34:30.760And you mentioned before what you described as his unique brand of originalism.
00:34:36.680Well, I think one of the things that sticks out is that he was raised in a middle-class family by a public servant who he really respected, his father.
00:34:45.100He goes to Princeton, and he's a public school kid, and he assumes that all of these elite kids are going to be really smart and give him a run for his money.
00:34:53.300When he gets there, he finds out, actually, he's doing just fine in the intelligence department.
00:34:57.960And also, these elite kids are the ones who end up rioting, shutting down the campus.
00:35:02.760He knows that they will go on and have cushy jobs that their fathers gave them, whereas he needs the education.
00:35:09.280And so even though he goes to elite institutions, Princeton, Yale, goes to the Department of Justice, he doesn't seem—
00:35:15.400Do you want me to concede that Yale's an elite institution?
00:35:20.880He doesn't seem to want the respect of many of the people he meets there.
00:35:24.840He just doesn't—he's not that impressed with them.
00:35:26.940And I think that's—you see that come through now, and it's the same thing with Justice Thomas.
00:35:30.520He cares so much more about people who are working at the Supreme Court than the people at the cocktail parties.
00:35:37.060And speaking of Justice Thomas, he and Alito work together very well.
00:35:41.560But whereas Justice Thomas, as one person put it, is the deployed aircraft carrier on the court, Alito's chambers are more like the Green Berets.
00:36:02.100Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is completely unconstitutional.
00:36:05.760Alito might agree with that, but he builds together a six-person majority to say it can't be interpreted that there are these racial gerrymanders because that cannot be what the law means given what the 15th Amendment of the Constitution does in explicitly prohibiting such.
00:36:22.960So what do you think Justice Alito's legacy will be 50 years from now?
00:36:29.040For most justices, I think they will be lucky to be remembered for one thing.
00:36:33.300And if it is one thing, it's definitely going to be the Dobbs decision.
00:36:36.660But the reason why people should pay attention now is because of all these other important decisions, his incremental solid work on religious liberty, speech issues.
00:36:46.620And I would say the other thing I find really interesting about him that people should pay more attention to is how effective he is in oral argument.