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- [00:00]
A
Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Psaki and more. Voices you know and trust. Ms. Now is your source for news, opinion and the world. Our name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth that you've relied on for decades. We'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you. Ms. Now, same mission, new name. Learn more at Ms. Now.
- [00:30]
B
Is the judiciary the key to saving the democracy, or is it what's killing it? I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. If you want to have a provocative, critical thinker, okay, brain food session about the notion of justice judges balancing authoritarianism with democracy, where we are as a society, what our rules are versus our standards versus our morals and values. These are really deep things that are the ingredients for the shit stew that we're all feasting on right now in terms of the results of elections, of inaction within government, or what actions they do take and how we're treating each other and what matters and what's at play in culture and law. I. Hi, I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. If you want to have this conversation, there's no better person to have it who transcends generations, process and politics than Professor Alan Dershowitz. Now you may say, oh, yeah, I know him. I've heard him. Not like this. Not with me. Oh, no, I have. I've heard him with you on your show. Not in depth, not where we're able to question each other's suppositions. For example, I wanted the conversation to be about how the judiciary is the best hope for our democracy because we see them checking Trump appropriately. It's not what Professor Dershowitz says. I wanted to talk about whether or not the death penalty is a fine social instruction for a really violent society, which I believe us to be. I believe we're not good enough to not have the death penalty. I don't think it works. Not Alan Dershowitz. So it was really interesting, the difference between gay marriage and reproductive rights. I didn't see what was coming from Alan Dershowitz. So if you care about the why behind what we're all suffering through right now, this is the conversation to listen to. Let's get after it. Professor Dershowitz, do you believe that the judiciary is our last, best hope for preserving the democracy in our current political climate?
- [02:48]
C
Absolutely not. Alexander Hamilton didn't believe that. Thomas Jefferson didn't believe that. We are not a country of judges. Do you know there's a biblical book, I think it's the book of Ruth that said when judges ruled the land, there was famine. We are in real bad shape before counting on judges. Judges are elitists. They're not elected for the most part. In some places they are. They're not accountable. They're not electable there. They wear black robes and they think they're. You know, there's the great joke that they love to tell about Sigmund Freud is called by the angel Gabriel. And the Angel Gabriel says, Sigmund, we really have to examine God. He's having delusions of grandeur. He thinks he's a federal judge. Oh, so don't. Don't ask me to defend the judiciary. The judiciary is the weakest branch of our government. It is the most subject to authoritarian rule. Look what happened in Germany. The last branch that was able to defend German democracy was judiciary. They went along with everything. And every tyranny immediately uses the judiciary to do their thing. So don't count on judges. Count on the people. Count on elected people in the legislature. Make sure you elect good people to high positions, but do not count on the judges because they're not going to save you.
- [04:20]
B
Counterpoint. If you look at the current state of play, you mentioned authoritarianism. The executive branch has never been more susceptible to it than the decisions that are being made by this administration. Not in my lifetime. Congress.
- [04:35]
C
How old are you, Chris?
- [04:36]
B
I am 55.
- [04:38]
C
I remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 10 times or a centrist authoritarian. He threatened to pack the courts right.
- [04:50]
B
Extended the presidential term. He did a lot of things also. I don't think. I think we can debate whether it's definitely authoritarian if it is self directed. I think that authoritarianism has a flavor to, to it of wanting everything your way. That is not necessarily the best way for anybody else. That's a subjective standard. But when you look at the executive, the legislative, which literally until recently was doing nothing on purpose and all it seems to care about is not legislating but diminishing the other side. The judiciary seems to be the only branch that is even approximating what it's supposed to be doing. Fair point or no.
- [05:36]
C
Agree. The framers of the Constitution had no interest in the legislature legislating. If they want to legislate, they can legislate. If they don't want to legislate. Some of our best periods of time were without much legislation. You don't always need legislation. The status quo Sometimes is. Is pretty good. Last night, my wife and I went to see the film Nuremberg, the new film. And it's obviously all about the worst form of authoritarianism in the history of the world. And boy, the judiciary didn't help there one bit. But neither did any other branches in the government, and neither did the media. It was learned at hand who made a great speech during the Second World War. He said, when democracy dies in the hearts of men and women, nothing can rescue it, not judges, not anybody else. And my great hope for America is, is that democracy will not die in the hearts of men and women. We fight back, and we're contentious people. And therefore authoritarianism has never, never been at home here. But we're closer to it from both sides. The thing that worries me most is the pincer movement. We have the extreme right, which has now become very authoritarian and very anti Semitic and very anti everything. And we have the extreme left, which is much the same. Remember, people forget that Stalin and Hitler hated each other and were polar opposites in every way, had one thing in common. They both hated the Jews and wanted to kill them, and they both succeeded. And when Jews are killed, they're not the first. They're always going to be people after that. And so I think it's very more important than ever not to count on institutions of government to preserve our liberty. We have to count on the people to preserve our liberty. And certainly the branch that is least likely over time to preserve our liberty is the judiciary.
- [07:32]
B
So given your perspective, one, how do you think the judiciary is handling its role in this current administration on the questions that matter? And how do you think we're doing with people preserving their own liberty?
- [07:49]
C
Well, I think we're doing okay on the latter, and I'll get to that in a minute. But I think the judiciary is failing. It's becoming completely politicized. You know, when a client asked me today, am I going to win or lose my case? My first question is, who's the judge? What's the panel? And if you tell me who the panel is, I'll tell you who's going to win. You don't have to tell me what the law is. Judges have become so darn political and so darn partisan, and I see it all over the place. I see it with good people, good judges, judges I've respected over the years, but they have Trump derangement syndrome or Biden derangement syndrome. People are so angry at politics today. People today in the United States, people who I knew for years on Martha's Vineyard. People like Larry David and John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox, people who used to be perfectly rational people, they think that Donald Trump is Hitler. And people on the other side think that Biden is, you know, unconscious and was not able to make any decisions whatsoever. You almost find nobody today who says, you know, Trump, he's very active, he's done a few good things, but there's this real danger. It's, on balance, it's bad, it's not good. Or people say Biden, you know, he did some very good things legislatively. He was a very, very good senator, but, you know, he got too old. You don't hear those conversations today. What you hear is the best and the worst. And that's dangerous to democracy.
- [09:27]
B
Isn't. We're get. Aren't we getting a little relief from that? Within the decisions we've seen on this administration, there's been a range of decisions about whether or not the president can bring in the National Guard or additional federal troops. Based on the facts in different situations, they seem to be the least political of everything else we're dealing with now. But of course, they're supposed to be completely apolitical, which you're saying isn't the case anymore.
- [09:55]
C
It is. It's a low bar to say they're less political. They may be less. I'm not sure they are. They just hide it more. And, but the partisanship is so, you know, people really believe that if you elect a Democrat, it's the end of the world, or if you elect a Republican, it's the end of the world. We weren't that way even when you were growing up? Certainly not when I was growing up. You know, I could.
- [10:23]
B
But that's because we're creating our own crises these days, Professor. And in doing that, it's all about division and advantage over the other side. There's no reason to come together because we don't have a common enemy.
- [10:35]
C
But, you know, you make a very good point when you think about the 1930s, which was probably the worst decade in many ways in modern history. It was what led to the Holocaust. There was a depression. Things were terrible in the country. People were at war. The fascists were taking over Spain. Times are good now. There's no excuse for this kind of division. Yeah, too many rich people are a little too rich, and too many poor people are a little too poor. But we're better than almost any other country in the world. And yet these idiots who teach at places like Harvard and Yale and Princeton are indoctrinating and propagandizing their students to become revolutionaries. And if you think it's bad now, I can tell you one thing. Having been in teaching 60 years, if you want to predict the future, look at what the present is on university campuses. Because my students, I taught them all. My students are the future leaders of America. And if what's going on on college campuses today, you can extrapolate 20 years forward, we're in much, much deeper trouble. Now there are some people who say young people grow up. I'm not so sure of that and change their views maybe. But I think the views today on university campuses are so extreme and so dumb and so ahistorical and so ignorant that I have deep concerns about the future. Part of me regrets having retired from Harvard because if I were at Harvard today, I'd be fighting that fight every day. I wouldn't be fighting it in the classroom. You know, I taught for 50 years at Harvard, never once expressed a personal point of view in a classroom. Students had no idea whether I favored the death penalty, was opposed to anything like that. That wasn't my job. My job was to teach the students how to think critically, not what to think. But today, teachers regard their roles as having, you know, fomenting a revolution. They think they're in pre Castro Cuba or in pre communist czarist Russia. And that's not what universities ought to be doing.
- [12:43]
B
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- [13:19]
C
Why?
- [13:20]
B
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- [13:59]
C
All right.
- [14:00]
B
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- [14:39]
A
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- [15:11]
B
Professor Were you heartened by the Supreme Court's decision to not even grant cert, even grant review to this case to question gay marriage?
- [15:26]
C
Oh, absolutely. Of course I was heartened. But of course I knew it was gonna happen. I predicted it. Nine nothing with 100% certainty. Why? First of all, it was a terrible case. Doesn't involve gay marriage. It involves some clerk who was fined, I don't know, a few thousand dollars for not administering a gay marriage. So even if they wanted to reverse the gay marriage decision, which I don't think they're gonna do, that would be a terrible case. Let me tell you why. There's an en enormous difference between gay marriage and abortion. Gay marriage does not have any victims. Nobody should care that gay people are marrying and falling in love or having sex. It's nobody's effing business. Abortion, on the other hand, a third of the country thinks that you're killing a baby. You're killing a human being. That is not an irrational view. Many believe that abortion is not a victimless crime. There is a case for keeping the Supreme Court out of the abortion decision. There is no case for keeping the Supreme Court out of the gay marriage decision. Gay marriage is the easiest constitutional moral issue possible. The only thing that stops it is some of the absurdities of religion. But there's absolutely no plausible case against gay marriage. You can't say that about some of.
- [16:49]
B
These other well, the plausible case is marriage is from God and it means something to religious people. It's really a religious construct, which of course isn't true, but that that's why they feel the way they do. And that's what motivated the Judeo Christian ethic in this country until the Oberfell case.
- [17:07]
C
So they should get married to their opposite sex person. But you know, I have to tell you, I have a story once, I hope it's not too upsetting for a podcast, but I was speaking at an Orthodox synagogue, Miami beach, the Young Israel of Miami Beach Modern Orthodox Synagogue, and a woman got up and raised the question and she said, I think gay marriage is horrible. It's terrible. I said, why? She said, well, you know, when I think of two men in bed together, it just horrifies me. So I said, ma', am, you're married, right? She said, yes. I said, I want to ask you a question. When you have sex with your husband, do you go on top or on bottom? She said, how dare you ask me that question? It's none of your business. I said, aha, I think I've won this debate. And you know, it's just not anybody's business how people have sex, what they do in bed, who they love, who they marry, that's just. But it is somebody's business if you have an abortion. If you believe, if you believe, as a third of the country does plausibly, that abortion, particularly late term abortion, is, kills a fetus. Now, I'm in favor of a woman's right to choose abortion because I balance the right of the woman to choose how to use her body over whatever rights a fetus might have. That's my view, but that's not a view I think necessarily the Constitution requires.
- [18:32]
B
But how is it any different than gay marriage when, when you say a third of the country believes a third of the country. Almost a third of the country believes a lot of stupid things, right? Flat earthers. We're only 2,000 years old as a planet. I mean, there's a lot of dumb shit out there that people believe. Why isn't this standard, that what science says or what we know within other factual matters?
- [18:59]
C
By the way, it's 5,786 years exactly to the day, because I read it in the Bible. Look, you're entitled to have that view. The question is it's not rational for me to tell you what to do in the privacy of your own home. It is rational. Maybe it's wrong, but I understand when somebody who's been brought up as a very religious Catholic or as an Orthodox Jew looks at me with tears in their eyes and they say, how can you kill a baby? How can you abort an eight month pregnant woman's baby. I understand that that's a plausible argument, but when somebody says to me, I don't like the fact that two people who are male are in bed, that's not a plausible argument. Now, who am I to say what's a plausible argument and what's not? Well, the people have to make that decision.
- [19:52]
B
Well, I think that that's. I think we agree on that. Well, first of all, I would say you're pretty good arbiter of what's plausible and what is. And it's one of the reasons I have learned at your knee for all these years. But I think it's the same thing in our society. Look, the eight month, the nine month, the it's a baby never worked for me because it's never a baby. Now, I once got into this with Marco Rubio, and he was like, well, what is it? What's it gonna be? A cactus. Of course it's gonna be a baby. I said, going to be a baby. The question is when? And he says, that's not a real question. I said, it is in the law. And go back and remember Terri Schiavo. And we decided that at the end of life, it's not when your heart stops, when your brain stops sending signals to your body about to think and animate your person. You're no longer a person under the law. You're no longer compos mentis. But we can't do that in the beginning.
- [20:55]
C
Let me give you my favorite argument then, that here I'm gonna lose all of my viewers, all my liberals and all my conservatives. I agree with you. I think when your brain stops operating and your heart stops beating and you are dead, you are no longer a person. It follows from me, therefore, that you have no right to be buried with your heart, with your kidneys, with your liver and with your lungs. If those organs can be extracted from you after you're dead and be used to save human beings. I am totally intolerant of anybody who is not an organ donor.
- [21:27]
B
Agreed.
- [21:28]
C
As you probably know, that my son tragically died at age 64 just a few months ago. The one thing he insisted on when he was alive was that all of his organs must be donated. And they were. And three people are alive today as a result of my son's decision to donate his organs. So, look, but I wouldn't compel it as a matter of law. I wouldn't. But I would urge everybody to be an organ organ donor.
- [21:55]
B
I would compel it because how does it hurt you now? What they would Say, which is this same third of the population that I even refer to as the mouth breathers. Until I learned that there's some organization of mouth breathers that I was offending. But anyway, the idea is, well, you're going to kill me to take my organs. I think we can deal with that aspect. I'm an organ donor. Everyone in my family is. I remember someone saying to me, why are you having Mario check that he's an organ donor when he's so young? I said, well, what difference does that make? And they said, well, I mean, God forbid something happens to him and they start taking his organs. I was like, what is this? What do you mean they start taking his organs if he's dead? And we've decided to stop any efforts, medical efforts, that's when they take the organs.
- [22:43]
C
There is a plausible view. In China, we know that they kill people and they have more executions for their organs. That's why, for example, I would not allow organ donation by people who are executed. Why they're dead. I don't want anything to be benefited, anybody to be benefited by executing somebody. I don't want any juror or judge to say, you know, it's a closed question. Should we execute him? Well, if we execute him, we can take his organs. No, I don't want that thought to be in anybody's mind. But if people die a natural death or in a motorcycle death, their organs are for people to live with, should be, not for worms to eat.
- [23:24]
B
I agree. And if we want to get people upset at us and have them no longer watch us because they don't like our opinions, which is a big problem in our society right now. Nobody is open to what they don't already believe. I'll give them some grist for the mill. I'm fine with our society having a social instruction where you kill somebody for just about any reason you want. You want the death penalty? Go ahead. Do I think it reduces crime? No. Do I think you can make mistakes? Yes. Do I think that the Constitution, you can't get past the 8th amendment? No. I think you can. And I think we're kidding ourselves, professor, that we are more evolved than the death penalty and that all these other societies, Israel keeps it for crimes against the state, but they're in an existential circumstance. But most European, most developed societies, even in South America, death penalty is more rare than it is common. I don't think America deserves that deference. I don't think we're that nonviolent. I think we kill each other all the time for no or bad reason. Why not make it the rule?
- [24:32]
C
Look, I agree with the fact that we kill each other for all kinds of reasons. I just debated one of the people from the National Rifle association in Chicago for the Free Press, and I had the proposition that the Second Amendment makes us less safe. Now my argument was, yeah, it does make us less safe, but that doesn't mean I want to abolish it. The First Amendment also makes us less safe. So does the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. Nobody wrote a Bill of Rights to make us safer. They wrote a Bill of Rights to make us freer. And we have to balance the freedom versus the safety, as obviously, famously, Benjamin Franklin said, those who would give up essential liberties for a little bit more security deserve neither. But we have to have a balance. I'm prepared to give up some liberty for a lot of security if we can benefit people. Remember too, we're privileged. We live in safe neighborhoods. We can afford if we have to have people help us, protect us. But if you're living in a really high crime neighborhood in some city, you're not going to be reading the Bill of Rights every day and saying, well, that's going to save and protect me. But nonetheless, I wouldn't amend the Bill of Rights under any circumstances.
- [25:46]
B
Self interest. It all comes down to self interest. Certainly politics, the individual into the collective, if you're lucky to make that leap. But when you look at it, professor, the idea of. So the case comes up. The girl is raped by the monster, the stereotypical monster that can be whatever your stereotype is. The father finds out and kills him.
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C
Yeah.
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B
People are very divided on what should happen to the father. Why? Well, it's the same reason we rarely punish the gun owner whose child takes the gun and then kills themself or kills the other parent. Why? Because you've already suffered, you've already been victimized. What is the point of punishing anything when you've already been punished? Similarly, doesn't that tell you what you need to know about us? It's not that we live by the sixth commandment or the fifth commandment, depending on how you want to enumerate them, that it is wrong to murder in all situations. We don't believe that in this society.
- [26:53]
C
We don't believe the presumption of innocence. We don't believe guilty until proof. We don't believe any of that. But if you don't believe what you've just said, ask Mike Dukakis the reason Mike Dukakis is not the former president of the United States. He is because he gave the second dumbest answer to a question I've ever heard. The dumbest answer was, of course, by the president of Harvard, who wouldn't say that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's policy against harassment or something. But when Dukakis was asked what you would do if somebody raped and killed your wife or your daughter, you know, of course we know what the answer actually is. We would do everything in our power not only to see that person die, but to suffer in the process. That's human nature. And part of the function of the law is to constrain human nature is to say you don't get to decide what the law is just because your wife was raped or because your child was killed. You get the right to have input, but society in general has to make that decision the case.
- [27:49]
B
The offense is against society, not the victim. On the criminal side, civil side can be different. But my father had a great take on this, which was very frustrating.
- [28:00]
C
He was one of my heroes. I always. You probably know that I voted. I wouldn't vote for Bill Clinton in the primary in 1992, was it?
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B
Yeah.
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C
That's something outrageously insulting about your father.
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B
Yeah, he said he was a mafiosi when he thought he was going to run. And I'll tell you something about my father if you. So he never watched a mob anything. And he almost made Scorsese cry at a dinner once. And my mother had to calm him down because he hated how Italians were portrayed because he'd been so stained by the stereotype. And anyone who knew my father like Alan did. It is laughable to think that my father could be corrupted by anything except his own conscience. I mean, he didn't respond to those kinds of enticements the way some in power do, but. So Clinton calls him a mafiosi. We all know why he did it. My brother then wants to go work for Clinton, which nominally, you know, on the surface level of my family was like heresy. Like, wait a minute, this guy called this cracker, called us exactly what we don't want crackers to call us. And you're gonna go work for him. But my father was able to see the value that Andrew could do that Clinton was a function of circumstance and what works in politics and his own background, and he forgave it.
- [29:29]
C
Your father told me the same thing. I told your father, too, that I would have trouble voting for Clinton. And now you gotta vote for him. He'll be a good president. He was in bed with a woman. He was trying to impress her. I don't know if he really believes it, but even if he believes it, what the heck, that's the way people are brought up to believe. I forgive him. And you do what you have to do. Look, your father was such a wonderful, forgiving guy. And, you know, not only that he was a good baseball player, he was.
- [29:57]
B
A damn good athlete. He was a good baseball player.
- [29:59]
C
People forget that.
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B
He was a defense attorney, great attorney. He loved the law so much more than he loved politics, which was. It was a little disappointing to me. The second time he turned down the Supreme Court once, it was to be an associate justice. The second time or the first, I forget which one was, but there was one where it was the chief position that they were playing with. And he had such a terminal case of humility that he could not see himself in that role. Although he would love being a judge. He was a judge in every other context of his life. But he didn't see himself as a president. He didn't see himself as a Supreme Court justice. And that was the standard. I don't. I don't see it. And that's it.
- [30:47]
C
You know, his conversation with me some years before he died, we were talking about our common background. You know, he had gone to, what, St. John's Law School, and he was very good student. I went to Yale Law School as a very good student. Neither of us could get jobs on Wall Street. And he said, the dean came over to him one day and said, mario, you want to get a job on Wall street, you got to change your name. How about like Mark Conrad? So. So I said, you know, my dean said the same thing to me. Not my changing my name, but, you know, he wanted me to a little more wasp. And your father said, I looked in the mirror in the morning and I said, I'm not Mark Conrad proud of it. And he wouldn't change his name. And he didn't get to work for one of those big Wall street firms, and neither did I. I was turned down by 32 out of 32 Wall street firms, even though I was first in my class at Yale Law School and a Supreme Court law clerk and editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. But I wasn't good enough for a Wall street law firm.
- [31:42]
B
Oh, you were good enough. You were just a Jew. And that is the same thing my father thing. He used to talk to me all the time. One of the last, he told before his illness took away His. His personality and his mind. Is he. Someone read him. And again, as Alan knew, my father, the idea that he wasn't able to read anymore was the true pain of his illness. He would have much rather surrendered his body than his mind any day. And someone's reading him a piece about me and how I was doing something in which was interesting because of my white privilege. And he stopped them. And he said, white privilege? Talking about Christopher, he goes, hot damn, we've made it. We're white. Because he was not considered a white guy. He was considered an ethnic, as you were as well, and as we have relearned again today. And one of the reasons I'm happy my father isn't around is he would have hated seeing what's happening with Jews today. Jews have learned. You thought you assimilated and graduated to whiteness with the rest of the ethnics. You haven't.
- [32:52]
C
Well, let me tell you about my first case. First case I ever had. A young man called John Lucido calls me on the phone and says, I've been working for nine years at Cravat, Swain and Moore white shoe firm. And they just decided they won't make me a partner because they don't believe that a person who is an Italian Catholic should be a partner at Cravat, Swain and more. I said, I'll take your case. He said, I don't have any money. I said, I'll take your case pro bono. And I took his case, and I won the first decision ever, that promotion from associate to partnership. But here's the interesting story. Morris Abram, the head of the American Jewish Congress, or the Anti Defamation League, one of the big macha Jewish organizations, called me kind of with a whisper and said, alan, I don't want you to take this case. I said, why? He said, you know, they're starting to really make Jews partners now. Don't rock the boat. And I, after a couple of appropriately chosen Chris for his, told him what I thought. I said, you know, for me, if there's discrimination against anybody, it's discrimination against everybody. And of course, I was then teaching at Harvard, and Harvard's last discrimination was against Italian Americans and Irish Americans, because in Boston, there were many Irish and Italian Americans at the time I got to Harvard, there wasn't much discrimination against Jews, but I fought as hard for Italian rights as I ever would have for Jewish rights. And I wish more people would see the world that way and see that, you know, you need to have meritocracy and equality. And we all are hurt when there are advantages or disadvantages given to people because of the color of their skin or the last name. I remember when I used to argue cases in the 2nd Circuit, they would say, oh, if your last name ends in a vowel and it isn't Shapiro, you're not going to win. You know, there was so much bigotry that was so pervasive even back in the day. Today it's much more overt. That was polite bigotry back in the day. Today it's not particularly polite. People are shoved and people are denied admission to classrooms and stuff like that. We're living in dangerous times. We're living in a pincer movement where both the extreme right and the extreme left pose dangers to the centrality of America. America is a centrist country, and if we're going to thrive, we have to stay that way.
- [35:12]
B
Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from AG1. I don't know what else I need to say. It's one and done. You take a scoop, you put it in warm water once a day. You get everything you need to give yourself the right start in terms of your nutritional foundation. The vitamins, the minerals, the adaptogens, all of the different nutraceuticals and ingredients that you're taking separately mixed together made to be saturated and digestible. Okay. Through science and tweaking of the formula that is proprietary to AG1. Why would I keep spending more and taking all of these different pills when I don't know the right combinations? I gotta swallow all the things you get, all the digestive stuff when I could just do one and done. That's why I take AG1. All right? It's really as simple as that. If you want to put yourself in the position to succeed. Head to drink. Ag1.com CCP for the Chris Cuomo Project. Get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 when you first subscribe. That's drinkag1.com CCP tell them I sent you.
- [36:27]
C
Hi, I'm Jim. I'm not an actor, just a guy living with prostate cancer. My wife and I face each day head on. We asked my doctor about XTANDI enzalutamide.
- [36:37]
D
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- [37:24]
C
Visit xtandi.com to watch my story.
- [37:26]
B
Boy, I'll tell you Is America a centrist country?
- [37:30]
C
I think that New York is not a centrist city.
- [37:34]
B
No, not right now.
- [37:35]
C
Brother's Law is such a disaster for the city of New York. Not only that, but for the city of Minneapolis, for the city of San Francisco, for the city, you name it, of Chicago. Because I think it sends a trend. The message of Mamdani's victory is that being a bigot is no longer a disqualifying factor in a city of New York. Being an anti Semite in a city which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel is no longer a disqualification because of idiot Jews, because of idiot Reform rabbis. Self hating people who provided the margin of victory. Jews provided the margin of victory to this bigot and anti Semite. What a country.
- [38:17]
B
Well, look, if you want to spread blame, there's plenty to go around. Although I will say this in true Mario fashion. One, the people get what they want. Two, it was a free and fair election and Andrew knows that. Everyone around the campaign knows that. Yeah, and sometimes this is how it has to go for people to understand what they voted for and what it means. I saw the same thing with maga. Now I call reaction formation to MAGA mega because it's bigger in most ways than MAGA was. Now the MAGA people get pissed off and the MEGA people get pissed off at me and saying, how can you say we're like maga? I said, I didn't say you're like maga. I said your reaction formation to it. A mirror image. When you look in the mirror, it's you, but your right hand is now your left and your left hand is now your right. So there's an opposite effect. It's a reflection and you are reacting to all of what it is. And now I believe that as we saw with the GOP being taken over by maga, the Democrats are gonna be consumed by the Democratic socialists of America. That the DSA is going to take over that party. Is that good or bad? I don't know. It just is.
- [39:34]
C
I know, I know. Have you ever read the DSA's?
- [39:38]
B
Yes.
- [39:38]
C
I mean, do you know that it says you cannot be a member of the DSA unless you don't believe Israel has the right to exist?
- [39:45]
B
Yes.
- [39:45]
C
I mean that's just. That's. That's Nazi Germany. That's Stalinist Russia.
- [39:50]
B
Well, that's because the socialists have now combined with a different degree of fundamentalists on the left. It's a coalition.
- [39:58]
C
Right.
- [39:59]
B
There's nothing about socialism that has anything to do with Zionism. But in fact, Israel, as you well know, professor, is a lot more socialistic than our society is. So it should be aspirational in that regard to the dsa. But they have combined as the MAGA people, the conservatives combined with the white fright, Christian nationalist people. This is the same thing.
- [40:21]
C
No, I agree with you. I agree with you. And that's prob. People. Forget the other thing about not again. Having watched Nuremberg last night in 1932, Hitler gets 32% of the vote but gets made to be Chancellor. The worst thing is that he was a good chancellor for two years. For two years he restored the economy, he reduced unemployment. Mussolini helped the trains run on time. Time. All of those things. And then people who voted for him despite his anti Semitism bought into his bigotry and his anti Semitism. I'm worried about that. I'm worried. I'm much more worried if Mamdani becomes a decent mayor for the first couple of years. And he's a smart guy. So if his smarts overwhelm his passions because deep down, deep in his heart he's a vicious anti Zionist and anti Israel. And I. I myself don't believe you can really be so deep and anti Zionist without having anti Semitic inclinations too. But he's hidden that. But that will come out if he's a successful mayor the way Hitler has came out much more forcibly when he was a successful chancellor. Now, I don't want to compare Mondavi to Hitler. There's no comparison whatsoever. I'm comparing situations in Germany in 1932 with the situation in New York in 2025.
- [41:44]
B
Yes, but look again, I get why you don't wanna make the comparison. But in terms of the concern, you're dealing with a guy who has never believed anything deeply he said what got him traction and extreme, outrageous things. He wasn't gonna make it as a big Zionist. He had to make it. That's his tradition, that's his background, that's the affinity, that's his parents. So there is a chance that he said a lot of obnoxious, bigoted, anti Semitic things because that's how he got noticed. And that now that he has accountability, not unlike what we saw with a lot of the Trump administration folk, that they said things on podcasts before that they would never say once they wanted to get confirmed or had power. Because you can't be outrageous just for clicks anymore. Now you have to be accountable. There may be a chance that this guy falls into that category.
- [42:35]
C
Hope you're right. I think about Tucker Carlson too. You know, I knew him. I was on his show. You probably knew him as well. He seemed like a reasonable person, and now he's found himself a niche. What I is, you know, here was a guy who wasn't going anywhere, right? And he looks at guys like Fuentes and he says to himself, gee, you know, these guys were going nowhere. Peter Beinhardt on the other, the same thing. He finds a niche and he gets a lot of people supporting him. Look, Fuentes has so many clicks, so many people who watch him. All you need is, you know, 2% of the population to support you, and you're a hero on the Internet. And in order to get that 2%, you have to be an extremist. That's what worries me so much.
- [43:19]
B
Right? And you have to play against type. Fuentes is playing to the home crowd. He's the old school demagogue, okay? Even though he's a kid, you know, he's easy, he's simple. Beinart represents something new, which is, hey, you can't come at me. I'm Jewish, and I am saying these things because I'm an honest broker. There is a big commodity that's a currency now.
- [43:42]
C
Yeah, Trotsky said the same thing can't come to me. I'm Jewish, I'm not an anti Semite, but I'm a communist. And I. You know, look, he started out by supporting Stalin and ended up getting his head crushed in because he supported Stalin. So. Right. You know, there's a lot of internecine fighting that's going on on both extremes. Extremes tend to encourage fights within, and we're going to see some, you know, disruptions in both sides. But look, the key is, and I want to get back to what I said in the beginning, democracy only lives if it lives in the hearts and souls of individuals. And that's why shows like yours and podcasts like yours are so Important because they present an alternative to the extremism on both sides, and they present thoughtful discussion. You and I don't agree about everything, by the way. Interestingly enough, the more we talk about a subject, the more we tend to agree. We might start out in different ways, but you're very persuasive. I changed my mind when I listened to you, and I would hope that some people maybe change their mind when they listen to me. I was recently invited to speak at Harvard for the first time since I retired 12 years ago. First time invited by an Egyptian Muslim to debate him about the Palestinian issue. And the best thing that happened is people came over to me afterward and said, I was so surprised by what I heard you say, you actually made me change my mind. And that, to me, is the key to dialogue and discussion. But, you know, we're not having debates anymore. Maybe I exaggerate what I say. At Harvard, we couldn't have the Lincoln Douglas debates. Half of the student faculty would say, we don't want to hear Lincoln. We know what we want. Half of the students faculty would say, we don't want to hear Douglass. We have to have more debates. We have to have more situations like the kind you present on your show and your podcast. So thank you so much for doing such a good thing for America.
- [45:29]
B
Oh, that is. That is a very generous assessment, Professor. Thank you. And thank you for being part of. Of what makes it worthwhile. I think the problem you'd have with the Lincoln Douglas debates if they were talking anything other than being white privileged guys is that the campus wouldn't allow them say, you gotta have some diversity in that. If they're gonna be talking about anything. We don't want two white guys. I mean, you know, that's the only kind of type you're allowed to be prejudiced against is the majority. The majority, traditionally in our culture, doesn't get the protection of type. So you can. This is a great joke. I can't believe. I don't know if it was Chris Rock or what comedian it was. A guy stands up and says. A black guy stands up and says, black power. And people go, yay, good for you. Good for you. White guy stands up and says, white power. Everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And now you say, well, why? Well, because white power has only been bad for other groups. Is that always true? Well, it's mostly true in our experience, but it shows what the lens of your perspective of is on it. To go back to one of your first points, my father said, if Something happened like. So when my sister Maria, she was mugged twice by the same guy where we were in Queens. And Andrew, the second time, Andrew ran after the guy with a baseball bat. Everybody he. We didn't see the guy, but he ran after where they had been. My father said, you know, if I could get my hands on that guy, I would kill him. And he said, but that is me at my weakest and my worst. And that cannot be the instruction for our society because we are not trying to codify us at our worst. It's supposed to be aspirational. The standard should be better. And I think that's something that has been lost, not just in terms of crime and punishment. We don't want better. We don't want a standard. I'm voting for Alan Dershowitz because he's smarter than I am, he's better at this stuff. And I want to be led by somebody who's better than me. Not anymore. Trump changed that. And our politics has become about erasing privilege, equalizing. And within that, you have to be careful that you also don't lose excellence, that you know you have the best of people. Right now, we just have the rest of people.
- [47:51]
C
Yeah. No. Meritocracy has really fallen off the chart of desirable things. One of the reasons for anti Semitism is the fight against meritocracy, because both Jews and Israel represented the success of meritocracy. Jews have been very successful in America. You know, Nobel prizes, professors, we know the whole story. And it's not because we're any smarter. You know, there are cultural, all kinds of reasons. But the truth is Jews have been successful. Israel has been very successful. No natural resources, enemies all around, startup nation, high tech. And if you are anti meritocratic, inevitably you have to be anti Israeli and anti Jewish. And so I think meritocracy is crucially important. I mean, I think of myself as a libertarian, meritocratic person who cares deeply about fairness, fairness. And I don't want to give anybody an advantage disadvantage, but also realize that you can't have a fair race if you start out with a different starting line. And I want to give advantages to people who have overcome disadvantages, but I don't want to do it just on the basis of skin color or gender or anything of that kind. I want to have a kind of holistic approach to it. And so I'm not against affirmative action. I'm just against affirmative action that gives advantages to the wealthy black daughter of hedge fund and a federal judge. That's not what I call affirmative action.
- [49:27]
B
It's not about kind, it's about circumstance. And that's what we were trying to balance out. Because it'll never be fair if it doesn't ever begin as fair. But that has always been fraught. It's just when you stop having the real conversation and being distracted by others. What's different about this time around, October 7th and forward, is the Israel issue, the Jewish issue, the anti Semitic issue, the Zionist issue, have all become footballs in our binary political battle to the bottom. And that has never happened before. There's always been anti Semitism and there's always been problems with Zionism, and a lot of it is fueled by ignorance. But this is the first time that the issue has become a football between right and left. And it is not a surprise to me that the fringes on both sides arrived at the same solution. You now have Tucker Carlson, the difference between who he was and who he is. No accountability. He can say whatever he wants. Nobody can say to him, hey, hey, we don't talk that kind of shit here. You're hurting the brand. The brand is the shit. So that's the difference in him. But he's on the right. And he and Candace Owens are every bit as bad as anything you're worried about coming from, you know, any of the subtle Islamists.
- [50:51]
C
Hey, let me disagree with you. Why? They're not as bad. They're not in universities. They're not influencing our young people the way the hard, hard, hard left is. If you go to a place like Harvard, you will see tremendous support from Mamdani. You will see virtually no support for Fuentos. You'll see a little bit, a few fringe people. But it's the universities that predict our future. And so I think that the extremism on the hard left is actually more dangerous than the hard right. Even though the hard right is more violent, that is more violent acts. For example, the Tree of Life Synagogue. Some of those things come more from the right than the left, though the left has its violence too. The two kids that were killed outside of the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. came from the left. But America thrives at center. You say, are we a centerist country? I don't know, but we aspire to that. Because centerism doesn't mean do nothing. It means dialogue. It means, you know, I'm a liberal centrist. A lot of friends of mine are conservative centrist. Bill Buckley was a centrist conservative. I love Bill Buckley. We had great arguments today. I don't think Bill Buckley would Make it on television. He's not controversial enough. And when he took on Pat Buchanan, and that was a really great moment in American history, when the conservative took on the extremists and put him in his place. I wish more liberals would do the same thing. I wish we could have, you know, the Chuck Schumers of the world stand up to the people on the hard left. But they're cowards.
- [52:29]
B
Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from one skin. Now look, if you're gonna put something on your face, and this is the time of the year, especially in the northeast east, where man, woman, no matter how you identify, you're going to need some help with your skin, okay? But you have to start paying more attention to what you're putting on your skin. You can't put some chemical cocktail on there and think better things are going to happen. This is why one skin is different and why I'm working with them. The patented OS01 peptide. Peptides are all the rage right now, right? This is the first ingredient proven to target get senescent cells. The cells die, you get different kinds of feelings and wear marks in your face. Results have now been validated in five different clinical studies that Oneskin helps you deal with the senescent cells. Known for the cult skin care favorites like the OS 01 body, face and eye. One skin stands out for their science first approach. That's how they attack skin. Aging and delivering hydration. The barrier support all longevity benefits that you want in a product like oneskin. Limited time, 15% off. Using the code Cuomo at Oneskin Co. Cuomo. Oneskin Coomo. They're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please show me the love so I can show them. They should advertise here. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from True true classic. Gotta tell you something. True classic game changer for the mole man. Here's why they have made clothes that makes you look better even when you have dad bod. Okay? The jeans. I don't wear jeans anymore. I had stopped wearing jeans. Was only wearing like athleisure wear like golf elf pants. Why? I need the stretchiness. I need the movement around the waist, around my big ass, my big quads, right? Thick thighs save lives. Yeah, but they don't do great with jeans, okay? And my classic problem was that my waist is one size and it's still not bad. Like I can wear like 35 jeans, but it wouldn't fit on my ass, wouldn't fit on my legs. And then I was wearing like mom jeans. And you know, they were never comfortable so I just stopped wearing them. Then True Classic came and said tried this out. The shirts were a no brainer. They have that, you know, nice stretch fabric. They wash well, they wear well. Great, easy, perfect jeans. Much tougher. For me, True Classic has me back in jeans. I'm actually wearing them right now. They're very comfortable, they wash well, they look good, they hold up well. They look like a quality deeper denim gene. And look, I know I have to be right because over 25 million shirts have been sold, 5 million customers. That means each of us wants a lot of their stuff with it, which is great. You can find True Classic at Amazon, Target, Costco, Sam's Club, or make it easy. Stay online. Go to trueclassic.com Cuomo grab the perfect gift for everyone on your list and say, hey, Cuomo sent me me.
- [55:46]
E
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- [56:31]
B
I think Schumer is done because of this shutdown and I also think that that's okay for a couple of reasons. One, that's how it goes. Two, right. Cuz it's a process and it's a competition. And your party has rules. And if you're not with your party and where it wants to be, you got a problem. Andrew suffered the same thing. My father suffered the same thing. That's politics. But he did not do what he needed to do on the Israel issue either. And being a Jewish politician has an extra responsibility to it, in my opinion.
- [57:04]
C
Well, especially, especially when you pronounce yourself Shomer Israel. The Guardian when you say you're the highest elected Jew ever office, you know, if you're just a Jew. The senator from Georgia, US what's his Name? Oh, yeah, he's a Jew. Nobody knows he's a Jew. He has no special responsibility as a Jew. But Schumer, who runs on his Judaism, who. Who brags about his Judaism, that's a different responsibility. And when you abdicate responsibility after saying all those things, you're not Ossof or whatever his name is, Right? And you're not Shomer. Shomer means the guardian. Right.
- [57:46]
B
And look, I'm also okay with it because to me, there is a mortal sin in politics, which is getting outplayed. And he got. If you get outplayed and you deserve the consequence that comes with it. He got talked into this shutdown by his left flank. You got to be strong. You got to be strong. Now, any reasonable, strategic politician thinks is what I'm about to do likely to achieve what I want, if all I want is the perception of resistance, then sure. But if it's changed, he had to know the shutdown was never going to be that, because it's never been that, ever. But he did it anyway to please the left flank. The same reason he got quiet on Israel, to please the left flank. And then they played him. And when the shutdown ended, as it was always going to end, they said, you quit. You quit. You caved, you caved. And now he is going to be unseated by that left. He got outplayed. You deserve the consequence.
- [58:50]
C
I agree with you. The one area where I think he miscalculated, too, is I do not think that the left can win a statewide New York election. I don't think AOC can be elected. I don't think that Mamdani can be elected to a statewide official office, certainly not a national office. New York City is. Is different. But I don't see him carrying buffalo and Rochester and. And Binghamton.
- [59:15]
B
I think that Bernie carried the cross to mix metaphors for a guy who's really an atheist, for socialism. And I think it is no longer what I've always believed it to be, which is a just death sentence. That the word socialist is a death sentence. Not in America anymore. Not with younger people, not with the angry class, a lot of whom who are in maga. They don't care what you call it. They want to break the system. They don't care what you call your solution. I want this system of crony capitalism, of picking winners and losers to change. And I don't care what you call it.
- [59:54]
C
I want to change the word capitalism, too. I think it's a nasty word. Now it's loser word. I Want to talk about free market economy. I want to talk about words that really don't. Capitalism makes it sound. Even if you think about the word, it's capital, it's wealthy. I think the idea of an open market economy, someplace where freedom prevails. You know, Goldberg told me something very interesting. I was his law clerk, and he was, as you may remember, the greatest labor lawyer in American history. And he said the one battle he lost was when they wanted to have whether you could have mandatory unionization. Mandatory unionization. And he said as soon as the. The capitalists, as soon as they came up with the concept the right to work, right to work laws, it was lost. It was lost. It was a question of labeling when they talked about mandatory unions. But right to work, that did it. Right to life did it, too, was very, very helpful. And so I think we have to change the word from capitalism to free market economy. I think people love freedom.
- [61:02]
B
Yes. And they like the word right. They like the idea of having a right and not having it taken away. Do you believe that with the Trump administration, we are seeing an authoritarian administration and that they are exceeding the power, whether it's with tariffs, with bringing in the National Guard, with what they're doing with ice. Do you think that the president is exceeding the powers that was given to him by the Constitution and Congress?
- [61:29]
C
No, I think that the framers of the Constitution wanted a very, very strong president. And the first two presidents were not particularly strong. Washington didn't have to be because he was the king. Everybody loved him. Adams was essentially a failed president. One term failed. President Jefferson came into office barely having won. You know, he went on, I don't remember the 76 ballot or something like that, barely won, and became the first really authoritarian president. You know, he does great things. He buys Louisiana, he indicts his arch enemy and uses the hates judges, won't even endorse the midnight judges. That. So we've had authoritarianism. Then we have Jackson. An extraordinarily authoritarian president tells the Supreme Court, you render the decision, now enforce it. Lincoln, for good reasons, fighting a civil war, very authoritarian, suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. And then Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt, the most authoritarian president in history and the one who accomplished the most, because, remember another thing, the framers of the Constitution were not looking for efficiency. If they wanted efficiency, you have a parliamentary, monocameral system, that's easy. They wanted a confusing, difficult, balanced system where it's hard to get things done, but it's hard to create tyranny. And Roosevelt wanted to abolish that he created the Alphabet agencies, all under the jurisdiction of the Executive. He really wanted to weaken the Supreme Court considerably. He did so many things that are. And he accomplished so much. Now with Trump, it's more personal with Roosevelt, who was more institutional, and we can tolerate institutional more than if we think he's doing it for personal aggrandizement, which is why I think so many people see Trump differently than they see former very strong presidents.
- [63:26]
B
Through the law, though, you see them the same way. And do you believe the president is doing anything that the courts should be shutting down?
- [63:34]
C
Yes, and they will. And that's what we have is our system of checks and balances. There are things we may see. The Supreme Court strike down his international tariffs, in part because his lawyers argued the wrong point, didn't do the best argument they could have. The best argument they could have made was that tariffs are a weapon of foreign policy and military policy. If you could stop a war by imposing high tariffs, that's something the commander in chief has the right to do. If you can create a situation where we win diplomatic victories over our enemies by a tariff, that's something a president should do. So a tariff is more than just a fundraising mechanism. And I think his lawyers didn't sufficiently argue that. They argued the emergency statute, and it fell on relatively deaf ears, including among some of the centrist conservative judges. So I don't think that necessarily he had the best representation.
- [64:36]
B
Professor Dershowitz, you are brain food, as always, and I appreciate you. Thank you for being a gift to the audience and to me.
- [64:44]
C
I am brain food. You are a brain waiter because you bring out the portions. You are the ones who stimulate me to say the things I say. I think we're a good combination.
- [64:56]
B
I love it. I'm always here for it. I'm always a call away. Professor Dershowitz, thank you very, very much.
- [65:01]
C
My pleasure. Thank you.
- [65:07]
B
Now you know why I relish opportunities to talk to the good professor. Doesn't matter how you feel about his politics, and in truth, it's hard to know what they are. But his ideas about our society and who we are and what we are and how that works and how it's tested and how it is sustained or not, I think are really, really interesting. What do you think? But then again, again, I am not looking for confirmation bias because I am a free agent. I don't believe in fealty to a side. I am a critical thinker. That's why I'm selling these, so that you understand that this is what you should be. You should do you not what someone else is telling you to do. So click buy this. The holidays are coming. Great gifts. I am different. I got one coming. The free agent critical thinker. I like it because it's subtle, all right, Unlike my massive pectorals. And it sends the right message about you. You're a free agent. You're not owned by anybody else's ideas, you're owned by your own. Okay, independent has kind of gotten milk toasty, but you're a free agent. I believe independent voters are the salvation for our democracy. I love that they're the fastest growing part of the electorate, but not fast enough. They don't have enough, enough influence yet and they're not getting catered to enough. But the movement must go on because that's all we're about now right now is movements moving us away. We got to find a way to get to a better place together. So thank you for seeing me here. Thank you for checking me out at News Nation. 8p and 11p every weekday night. The challenges are real, but show is our approach. If you want to get through something, you got to get after it. Sam.