00:11:38.800And what's interesting and part of the reason I believe that this threat is real, this is not you know, there's some folks.
00:11:45.320In the media, some folks who think, gosh, they really wouldn't do that.
00:11:50.100If that seems really radical, the biggest indication to me that they really mean it is there is a concerted effort among Democrats in the media to redefine what it means to pack the court.
00:12:03.920So, you know, we've talked about before the incredible message discipline that Democrats have.
00:12:09.840About a week ago, the talking point went out that every Democrat began repeating, which is, well, the Republicans have been packing the court for four years.
00:12:17.120Well, that's not actually what packing the court means, filling vacancies when there's a vacancy, appointing a justice, confirming the justice.
00:12:52.840They recently wrote an article where they said to depoliticize the court.
00:12:58.600So you want to talk about an Orwellian term, packing the court, adding new left wing justices and growing it beyond nine to, I don't know, 11, 13, wherever they go is, is according to the Associated Press, is depoliticizing the court.
00:13:18.480And it went on to say, which some critics have referred to as packing.
00:13:23.660Well, no, actually, everybody referred to it as packing.
00:13:27.780Of course, the term court packing is much older than the term depoliticizing.
00:13:33.680So what you're telling me, because I was just about to celebrate when you told me there was a Democrat surrender on Amy Coney Barrett today, I thought, oh, gosh, this is good news.
00:13:52.400But they are going to use the confirmation of Judge Barrett as another excuse for court packing, which, you know, we played it earlier.
00:14:01.780Joe Biden in the 1980s may have said that he thought it was a boneheaded scheme.
00:14:05.440But don't forget, Joe Biden has changed his views 180 degrees multiple times over the course of his career.
00:14:12.860You saw this actually during the George H.W.
00:14:15.880Bush administration, where he said it would be a terrible idea to nominate and confirm a judge, a Supreme Court justice in an election year.
00:14:56.040Dick Blumenthal, 2018, commenting on the 1937 Judiciary Committee statement that it is a measure which we should be which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.
00:15:56.220I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.
00:16:00.700Um, they all agreed with this until they got very unhappy with with the president's judicial nominations for the for the vacancies that he had.
00:16:13.520And at this point, I think it is all about power.
00:16:16.860And it's all about, you know, we talked yesterday in the podcast about I went through the litany of constitutional rights that are hanging in the balance, that are one vote away a lot.
00:16:27.340All the different rights that I talk about in my book, one vote away, religious liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment.
00:16:32.880And I explained in the hearing how every one of those rights was hanging in the balance.
00:16:56.620I think they recognize they can't stop it now.
00:17:00.100So their plan and their hope is they win in November and then they use brute power to just grow the court and and force in radicals who will mandate their their view of policy from the court.
00:17:11.500Well, I want to ask you about one particular example of the exercise of brute power, which today, frankly, completely overshadowed the confirmation hearings.
00:17:21.540That was the matter of big tech censoring a new report just came out from the New York Post.
00:17:26.980It showed emails in between Hunter Biden and one of his oligarch pals over in Ukraine.
00:17:34.760We've talked at length on this podcast about the shady business connections between Hunter Biden and these Ukraine energy companies and oligarchs an email suggesting that Hunter Biden not only discussed this issue with Joe Biden, but actually introduced the Ukrainian oligarch to Joe Biden.
00:17:52.500This is very explosive stuff during a presidential campaign, big tech platforms, Facebook and Twitter censored the New York Post report.
00:18:02.880They offered no evidence to the contrary.
00:18:05.740They had no reason to suggest that this was not real.
00:18:08.840They simply said this could be damaging information, damaging to whom damaging, of course, to the Biden campaign.
00:18:15.180And the craziest part of it all is it worked.
00:18:19.320It didn't work to stop the conversation, but it it worked to stop the spread of of this particular link throughout big tech.
00:18:27.320I you know, we've criticized big tech on this show before.
00:18:30.700I did not know that those companies would take election interference to this kind of a dangerous extent.
00:18:38.960I don't know if this New York Post story is true or not, but it was really quite stunning this afternoon.
00:18:43.160Both Twitter and Facebook just decided we're going to block this story.
00:18:48.060And by the way, so they would block it a if you tweeted it, if you tweeted it, if I tweeted it and you link to the story.
00:18:54.740If you tried to click on the link, you'd get a warning on Twitter that that that this link has has content that may be harmful.
00:19:03.080Well, maybe harmful to Joe Biden's political prospects, but but it's not.
00:19:06.760Right. And not only that, they did something which which I don't recall seeing them have the cajones to do before.
00:19:15.880That being a Cuban term, I'll look it up, which is they banned the New York Post itself.
00:19:23.000So the New York Post publisher, the Post was and the Post has one of the largest circulations of any newspaper in the country.
00:19:30.340I mean, this is not, you know, Bob's newsletter.
00:20:15.420Do you know what his jobs were before he started working at Facebook?
00:20:18.580He worked for Democratic political action committees.
00:20:22.420He worked for Democratic elected politicians.
00:20:24.820He is a Democrat operative at a supposedly neutral tech platform using that neutral tech platform to suppress damaging information about Democrats mere weeks to an election.
00:21:09.540So I sent today letters to the CEOs of both Facebook and Twitter as chairman of the Constitution subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting out a series of questions, asking them who made the decision.
00:21:22.000What was the basis for what was the basis for what other news sites have you have you blocked and silenced?
00:21:28.160Have you ever blocked The New York Times?
00:21:29.420Have you ever blocked The Washington Post?
00:21:31.020Have you ever blocked anything damaging of Donald Trump?
00:21:33.300Or is it only stories that you think are damaging of Joe Biden that you're going to block?
00:21:37.560And what's interesting about this, you said a minute ago, well, you know, they were able to succeed in this.
00:21:46.020I think their arrogance is their pitfall because this is now a 10 times bigger story because they blocked it than if they just ignored it, if they'd let people tweet about it.
00:21:57.720Look, one of the challenges, and we find this, you know, when we did the podcast talking about James Comey and, you know, all the Russiagate and everything, people are tired of it.
00:22:12.620They're just, all the names and Brennan and Comey and it's complicated and people want to tune it out and it's noise and I get it.
00:22:19.720Look, I do this for a living and it's hard to follow all this stuff.
00:22:23.940I think this story could very easily have faded into that kind of mist of noise of I'm not sure what Burisma is anymore, Ukraine or Biden, whatever, Hunter Biden.
00:22:36.160And I'm not sure it would have gotten a whole lot of attention beyond right wingers who already are going to vote for Trump.
00:22:41.400But I'm not sure it would have gotten a lot of attention beyond that.
00:22:45.100Except for Twitter and Facebook censoring it where you're sitting there going, OK.
00:22:49.320If they can block a major newspaper a couple of weeks before a presidential election publishing what purports to be evidence of corruption at the very highest level of politics, that's a big frigid deal.
00:23:04.060And I think it actually backfired on them.
00:23:06.400And it's frankly, that itself is a bigger story, perhaps even than Joe Biden's potentially corrupt dealings with Ukraine.
00:23:14.160The idea that a few oligarchs in Silicon Valley are now going to control effectively the public sphere, the control of information around the Internet, interfering in an election in a way that the Russians could only have dreamed of.
00:23:26.320They would never have been able to interfere to that regard.
00:23:46.220As you know, I've been leading the charge on this for several years.
00:23:49.980The most of the action that can be done on this is in the executive branch.
00:23:53.580So so I have met and talked with on this topic.
00:23:57.240President Trump, Vice President Pence, the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel, Attorney General Bill Barr, the deputy attorney general, the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
00:24:07.780I've urged all of them to use the enforcement power of the executive branch.
00:24:13.360Look, in Congress, we don't have the ability to impanel a grand jury.
00:24:17.460We don't have the ability to bring indictments.
00:24:37.200Is it tends to be very siloed where the antitrust division thinks about antitrust issues, the civil division thinks about civil issues in each little silo.
00:25:39.660Although I will say it all comes down to the election, because if if if we start next year with Biden, Schumer and Pelosi, they're not going to do a damn thing about big tech.
00:25:49.780They want big tech to censor your speech.
00:25:52.780So not only are they going to go after your speech through the Supreme Court, but they're also going to go after your speech through big tech.
00:25:58.660You know, we had a couple of years ago, Mark Zuckerberg testify before Judiciary Committee and Commerce Committee.
00:26:05.620And it was this month monstrosity of a joint committee meeting where there were 40 some odd senators.
00:27:05.800So if they win, there's not going to be any DOJ enforcement.
00:27:09.300There's not going to be any enforcement of law.
00:27:10.820If the Democrats win, big tech is unchecked and it is the oligarchs running things until another election changes things.
00:27:20.800And so that's one of many reasons why I hope we have a good election and Trump gets reelected because we need to address this is the biggest concentration of power.
00:27:31.700In the world of the media and communication that the world has ever seen.
00:28:46.740And he's actually a pretty talented artist.
00:28:49.220He paints, but he paints these sort of hard, lefty, nasty.
00:28:56.640So he actually, back when I was in my reelection campaign against Beto, he did a painting of me that was really horrible attacking me.
00:29:03.980So this is the second time he's painted me, which is very odd that Jim Carrey is like, so this second one, I'm like bright red and look like a demon out of hell.
00:29:12.240And actually, I'll tell you, I'll answer this question by telling you the story as I had the conversation with Caroline last night.
00:29:19.820So Caroline is my 12-year-old, and she is a spirited girl.
00:29:25.520And she was explaining, she said, she said, Dad, I'm really sarcastic.
00:29:34.540You wouldn't understand it because you're not sarcastic.
00:29:37.420I'm like, wait, what do you mean I'm not sarcastic?
00:32:00.020But I think if they go, I think I think whatever happens, it would go to an odd number just so that you have you have you don't have the possibility of a tie.
00:32:08.540But if they go to 11 or 13, I think we go to 15 or 17.
00:32:15.960And you end up having the court as this super legislature with a bunch of politically appointed people.
00:32:23.740And it's an escalation that I think would be a terrible idea.
00:32:29.300Now, by the way, there is a chance that Republicans are too wimpy to do it, that we let Democrats pack the court.
00:32:34.800And then when we take control, we like are scared of our own shadow and don't do anything.
00:32:37.980I'm hopeful we wouldn't do that because, frankly, if we find ourselves in that picture next year, even though I think they're going to do it, I'm going to fight as hard as I can to stop it.
00:32:49.520And then one of the main arguments I plan to use is if you do it.
00:33:41.260I mean, that and I would have opposed it.
00:33:42.760It would have been and no one even suggested it was such a bad idea that no one even suggested it.
00:33:49.560And so the the level of escalation, the fact that the Democrats are going down this road, the fact that Joe Biden is saying the voters don't deserve to know his answer.
00:33:59.060I mean, it's a really scary escalation.
00:34:01.560And and it's you don't have to look back to ancient history to say Republicans didn't do it.
00:34:09.700It was the right thing not to do it then.
00:34:12.780And I hope we don't find find it happening a few months from now.
00:34:16.800And it is it is scary to see even just that redefinition, the normalizing of that idea, as you said earlier, of court packing, changing the meaning of the term.
00:34:24.820You actually just saw this yesterday as a result of the hearings.
00:34:27.940Senator Hirono was lambasting Judge Barrett for using the term sexual preference.
00:34:33.500She said this was which has been an innocuous term for as long as one can remember.
00:34:37.600She said this is offensive. And then over the course of the day, everyone seemed to get on on board, the media, leftist politicians, even the dictionary online.
00:34:46.820I think Merriam Webster's changed the definition of sexual preference to say that it's now an offensive term.
00:34:53.100And that that kind of power all all in one place is obviously a great threat.
00:35:00.220And it just shows you what the normalization of a term like court packing could lead us to.
00:35:05.240So Webster's dictionary in one day when the Democrats criticize the term sexual preference, they change the dictionary definition the next day.
00:35:14.880That's a little terrifying. Noah Webster's got to be twirling in his grave.
00:35:19.300Right. Right. A final point that's just kind of an interesting observation on that that sexual preference issue.
00:35:26.720So both Maisie Hirono and Cory Booker lambasted Judge Barrett for using using the phrase sexual preference, which I don't think Judge Barrett meant to convey anything.
00:35:35.820But just an interesting observation, both Hirono and Booker insisted that sexual orientation is immutable.
00:35:45.880Immutable. Which I thought was actually a fascinating point.
00:35:50.200I was genuinely not aware that it is a position of the far left.
00:35:54.560Immutable means not capable of changing, always constant, never changing.
00:35:59.300I wasn't aware that the far left maintains that sexual orientation never can change, that it is unalterable.
00:36:06.180And it's it's it's it's an odd position to have when they simultaneously insist that gender is capable of continuously changing.
00:36:19.280And I don't know that that is the position of the left, but both Hirono and Booker insisted upon it.
00:36:24.760And I think it's a vestige of some of the arguments that used to be common between left and right about whether whether sexual orientation, whether being gay is is genetics and or or a choice.
00:36:38.660And so when they say immutable, what they mean is innate.
00:36:42.700But innate is different from immutable to say you can never at any point.
00:36:49.040I just thought it was a fascinating observation about the lack of introspection and the incoherence of the left's views on sexuality, more broadly speaking.
00:37:03.100Well, of course, I mean, just to put it in very simple terms, if a gay man has a homosexual orientation that can't ever change,
00:37:12.640if he then transitions and identifies as a woman, but his his preference or orientation doesn't change, then then is he still he's not a gay man anymore.
00:37:24.820He can't you can't have those two things at once.