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Why Trump's Iran Strikes Are Unconstitutional — with David French
01:03:24
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- [00:02]
David French
What does it take to be prepared for disaster? You have to be confident. You have to be calm. Will you be perfect?
- [00:10]
Mitch Purse
No.
- [00:10]
David French
But the idea is that you'll have your bearings and this won't be something new to you. This week on Explain it to Me,
- [00:18]
Podcast Promo Voice
how to stay ready so you don't
- [00:19]
David French
have to get ready. New episode Sundays.
- [00:22]
Podcast Promo Voice
Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:31]
Peter Kafka
For years, if you ran a media company, you obsessed about Google because Google could send a fire hose of traffic your way. But now things are changing fast.
- [00:41]
Sponsor Voice
So last year I told all of our teams, you need to plan your businesses around there being no search. And if you don't have a plan for that, you may not have a business. I think it was very effective.
- [00:50]
Peter Kafka
That's Roger lynch, the CEO of Conde Nast, the home of fabled magazines like the New Yorker and Vogue. And if you want to hear how lynch is thinking about Google and AI companies and who's going to replace his most famous editors, good news. You can hear all of that on channels with Peter Kafka. That's out now, everywhere.
- [01:07]
Francis Lam
Hey, it's Francis Lamb, host of the Splendid Table podcast. Every week on our show we celebrate the intersection of food and life. And this month we're releasing a new series called Culinary Masters. It highlights some of the most iconic people in the food world. And we're revisiting conversations with people who have fundamentally changed how many of us cook and think about food. People like Jacques Pepin, Claudia Rodin and Tony Bourdain, to name a few. You can listen to this special series now. Just search for the Splendid Table in your podcast app.
- [01:39]
Podcast Host
Episode397.3 9 is the country code for Italy. In 1997, Netflix was founded. I recently watched the documentary on Netflix on Subliminal Persuasion. It is terrible. I finally turned it off after 11 seasons. Get it? I can do better than that. So there's also a documentary on a woman's G spot, but I swear I couldn't find it.
- [02:05]
David French
Go, go, go.
- [02:14]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the 397th episode of the Prop G Pod. 397. I don't remember what I had for breakfast. I can't remember. We've done 397 of these things. They're all starting to mix together. I don't get it. Anyways, I remember the ZipRecruiter ads. I remember those. Yeah. Other than that, I don't remember much. Anyways, what's happening? In today's episode, we speak with David French, an American political commentator and columnist for the New York Times David touches on topics we talk a lot about here on law, culture, religion and armed conflict.
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Sponsor Voice
I'm a big fan. I like the way he.
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Podcast Host
Thanks. You've probably read his work. Just a Clear Blue Flame thinker. Anyways, with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with David French. Also, before we get into this episode, a quick heads up. This conversation includes some graphic descriptions of violence and sexual violence. Where are you, David?
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David French
I am in Nashville, Tennessee right now.
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Podcast Host
Oh, my gosh.
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David French
Is that home or that's been home. That area's been home for a very long time. But we're also up in Chicago helping my oldest daughter with her kids while she goes to law school. Grandbabies have a powerful gravitational pull, let's put it that way.
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Podcast Host
Oh, that's nice. So let's bust right into it. You're one of the few people in American media who has actually been to a war, to war, I should say, and knows the law of armed conflict from the inside. You deployed to Iraq as a JAG officer and you've spent your career litigating constitutional questions and you've written seriously about just war doctrine. So let's start with the basics. Are there rules in war? Do they actually matter? And what happens when they're not followed?
- [03:58]
David French
Yeah, there are rules of war that have to be. Let's put it this way. To say there are rules of war that have to be followed is a bit of an oversimplification because it requires a choice. It requires international bodies. It requires the United States or, say, Israel or combatants to comply with the laws of war. So in the United States, we have statutory rules, laws passed by Congress that govern how our armed forces act in the field. And so we absolutely have binding laws of war. Other countries do not. But there are international systems that sometimes, though unfortunately not always, bring them to justice. So there is such a thing as the law of armed conflict. Gosh, we've got more than a thousand page Department of Defense Law of Armed Conflict manual. We have binding rules. Soldiers go to jail when they violate the laws of armed conflict. So they do exist. They are very real. But they can't always be enforced everywhere. Against all combatants. Yeah.
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Podcast Host
It always struck me that rules of engagement, providing quarter, that it's not only the right thing to do, but it's the smart thing to do because your enemy is more likely to surrender if they believe they'll be treated fairly. And the populace is more. I think it's to your advantage to be seen as the good guys, no?
- [05:23]
David French
Oh, absolutely. You know, a lot of people. When I say the things like the laws of war or law of armed conflict, you'll sometimes see people kind of roll their eyes and say, well, the law of war is to win where the law of war is to be lethal. But it really overlooks why we have them. I mean, this is the product of really more than a thousand years, honestly, if you're, if you're sort of walking through human development of, and how human beings have approached war. And they're also the product not just of, of hundreds and hundreds of years of hard earned, hard learned experience, they're also products really truly in the last 100 years of the terrible experience of two world wars. And so a lot of the laws of war are both designed over the course of centuries to make war humane, both for the combatants and for non combatants. But also they've been developed particularly since World War II to try to block the emergence of another world war. So they really both limit human behavior once a war has started, but they're also supposed to strongly limit when wars can start. And so it's on the front end and on the back end that the law should apply.
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Podcast Host
So I don't know how to segue into this, so I'll just start with Iran. Question mark. Talk about our entry into the war. Talk about where. What is on your mind in terms of where we are now?
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David French
Yeah, I mean, this is a really good example. The Iran war is a really good example of why the law matters so much. So under traditional just war doctrine, you're not supposed to be able to go to war. You should not go to war under the old school just war doctrine, unless you're going to war under the command of the lawful sovereign for a just reason and to pursue just ends. And so usually what this means is self defense. Self defense or collective self defense are the main reasons why one goes to war. But what's very key in that is that first element, the lawful order of the order of a lawful sovereign. So has that happened here in the United States? And the answer is no, because American law requires for the declaration of war that that's a role reserved to Congress. So we made that decision very early in the Republic as part of the very deliberate decision to break up the power of a king, because the king used to have the power to declare war and also to wage war. And what we did is we split those two powers, we put part of that in the hands of Congress to declare war, and then we put the power to wage war. And the President, that's the Commander in chief power. And so now that doesn't mean that a President can't respond immediately when there is an attack on our forces or there's an emerging immediate situation that requires military force. But even in those circumstances, the President is supposed to go to Congress immediately to get ratification and support of his actions. And so this isn't just, it's really important for people to realize this is not just some sort of like constitutional technicality. It is actually very important to the ability of the United States to wage war and to wage war effectively. Because if there's one thing that we know from history, it's that democracies that have achieved public support for a war are among the most powerful entities we've seen in the world. Democracies that do not receive public support for a war can be very fragile and brittle in their pursuit of the war. And so when you actually take the time to follow the constitutional process, as I said, that's not just dotting I's and crossing T's, it's part of the fundamental role of getting the people of the country to understand why they're supporting it, why we're going to war. They're choosing to support it. And that creates an enormous staying power in the conflict. Because every conflict, or almost every conflict, has periods and times of adversity. And if you've actually rallied the people, you can endure that. But as we've seen in this war, we had no constitutional process, no public support for it. And so we really have very little patience for it at all. So even if you thought it was wise to attack Iran, for example, the fact that we didn't do the constitutional process undermines the entire war. And if you don't believe it was wise to attack Iran, undermining the constitutional process has cut you completely out of the debate. It means your voice doesn't really matter to the debate. It didn't matter to the decision to go into war. And that's antithetical to the purposes of our democracy.
- [10:18]
Podcast Host
I mean, hasn't this train left the station about 16 or 60 odd years ago with the Vietnam conflict? I mean, granted, Bush did go to the un. Isn't this a larger structural problem where we've ceded more and more power from Congress to the Executive branch?
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David French
Yes and no. So I'll do the yes part first. It's absolutely true that there have been multiple armed conflicts fought since World War II without congressional approval. Most notably, the Korean War was fought under a UN resolution. For example, the Libyan bombing campaign that began in 2011 that was under a UN resolution. Now if you want to sort of break it down legally, the argument that those presidents that both Truman and Obama would make around the Korean War and the Libyan intervention was that, well, we've ratified the UN treaty. So we did have Senate ratification of the UN Treaty. And under the UN Treaty, the Security Council members are empowered to use armed forces when the Security Council says so. So there's at least some argument there that that's still connected to our process. However, at the same time, when people say, oh, we never go to Congress anymore, that's just wrong. So in the Vietnam War we had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which I think was stretched beyond its, its purpose, but it still existed. Before desert storm, George H.W. bush not only got a UN resolution, he got congressional authorization after 9 11. Bush could have struck the Taliban without Congress after that attack on the U.S. but he went ahead and got congressional authorization before the Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion of Iraq. He had Department of Justice lawyers telling him he did not have to get congressional resolution or congressional authorization. But he went and he got congressional authorization and our UN resolution. And so we have had in our largest armed conflicts really since Korea, have all had some form of congressional authorization or UN Security Council authorization. And in this circumstance it's a direct attack on a nation state Iran without congressional authorization, without a UN Security Council resolution, and without it being an immediate self defense. In other words, there was no indication that we were under imminent attack by Iran. But even if there was, and we responded to what we thought was an imminent attack, we're supposed to go to get congressional approval for a longer conflict. Anyway, I want to back up, tell
- [12:50]
Podcast Host
us a little bit about your service. Why did you decide to serve? What did you do in know dad? What did you do in the war, so to speak?
- [12:57]
David French
Yeah, that's a great question. I joined later in life. I got an age waiver and I joined in at age 36 and went to officer basic at age 37. And it's a really simple reason is that I had supported the Iraq war in 03. And then I just felt convicted in my conscience that I was supporting a war while I was still healthy enough and young enough to serve in it. And I was allowing other people to go serve in the war that I had. Now. I was not a congressman, I wasn't a pundit back then, I was a constitutional lawyer. But still, whatever little tiny public voice I had back in 2003, I was saying, I think we should do this. And then my conscience just Wouldn't let me stay at home, to be honest. So I walked into a recruiting office after they raised the minimum age or the maximum age to 35. And I thought, hey, I'm 36. I can. I bet I can get an age waiver. And he would have laughed at me. I walk into a recruiting office in downtown Philly, and I'm just as bald as I am now, covered up by. Covered up by my hat. We have a very. I think we go to the same barber, and. And I walk in and I say, hey, I'm a little bit too old. I need an age waiver. And I want to join the JAG Corps as a lawyer. So I wanted to be an army lawyer. And they had no idea what to do with me, so they put me. They said, go to Fort Dix in New Jersey, get a physical, which I passed by the skin of my teeth. And then I had to just kind of Google how to get an age waiver and how to do this. And I followed the steps. And then about six months later, I was in Fort Lee in Virginia. In the summer of 2006, 2007, I finished my legal training. And then at the very end of 2007, in November, I deployed to Iraq for almost a year with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. I was with a 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. We were detached from the main regiment and kind of put on our own in eastern Diala province near the Iranian border, and were given a really, really challenging assignment. We were plopped in the middle of one of the last and largest Al Qaeda strongholds in the country. And this is at the height of the surge at the end of 07 and beginning of 08, and basically had to fight our way out. And so we had our first enemy contact as a unit in late November of 07, and then we had either daily or near daily enemy contact, for, gosh, I would say, until August is when it really began to ease off. And it was a tough, hard deployment. My. My role as a. As the JAG officer was primary. Two, I had two primary jobs. Primary job number one was helping make these targeting decisions. Shoot, don't shoot. Bomb, don't bomb. Those kinds of decisions. And then primary role number two was I was overseeing detainee operations. So I was responsible for the treatment of detainees. I was responsible for their. Their conditions in which they were held. I just. As soon as we. As soon as we caught a detainee, they were my responsibility at that point. And then the final thing that was sort of a thankfully blessedly was a very small part of my life was military justice. In other words, dealing with soldiers who may have violated the law of war that we just talked about, or soldiers that violated the law in other ways, such as, you know, we were in an environment where it was absolutely prohibited for any of us to drink, for example. And every now and then a wife or a girlfriend would send their soldier boyfriend or husband, let's say, vodka in a, in a mouthwash bottle or something like that. Or sometimes we would have things like fights between soldiers, but it was super rare. Our guys were very, very, very disciplined. So my 90% of my job was the, was the rules of engagement. Do we bomb? Do we not bomb? And handling detainees. And we had a lot of detainees because we were in the thick. Our unit was in the thick of the fight for month after month after month. And in fact, the unit at the end of the deployment received something called the valorous Unit award, which is a, a very high award given to combat arms units that have really been fighting who, who had these very tough deployments and very successful. We, we actually did clean out Al Qaeda from our area of operations. And just to give you one statistic on how successful we were when we first arrived In November of 07 to that area, there was about a 25% chance that if you left, if you left the gate of our base, a one in four chance you would get attacked by the enemy in some way. A bomb, a mortar attack, rocket attack, sniper fire, ambush, whatever. So anytime you went out, you knew, just have a take like a four sided dice and roll it. And if it came up one, you were going to get hit. And then by the time we left, we had been so successful in dealing with Al Qaeda. It was about a 1% chance that when you rolled out of the gate that you would face enemy contact. So that is a, that was a remarkable thing. And we saw markets come back to life, we saw people move back into their homes. We really saw an entire part of Iraq just sort of come back to life where we were being on the ground.
- [18:31]
Podcast Host
What was reality versus your perception of the men and women you served with? The war itself, actual combat. What did you think? What surprised you most? To. I won't call it the upside or the downside, but what surprised you most versus what you thought you would encounter in this, in service?
- [18:51]
David French
That's a, a great question. So when I came back, I would say, you know, I was always asked, what is it that you learned? And, and I would say, I'll say three things. Number one, deployments are much more difficult than I ever imagined. That the stress, the strain, the risk, the pain of it all is, you know, we had a little over 700 guys in our squadron. And by the end of the end of the deployment, you know, I'd have to check with our S1 who kept. Who kept track of all of these statistics. But I believe we were. Out of the 700 plus of us, we had about 100 total who were killed or injured out of that 700. So we had a high rate of casualties for that phase of the war.
- [19:43]
Podcast Host
So how many out of the 700?
- [19:45]
David French
About a hundred were killed or injured. And it was a high rate of casualties, especially, you know, as a high rate of casualties for the unit. And, you know, I lost. I lost guys I loved. I mean, friends, people I was serving with, people, you know, felt close to me as brothers. And it was. It was. It's hard to put into words how hard it all was. That was number one. Number two was that the enemy was far more. I knew going into it that this enemy was. Had no lines that it wouldn't cross. That was all theoretical to me. But then when I saw when what we were fighting was not exactly Al Qaeda in Iraq, they were already transitioning over to isis. And in fact, the. The branch that was very active in our. In our area was called the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq. So this is sort of like a proto version of isis. And so everything that you saw, I remember when ISIS just came roaring out of Nowhere in, like 2014, 2015, and all of these unbelievable atrocities were being broadcast around the world. Well, we saw all that stuff. It was all in our area of operations. It was brutal. I never was more motivated. I don't think in my life I've been more motivated to do anything that you crush those guys because what they would do to innocent people, what they. It's just even hard to put into words some of the things you would see and they would. They would do things like, for example, we were known in an area that was known as the female suicide bombing capital of the world, where women were blowing themselves up. And one of the ways that they would, quote, unquote, recruit women to be suicide bombers is they would rape them and then tell them the only way to restore their honor was to blow themselves up, say at an American checkpoint or in a restaurant or at a wedding or in a hospital. It was horrific. So that was number two, that the enemy was far more brutal and evil than I imagined. And then. But the third thing was Democracy and civil order. Anything like we would recognize here in the United States was far more elusive than I thought. And so, you know, one of the things that I think is a mistake that previous administrations have made is that we're just too idealistic. I think George W. Bush was too idealistic about Iraqi society without Saddam Hussein. I feel like Barack Obama was too idealistic about sort of how the Muslim world would, or say jihadists would be less motivated to attack us if, if we changed policies or moderated in our stance. And so we had a lot of this view that I think was just sort of too idealistic about the complexities of the situation. And so I have, I'm now, I have less idealism about what's possible in the Middle east over time than I did before. I was one of these people. I thought that genuinely, you know, and I, I'm embarrassed to admit it right now that if you remove Saddam Hussein In 03, the trip from Saddam Hussein to a functioning democracy in Iraq would be much shorter than it's proven to be. That it's actually was much more painful. It's still an ongoing process. I mean, obviously Iraq is much more of a democracy than it ever was under Hussein now. But I thought that trip from A to B would be shorter than it turned out to. I mean, would. Would be shorter. Much shorter than it turned out to be.
- [23:27]
Podcast Host
And what about the men and women you served with?
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David French
Yeah, so that about those guys. I was one of the. We're in an all male combat arms unit. I think that I might have served over the course of my time in Iraq with two or three women who would come into our base briefly and then go. But I will tell you, men, women, incredibly disciplined, incredibly, as a rule, I'm not going to say every last one, but as a rule, incredibly compassionate, literally willing to risk their lives rather than harm civilians, in my experience. And I just can't say enough about them. I mean, I remember being walking into it and I was a late replacement. I was a reservist added on to active duty unit. And if anyone knows anything about military culture, being the reservist, especially the lawyer, for crying out loud, the reserve civilian, previously civilian. Obviously I wasn't civilian when I was serving, but I had spent my whole career as a civilian. Come in, rookie military lawyer. As a reservist to an active duty unit. And I was even warned about that unit when I came on. The other jags said one of them even used the term, I believe, penal battalion that you're joining the unit that of all the units in the regiment, had the most people in it who, for whom there were waivers when they joined about previous criminal activity. And so they told me to watch out, to be. Watch like a hawk, to see if there were going to be discipline issues, if there were going to be morale issues, et cetera. But no, I mean, no, the, the discipline was incredible. The courage was incredible, and really, the care and consideration for civilian life was remarkable. So I'll give you a statistic. You know, we probably faced, I would say, just ballparking. Out of the 300 or so days that we were in that particular base, I think we faced combat. Our unit did about 250 of those days. I would say, you know, maybe getting close to 80% of the days we were downrange, somebody in our unit, some element of our unit was attacked in some way. And that entire time, all of that intensity, I think that at most we ended up harming, killing less than five civilians the whole time in all of that intense combat. And that was no accident. That was a result of incredible amount of discipline, Just an incredible amount of discipline. And, and in one of those civilian death incidents, it was because an artillery shell just fell short. Like, it wasn't. We had the proper target, we had the proper technology, we had everything. It was just a dud shell that fell short and just horrible, horrible. But that, that's the level of discipline. I know there were other incidents in Iraq where, you know, you can talk, we could talk about Abu Ghraib, we could talk about some incidents in western Iraq and other places where American soldiers committed war crimes. But that, that was not my unit. That was not the guys I served with. And in fact, I'm. I'm in date, literally in daily contact, contact with the staff officers I served with. We have, we get together all the time. We have our WhatsApp group and, and just some of the greatest. I mean, literally just some of the greatest people I've ever known in my life. And I know that sounds cliched, and I know a lot of people sort of kind of put American soldiers on a pedestal, but I will tell you, the folks I served with were just great people who risked their lives, sometimes gave their lives to protect civilians, to protect the innocent. And so I may. And we were also at that same time, very successful in our mission. So I'm the last person to say that we have to sacrifice compliance with the law and the protection of the innocent to accomplish a military objective.
- [27:29]
Podcast Host
So I wasn't planning to go this way. But we talk a lot about the struggles of young men on this show.
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David French
And I think that's been just an incredible part of your focus. And I've really appreciated that, by the way.
- [27:43]
Podcast Host
I appreciate you saying that. But one of the things that comes up a lot is, and I wish I knew more about it, and I'm planning to do some podcasts on it, is service as an option for young men and women. And the question I get a lot, and I want to put to you is who is the right fit for service and who is not.
- [28:05]
David French
So I'm going to say this. You are probably, if you were listening and you are healthy, physically healthy, you are probably the right fit for service. You would be amazed at the diversity of people, personalities, et cetera, who serve in the US Military. There isn't a type, there isn't a one mold. And you know, it's funny, I grew up watching, you know, war, World War II movies, Vietnam War movies, all of this. And there was always a stereotype. You know, you have the infantry platoon that's got, you know, the wisecracking kid from Brooklyn, the kid from Appalachia in Kentucky who's never been outside of his hometown until he joined the military, the guy from Puerto Rico, the guy from California. And you know, you've got these sort of stereotypes of all these people from around the country. And then I arrive and it's all true. That's the way it is. So here, you know, we had, I was with an armored, armored cavalry unit, not an infantry unit, but we had the very same dynamic and it was just remarkable, the diversity of people. I, I put it this way, universe, that the US Military has achieved the diversity that colleges say they want but never get close to achieving. We had diversity by race, by ethnicity, by religion, by class. I mean, the whole spectrum and lots of different personality types. You know, the, the, you have to be willing. You have to be somebody who's willing to take orders and to take direction. You have to be humble enough and pliant enough to, to recognize that you don't know everything, that you are not an expert in everything, and that sometimes people are going to have to tell you what to do. And it's going to be absolutely critical that you say, yes, sir, yes ma', am, and do it. But beyond just that, very basic ability, if you're able bodied, if you have an ability, you know, if you have enough humility to swallow your pride and take orders. And I will honestly say, even if you have doubts about your courage, you are Someone who can serve. It's funny. Who rises to the occasion and who shrinks away is not predictable based on someone's attitude about themselves entering the military or entering a combat zone. I saw people who are very quiet, people who had expressed privately to me doubts, perform magnificently. Just magnificently. I mean, and again, this is a cliche. I saw people who had a lot of bravado who said they couldn't wait to get out there and get at the enemy. That when we took our first losses and it became very, very real and you realized that, no, this isn't theoretical anymore, people are getting hurt, that I saw them shrink away. And so don't predict about yourself, who you would be in the circumstance. Realize that if you have a, if you feel that call to serve, there's also a lot of molding that goes on. You become somebody different during your service. And my wife would say that about me. She said, there's one person who left and there's a second person who came home. And there's a lot of resemblances between the two, but there are very real differences as well. It was a life changing experience for me without question. And I would say in ways that are both good and not so good and bad, but it was absolutely life changing. But I would say, do not count yourself out. Don't. Don't look at a TV show, don't look at a body type or whatever and say, well, that's just not me. I wouldn't fit in. Or there's nobody like me in the military. I would bet you there is absolutely not just somebody like you in the military, but a lot of somebody is like you because it is a. It's a remarkably diverse institution.
- [31:57]
Podcast Host
We'll be right back after a quick break.
- [32:09]
Mitch Purse
I'm Mitch Purse, two time IndigoCell champion, championship MVP and forward for the US Women's National Team. Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology mindset and unseen battles on the path to greatness. So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an elite athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:52]
Sponsor Voice
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- [35:21]
Podcast Host
So under the auspices of a lack of elegant segues, let's talk about the Pope.
- [35:29]
David French
That's still given the circumstances, that's a pretty good segue.
- [35:34]
Podcast Host
I thought that was great and I'm glad we went there. You wrote that the Trump Pope Leo standoff was the most important theological debate of your lifetime. Can you make the case for why it matters to someone who isn't following it? Or isn't quite for it isn't religious.
- [35:48]
David French
Oh, absolutely. So if you're going to look at. Let's back up a little bit and just do Super Short History 101. So after World War I, which was this catastrophic confrontation that cost by some estimates 20 million lives, the Western world said, let's not do that again. And they passed something called the Kellogg Briand Pact, which was trying to outlaw aggressive war. They began to enter into a bunch of treaties requiring kinds of humane treatment in war. So the basic desire was to create something called the war that. To make World War I the war to end all wars. In other words, we. We're. That was so horrific, we're never going to do it again. And when they began to construct laws of war, they weren't building from a blank. They weren't painting on a blank canvas. What they essentially did was took Catholic just war doctrine and began to incorporate it into international law. Now, we all know that it didn't work. World War I was initially. World War I was not the war to end all wars. One of the reasons why these international institutions didn't work was that they were. The United States didn't participate. The most powerful economy in the world, the theoretically, potentially most powerful military in the world did not participate. And so when Hitler arose, there was no real great power that had the willingness and capacity to resist him. So he went through it all again, except maybe by some estimates, three times worse. There are some guesses as many as, say, 60 million people died. So then we said again, let's not do that again. And this time, the United States stuck with a plan and we passed the U.N. we created the U.N. we ratified the U.N. charter, and the U.N. charter does exactly what was attempted after World War I, and that was to ban aggressive warfare. It was rooted in just war doctrine. So in other words, if you're, interestingly enough, in a very religiously diverse world and an increasingly secular west, when you're hearing the Pope talk about the war, what you're in essence is hearing a descendant of a Founding Father talking about the Constitution in an interesting way. He is the heir to the intellectual tradition that created the legal system that our entire international system is based on. So these debates about just war doctrine are not esoteric debates. They're exactly like debates around the Federalist Papers, say around the Constitution. This goes into what do these words mean? What do these doctrines mean? And the way I would put it is after World War II, we replaced a Clausewitzian worldview. And Clausewitz is the military strategist who described war as the extension of politics by other means, in essence, war just as an instrument of national policy, and replaced it with the Aquinas view of just war doctrine, that war is a last resort, not a first resort, and permissible only in very limited circumstances. So I'm not going to claim that all of the law of armed conflict is rooted in Catholic just war doctrine, but you can read the Department of Defense Law of war manual, and it will tell you. It will tell you that just war doctrine is one of the foundational pillars of the international law of armed conflict. And so this fight over the Pope isn't like just picking a fight with, say, some mega church preacher in Dallas. It's picking a fight with the intellectual heir of the entire just war tradition that underpins international law.
- [39:33]
Podcast Host
So you argue that Christian nationalism isn't really Christianity, but from the outside, and I realize this is reductive. A lot of people look at evangelical support for Trump, which hovers around 80%, and thinks, isn't this just what American Christianity is now?
- [39:51]
David French
Yeah, well, they'd be forgiven for thinking that, given how vocal and outspoken and we just had this 250 rededication service on the National Mall, publicly funded. But American Christianity is a lot more diverse than white evangelicalism. So it's very true that 82% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. It's also true that somewhere between 80 and 90% of black Protestants voted for Harris. It's also true that the main line split about 50, 50. It's true that the Catholic Church slightly leaned towards Trump over Harris. But American religion is quite diverse. And it's just that the white evangelical church sort of punches above its weight in that debate because it's so big, especially in the south, and it's so hyperconcentrated in one party that I would argue that white evangelicalism is the strongest faction and the strongest political party in the strongest nation in the world right now. So that means that white evangelicalism is arguably one of those potent religious movements in the entire world at the moment, and it has thrown its weight around behind Donald Trump in an. Just. In an overwhelming fashion. And speaking of someone who grew up evangelical, who is evangelical, that is incredibly grievous to me. It's just incredibly grievous. And it's grievous in part because it's making hypocrites of millions of Americans, because I'm old enough to remember when evangelicals united in rage against Bill Clinton for all of his, you know, sexual sins and indiscretions and all of that. And even in 1998, the largest. The largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Church, Southern Baptist Convention put out a statement that said, tolerance of serious wrongs by leaders sears the conscience of a culture results in unrestrained lawlessness and surely will result in God's judgment. And you know what? They were right. Right now, unrestrained lawlessness has seared a conscience, all right? It's seared their conscience. It's sponsoring unrestrained lawlessness. One of the most corrupt administrations. It is the most corrupt administration I've seen in my life. So corrupt that the Gilded Age dudes are, like, rolling over in their graves saying, I was born in the wrong era. I could have gotten crypto riches if I had just been, you know, been born a little bit later. So it's the most corrupt administration I've seen in my lifetime. By miles. By miles. And it is the most divisive. It is wrecking the social cohesion of this country. And the fact that this is empowered by people who believe they're saving the country in the name of Jesus is just. It's just grievous. It's grievous. And I'm hoping, I'm praying for a recognition in the church of the damage that they have inflicted. But no one who's listening to this podcast should think that is what the American church does. The American church is, you know, let's put it this way. Donald Trump is supported by one part of the American church. Another part of the American church is embodied by Pope Leo, who has turned out to be one of Trump's chief international antagonists in some ways. So American religion is big, diverse, and messy, but a big branch of that, of American religion is supporting Donald Trump overwhelmingly and still does. And it's very grievous to me.
- [43:23]
Podcast Host
So there's a. I don't know if it's fair or not, but Democrats have a reputation for being somewhat hostile towards religion that it's not as welcoming or embracing. If you were advising the Democratic Party on how to speak to religious voters that they've lost, what would you tell them to do?
- [43:45]
David French
Oh, that's a great question. So, first, it's absolutely true. Aside from black Protestants, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, there is a giant God gap between the parties. The more often you go to church, the more often, the more likely you are to say you believe the Bible is the word of God, the more likely you are to be Republican, and that there's a giant gap there. And that has led many Democrats especially, especially white Democrats, white liberals, to see sort of Christianity or conservative iterations. And when I say conservative, I don't mean politically, I mean theologically to be the enemy. And I would just say this. Nobody wants to go where they're not wanted or where they're not liked. And if you create an impression with all of these conservative Christians that we hate you, we think you're backwards, we think you're bigoted, then guess what? They're going to stay in the exact place where they are right now. And then if you berate them and you say, how dare you, how dare you stay in this place? And they try to come to you and you say, well, no, I don't want you unless you agree to everything I believe in, that becomes a real problem. And I saw this really interesting interview with James Talarico, who I think we'll see. You know, Texas is always fool's gold for Democrats. It's like Charlie Brown with the football for, for Democrats of late. But if Ken Paxton wins the primary, I think Talarico has a really good opportunity to beat him with this message because I saw a con. He was on a, he was on an evangelical Christian podcast with conservative hosts, and they said to him, would you welcome a pro life voice into the party? And he said without hesitation, absolutely. He said, I'm pro choice, but the Democratic Party has to be about becoming a bigger and bigger tent and we have to put fewer and fewer, fewer roadblocks and hurdles in front of people to join the party. And he says, I would want to work if somebody wants to be a pro life Democrat. We're going to disagree about abortion, but we're going to work together on the many, many, many other things that we agree with. And my colleague Michelle Goldberg had a great statement recently about one of the problems of the left, and she said this. She said, there are movements that look for converts and there are movements that hunt for heretics. And she was talking about how the left had been really focused, especially on the 20 teens, on narrowing the tent, hunting for people who didn't toe the line a hundred percent. And this is begin when you began to see the just utterly absurd spectacle of Democrats running candidates in places like Alabama or Tennessee or Mississippi or Georgia who would be virtually indistinguishable from Democratic candidates in Massachusetts and California and Rhode island when they're never going to fly. My friend Ezra Klein and other colleagues said it's easier for him to almost imagine the republic ending than it is to imagine a Democrat winning Senate in Arkansas. But I'm old enough, we're both old enough to remember when Democrats held sway over much of the South. It wasn't that long ago. And so I think the Democratic Party has to concentrate on becoming more tolerant of differences within the tent. And it's interesting, they can actually look at the Trump GOP. There was this interesting dynamic in 2024 where the GOP had a broader ideological tent than the Democratic Party. There was one condition to join the GOP tent. To walk into that tent was the red hat. You had to have the red hat. You had to be pledged loyalty to Trump. You could be pro vax or anti vax. You could be pro Ukraine, you could be anti Ukraine, you could be pro war Thoran, you could be anti war with Iran. Now, that kind of messy coalition can get messy when you're governing, but it's a great way to win elections. And so, you know, I would say if you see somebody to, you know, my, to Democratic listeners, if you see somebody who agrees with you 70% of the time, lean into that 70%. Don't sit there and focus on the 30% and say, you're just not like me. You're horrible. You're awful. And there really is a perception just sort of to the core of the being of a lot of theologically conservative Christians that they just, no matter how much they may oppose Trump, no matter how much they might be appalled by the way the Trump administration is governing, no matter how much they may want to protect the human rights and dignity of immigrants, for example, or no matter how much they want to lift up and improve the lives of the middle class, that if they don't toe the line 100% on all the various social issues, they're just a tote. They're not just an outcast and not welcome in the Democratic Party, they're viewed as evil. That's an incredibly self limiting way of looking at the world. For any political party to look at the world, if somebody wants to be a part of you and wants to work with you on shared interests. Now, I'm not saying give up all standards. You know, if, if somebody's walking in with a swastika and says, hey, I want to join with you guys and no, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, we do have lines. But as a general view and sort of that great American spectrum of politics, if someone is in that great American mainstream and they come to you and they say, can I join you? Here's the answer, yes, yes, you can. We won't agree on everything, but we'll work together on shared interests and then we'll disagree with each other with civility and decency when we have disagreement. But my gosh, that seems to be way too heavy a lift, especially for people who are sort of at that core highly ideological activist base.
- [49:33]
Podcast Host
We'll be right back.
- [49:41]
Sponsor Voice
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- [52:02]
David French
Stitch Fix. Stop shopping. Get styled. Not today, sweatpants. Somebody's wearing jeans that fit. Wow.
- [52:10]
Podcast Host
No photos, please.
- [52:11]
David French
I'm just a regular dad who happens to have a stylist. I really look my best when someone else makes the decisions. Hey, we can all see you two way mirrors. Just share your size, style, and budget, and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch Fix. Get started today@stitchfix.com I want to hug you. I'm gonna hug you. I'm coming. I'm coming in for a hug.
- [52:37]
Podcast Host
We're back with more from David French. One of the things I really respect about you, David, is that when I see you on Bill Maher or another program, I have a difficult time assigning a political label to you. And I say that as a feature, not a bug. So I want to talk a little bit about conservatism and identity. I would argue you've been pushed out of the conservative movement, and you write for a paper that half the country calls the enemy. You left your church. What is your home? Do you have a home politically, or. It seems like everyone's saying they're politically homeless. Where do you stand on this?
- [53:14]
David French
I definitely do not have a home. I mean, the Republican Party, there's no way I can belong to a party that puts a man like Donald Trump as its leader, much less an object of devotion. I mean, he's so far beyond the leadership that I saw in. In my adult lifetime. I was the first election I voted in. I was eight. Was. Was 1988. So George H.W. bush was the first Republican that I voted for. So I've been through multiple iterations of party leadership of the Republican Party. I was a delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention for Mitt Romney, and at no point successful, unsuccessful, did any president have as much control over the party as Donald Trump does. And so including just grassroots devotion that Donald Trump enjoys. So I. I'm. I can't be a part of a party that puts that much devotion into a man of such low character. I just can't do it. But I also know the Democratic Party doesn't, you know, that going back to what we just said, I. I'm a pro life evangelical. I'm not. I'm the kind of person a lot of Democrats would say is evil. And so I don't have a home there either. But I'm in very good company because the. The maladies of both parties are so severe that they're driving a lot of people to label themselves now as independent. And independent independents are now a plurality of America. So I feel like all of those of us who say we're not, that we're homeless, we actually. We might not have a home and a party, but I don't think it's right that we're homeless anymore. We're actually part of the biggest faction of American politics, and that is the independent faction. And so. But as far as being pushed out of the conservative movement, I'm just going to use that old Ronald Reagan line that he said, the Democrat. I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me on basically every measure. The Republican Party has changed its approach into a way that I would describe it as no longer a conservative party. It is a populist party. And those two things are not the same. And one of the great cons the Republican establishment has kind of pulled is they have told the base now that this populism is conservatism when it is not. And so I will consistently get people who have changed their position on everything from debt to deficits to NATO to the importance of abortion and the. In the Republican Party platform. They'll. They'll look at me and they'll say, what happened to you? And I'm. I look at them and I say, what. What? Me? What happened to me? What happened to you? And you have a lot of people sort of saying that back and forth to each other. So, similarly with my church, I. When I said I was never, ever going to support Donald Trump, and this goes all the way back to very early 2016, late 2015, I never in a million years. I knew my church was overwhelmingly Republican. I never in a million years thought that that would create a breach that would lead people in my denomination to want me gone, to want me out of it as. As literally as being a heretic. But, you know, by. A couple of years ago, I was invited to speak at my denomination's General assembly and to speak on political polarization, and there was such an outcry, they canceled the invitation because I was a heretic. Why was I a heretic? Not because I disagreed with the Westminster Confession, the Apostles Creed, any sort of tenet of basic conservative theology? No, no. Because I had vocally opposed Donald Trump, and that had created. To some people, that made me a heretic. To some people, that made me too divisive. I mean, it's dreadful. It's. It's contemptuous. It's just. I have contempt for that position. And And I just have, I have utter contempt for the idea that Donald Trump, in support for Donald Trump should be sort of any sort of litmus test for inclusion in a Christian community.
- [57:22]
Podcast Host
Who would you like to see run for president?
- [57:25]
David French
That's a really, that's a great question. You know, I think there are a number of people on both, both sides that I would like to see. I would like to see Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. I'd like to see him run. I have a lot, although I don't, I think he would last maybe about nine seconds in a primary because he has, doesn't have the kind of national name recognition. Jared Pollis out of Colorado, I think is an interesting figure, although I really strongly disagree with his, his position on he, he just recently granted clemency to a woman who was imprisoned for her role in, in trying to steal the election for Donald Trump. I strongly disagree with that, that decision. Look, I, I recently heard Rahm Emanuel speak. He has some very, he's, he's a guy out there who's making that big tent argument that you just made in a very forceful fashion. I think there are quite a few Democrats who I would say, quote, unquote, get it in the sense that they, what they need is a bigger tent. What they need is to aggressively reach out to disgruntled independence that they realize they don't need to be ideologically litmus testing and who have a very strong commitment to the post Cold War order, to NATO, to our international alliances. To me, that's just an absolute deal breaker, just a deal breaker on the Republican side. You know, I, I have long admired how Brian Kemp of Georgia is about the only Republican to stand up to Donald Trump and live to tell the tale politically because remember, he, he defied, he's a very conservative governor of Georgia, but he outright defied Trump in the two in the 2020 election. And then unlike, you know, we saw Senator Cassidy go down, we saw five Indiana state senators go down recently. We might see Thomas Massie go down to the Trump effect. I think of the 17 Republicans who cast votes against Trump and the whole impeachment in 2021, what, 13, 14 of them are out of are gone. So Brian Kemp is a guy who defied Trump and yet still retained enough Republican support to win reelection in Georgia. He's somebody who's interesting. I really love and for a long time loved what Spencer Cox is doing out in Utah as far as like he is, he is really trying to create, to depolarize America because I think our polarization is the biggest emergency facing our country is our polarization. So right there, there's five names off the top of my head that I think if any one of them win, we're going to be okay.
- [60:03]
Podcast Host
So just as we wrap up here, David, and you've been chatting us with your time. You're a New York Times columnist or reporter. I don't know what the term is.
- [60:12]
David French
Columnist. Columnist is the official title. Yeah.
- [60:14]
Podcast Host
You live in Nashville, you served in Iraq. I think you're a man of faith. Would that be fair to say?
- [60:19]
David French
Yes, absolutely.
- [60:21]
Podcast Host
A Republican or Republican. Ish. A lot of young men listen to this podcast. You've had a very interesting life. What advice would you give to your 25 year old self or a young man who has some credentials, is not struggling, but is trying to find his place in the world? What advice would you have for. For him or her?
- [60:50]
David French
Well, you know, giving that I have a, giving me the, the hypothetical of telling my 25 year old self isn't that far off because I got a 25 year old son. He's a, he's a 1L at Northwestern. And if I had to give one sentiment of one sentence of advice, it would be cultivated virtue, not ambition. And, and when I say that I am not just making something up off the top of my head, what I am doing is I'm pulling people back, back to the conception of manhood and masculinity that would really be sort of the dominant conception, say at the era of the founding. Let me recommend a book to the guys listening right now. It's called the Pursuit of Happiness. And it is by Jeff Rosen, who until recently ran the National Constitution center and is focused on that phrase, the pursuit of happiness. And what did it mean? And he went back from the Declaration, you know, we're, we're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the pursuit of life, liberty. You know, life, liberty and happiness. And so the, the what was the pursuit of happiness? It wasn't the pursuit of doing things you like. It wasn't the pursuit of having a quote, unquote fulfilling life. It was the pursuit of virtue. And if you look at the founders, some of the most impressive men in the history of this country, much less world history, think about how fortunate we were to have such remarkably far sighted political philosophers, statesmen, soldiers, generals, at that point in our history, they focused on virtue. Benjamin Franklin used to keep a list of virtues. I think there are 13 virtues. And he would literally grade himself daily by his adherence and how he upheld his own standards about himself. Jefferson maintained lists of virtues. They were very interested in like the Stoic virtues, the Aristotelian kinds of virtues, and so the cultivation of virtues. And my colleague, well, he just recently left, David Brooks had a great way of phrasing it. He called it the difference between eulogy virtues and resume virtues. Eulogy virtues are the ones where someone at the end of your life is describing what kind of man you were. Resume virtues describe what you did, the bullet points and the virtue of concentrating on virtue, unlike concentrating on ambition. And I'm not saying don't be ambitious. You know, industry is a virtue, industry is a virtue. And by industry, we're not talking about making cars, we're talking about thrift, efficiency, hard work ethic. Can you, do you have that grit and that grind to succeed? And so one of the virtues is industry. But if you're concentrating on virtue, you're actually concentrating on something that is far more ultimately in your control than if you're concentrating on the bullet points on the resume. And so you can become, it is possible to become the kind of person you want to be if you pursue virtue. And the other thing about it is because these virtues are never perfected. No human being has ever perfected these virtues. It really is a lifelong quest for self improvement. It never ends, even when you're retired. My dad, he's 80 years old, he's retired. He used to teach math, he was a math professor at a college. Now he raises cattle in our family farm that we've had in our family since the 1850s and in rural Tennessee. And guess what he's doing at 80 years old? He's perfecting the virtues that required to raise cattle. And he's becoming a better man in different ways. Even at age 80. It's wonderful to see. I admire him so much because he has just never stopped trying to be a better human being his whole life. And that's the model I want to set for my kids. I want my son, when he's 57 like I am, to say my dad never stopped trying to be a better human being. And that is something within our grasp. And I'm not going to say that if you try to be a better human being that you're going to achieve high status wealth or a high status career. Nobody can promise you that. But what you can achieve is looking in the mirror and being proud of who you see looking back at you. And that's a lifelong process. And it's one that concentrates on virtue, not accomplishment.
- [65:16]
Podcast Host
David French is an American political commentator and columnist for the New York Times. He was former senior editor of the Dispatch, a fellow of the National Review Institute, and a staff writer for the National Review. It's passly to say this, David, but I appreciate on a lot of levels really appreciate your service. And I think you're a great American and a real role model. And we come at this from we have much different politics, actually not that different. On some key issues we differ. But I really think you're a real asset to the country and to the New York Times. Very much appreciate your time.
- [65:48]
David French
Well, that's so kind of you to say. And I, and I, I'm going to repeat it. I just think you're doing. The phrase I'm going to use is the Lord's work out there reaching, you know, reaching struggling young men who. You've got a manosphere out there that it's, it's the opposite of virtue is what they're filling kids, you know, they're filling young men's heads with. And I just think you're doing very important work, some of the most important work in our culture in reaching young men right now.
- [66:20]
Podcast Host
This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Geniere. Cami Reek is our social producer, Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor, and
- [66:28]
Sponsor Voice
Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
- [66:29]
Podcast Host
Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from PropG Media.
- [66:40]
Podcast Promo Voice
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David French
And that's just pregame.
- [66:55]
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