Loading summary
Transcript134 lines
- [00:02]
A
Guess what day it is. It's French Friday. It's French fry day. So grab your fries and say hooray. David French is here to play on French Friday. It's French fry day.
- [00:18]
B
All right. Hello, welcome to the Skypod, brought to you by Holy Post Media. This is a special French Friday episode when I'm joined by David French.
- [00:24]
A
Hi, David Sky. We're recording a little late. Well, early in the month. Skipped a month. I don't know how you were going to call it. Off schedule.
- [00:34]
B
Off schedule. We were going to talk last week, but events transpired to interfere with that. So I'm glad you're here and we're able to talk this week. I had a whole bunch of different ideas for last week, but the news moves so quickly these days. There's 10 new things that have popped up. And so I want to begin by talking about something that was on my old list. This isn't like a brand new story, but it's something that is a lot of our listeners are asking me about. It's relevant to you and I. We're both now in Chicago. We see this every day. And that's the stuff going on with immigrants, undocumented immigrants, ice, Border Patrol. I have friends that are deeply involved in this whole thing in the city, pastors and others. And one of the pieces that jumped out to me is what's increasingly being referred to as Kavanaugh stops, named after Brent Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice, to begin with, define what these things are. What is a Kavanaugh stop that the DHS officials, federal officials are using?
- [01:34]
A
So when they're saying Kavanaugh stop, it's. It's not intended as a compliment, Scott. Right.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah.
- [01:40]
A
Because it's referring to a concurring opinion by Justice Kavanaugh in a case in an opinion in September where they vacated an injunction, a lower court injunction that was blocking ICE officers from using a series of factors, factor or series of factors as reasonable suspicion to stop someone and, you know, check on their immigration status.
- [02:09]
B
Okay. I know you're very used to talking about this issue on advisory opinions in other places, but there's jargon here that I'm guessing a lot of our listeners are not going to get.
- [02:18]
A
So we'll go through it. Okay.
- [02:20]
B
So my understanding is ICE officials, Border Patrol officials, were stopping people in many cases based on their ethnic appearance. They appear to be racially profiling some of these folks and stopping them. A lower court said, you can't do that.
- [02:38]
A
Right.
- [02:39]
B
This then went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said to the lower court, yeah, they can do that, at least for now. So it's. It's a convoluted legal structure here.
- [02:51]
A
Yeah, it is convoluted. So let's even go back a little further. So the way things work is that the government in the United States of America is not supposed to be able to just stop somebody. A law enforcement officer is not just supposed to be able to just stop somebody and detain them, even for a brief amount of time, with. Against their will, unless certain legal standards are met.
- [03:15]
B
Right.
- [03:15]
A
And one of the lowest legal standards is something called reasonable suspicion. Probable cause is a higher standard. Probable cause is what you have to have, say to arrest somebody, an actual arrest. Reasonable suspicion is different. It's that, you know, stopping somebody, making inquiries of somebody. And so that's a very low level. There's not a lot historically you have to do to show a reasonable suspicion standard. So let's just get that out there right now.
- [03:43]
B
So let me give you a hypothetical unrelated to this. If a signal goes out to the Wheaton Police Department here, where I live, that says we have reason to believe that a robbery suspect is driving a white Honda. A white Honda Civic. Right. And I'm driving a white Honda Civic and they pull me over, they're doing that because they have reasonable suspicion that I might be that robber, even if I'm not the robber.
- [04:08]
A
Right.
- [04:09]
B
It's. They wouldn't be in trouble for stopping me.
- [04:12]
A
Exactly. They don't have probable cause to arrest because as soon as they stop you, they realize it's not that Honda.
- [04:19]
B
Right.
- [04:19]
A
Maybe you don't match the description of the robber, etc. They move you along. I have been stopped on reasonable suspicion by drug task forces on interstates, for example, before. The kind of car I was driving. Fit a profile perfectly. Exactly what you're saying, Sky. I'll never forget that stop. Because I'm pulled over. I was maybe speeding, but I didn't. Wasn't pulled over for speeding. As soon as I pull over, the police officer comes up, asks for my license and registration, takes a look at it, sees that everything is in order, and then off I go. It was. This was not a traffic stop. This was more like reasonable suspicion. Drug interdiction. Stop it. So reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause. So I think that's one thing that's important for people to realize. Also I think it's important for people to realize is that ICE was not telling the Supreme Court that what we want to do is stop every person who's Hispanic just because they look Hispanic. So what ICE was telling the Supreme Court was that they stop under these circumstances. And the circumstances are that the following factors or combination of factors are present. One, presence at a particular location, such as a bus stop, car wash, day labor, pickup site, agricultural site, and the like. Two, the type of work that one does. Three, speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent, and for apparent race or ethnicity. So looking at holistically, what you're, you're supposed to be doing is sort of a totality of the circumstances analysis. It should not be that, oh, there's somebody who looks Hispanic, I'm going to go make sure they're, they're here legally, okay?
- [06:13]
B
But if they're Hispanic and they're working at a construction site and they, you know, there's a couple of variables, and then they, they say we are justified in some people. And there have been stories in the media, and I'm hearing stories here from friends of mine in Chicago where American citizens who fit some of these qualities are being arrested and being asked to prove their citizenship. A whole lot of us don't walk around with a passport or a birth certificate, so it can take a while to prove your citizenship. In the meantime, you've been detained and arrested. And they would argue unlawfully.
- [06:50]
A
So let's talk about two things. What the administration has told the court it is doing, okay? And thing number two, what is the administration actually doing? And those two things are not always the same thing. Sky. So they're walking into court, into the Supreme Court saying, hey, look, this is our reasonable suspicion standard. It has all of those factors that I just ran through. And the Supreme Court saying, we're not going to enjoin you from applying those standards for reasonable suspicion. Okay, well, then what's happening in the real world, though, is that these standards are not necessarily being applied. Remember, this is a reasonable suspicion standard, not a probable cause standard. So they're using a reasonable suspicion standard. They're using these factors to actually arrest people.
- [07:43]
B
Right.
- [07:43]
A
That's not what it's supposed to be. So this is a very consistent pattern right now with the, the, with the Trump administration is they're walking into court and they're making an argument in court that sounds reasonable, that sounds rational. They're providing evidence, what appears, sometimes appears to be strong evidence to back up their claims. But then when you see the real world happenings, a lot of this just starts to fall apart completely that they are not behaving in the way that they have told the court they're behaving okay.
- [08:12]
B
But I've rarely taken the side of the Trump administration on these things. But based on what the courts have ruled, and Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence is where we get this term from the Kavanaugh stocks, because he kind of explains why they're allowing agents to do this if they are following the instruction and they are only stopping people who meet multiple factors, one of which might be their ethnic appearance or language spoken or whatever. What's the solution? Does it mean that every one of us who might not look ethnically Anglo or maybe African American or some, as I jokingly refer to myself, ethnically ambiguous, do we all have to walk around everywhere we go with proof of citizenship in order to avoid being detained? Because.
- [09:01]
A
Well, in theory, no. Again, we have to constantly be talking about the in theory versus in fact.
- [09:09]
B
But that's my point. Is it what's like, it's one thing for you to get pulled over because you're driving a truck that looks exactly like something that was involved in a crime. They can quickly assess, oh, that's not you. Off you go. But how do you prove, no, I am a citizen. Don't detain me.
- [09:25]
A
Well, this is a real problem, sky, because if you're listening, if you're seeing or listening to some of the testimony you're going to see, there are people who are producing actual, real IDs, the ID that allows you to fly the ID where you're establishing your legal residency without equivocation. And some of these ICE guys are saying, ah, looks fake to me.
- [09:46]
B
Exactly.
- [09:47]
A
Or people are pretty. And so the problem you have is that the system, as we have right now, the way things are set up right now, is inadequate to deal with this abuse. Okay, the way this, we deal with this kind of abuse in criminal law is pretty simple. So, for example, in a criminal law context, if you are being detained for prosecution criminally, if you're being arrested for prosecution criminally and they do so in violation of probable cause standards, or they detain you in violation of reasonable suspicion standards, you have a remedy. And the remedy is the exclusionary rule. In. In other words, you can have that evidence obtained through the unlawful stop excluded. In some circumstances, if it's a state agency that is detaining you, if it's a state police officer or local police officer, you may even have a claim for damages if they have violated your constitutional rights in a way that's clearly established. Where there's no qualified immunity, it's a little tougher to get in the federal government context. But so in the most circumstances you have a remedy there. It's the exclusionary rule, claim for damages, et cetera. It's very rare for courts to enter big sweeping injunctions to prohibit law enforcement from engaging in activity that from. From using reasonable suspicion standards, from using probable cause standards. The remedy is often seen to be more individual, in other words, that if I individually have my rights, violated. The problem you have here, though, sky, is what's happening is often at large scale. Often what's ending up happening is that people are being detained maybe for hours or sometimes days at a time before they're vindicated, before they're released. And there isn't really a mechanism for them to get any real redress. It's very, very difficult for them to get any damages from the federal government.
- [11:43]
B
What are they going to do? Hire an attorney and file a suit and go through all the expense and the hassle? In the meantime, they may have lost their job because they've been gone for a couple days because they were detained by ICE unfairly. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of practical impediments to this. Yes, and beyond all that, I mean, most people listening to this probably aren't worried about being stopped by ICE on the street and having to prove their citizenship. But do we want to live in a society where a significant amount of the population has to constantly be worried about being detained if they don't have proof of citizenship that is sufficiently valid that someone couldn't question whether it's a. I mean, it's not. This isn't Eastern Europe in the Cold War.
- [12:26]
A
Right.
- [12:26]
B
This is not a Soviet blocked reality. This is America.
- [12:30]
A
An incredibly high percentage of our country, both citizens and legal residents and non citizen legal residents fit some of these categories. Yeah, they speak Spanish or speak English with an accent. They have an apparent Hispanic racial race or ethnicity. And so, yeah, you're correct, Sky. I mean, this is creating a situation where a significant portion of the American population now has to sit there and worry if I've got to be able to produce papers sufficient to satisfy some random ICE agent who is under strict quotas and being told and browbeaten into them that they are, that they have to deport more, more, more, more. And then they're also being turned against these communities to such an extent that they are extremely hostile and extremely aggressive. And then also they're wearing masks. I mean, this is incredibly intimidating. This is a masked law enforcement agency that is conducting sweeps through American communities. And look, I Think honestly, sky, that what Kavanaugh thought he was approving is very different from what is happening. And this is something that is an emerging issue in courts with the Trump administration. Courts are now wise to the fact that this administration is not telling the truth. It is not giving them the true story here. So I suspect, sky, this is my, my own assessment that over time, what you're going to be dealing with is less and less and less judicial patience with the administration, less and less willingness to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. There is this thing, there's a legal concept called the presumption of regularity that through decades of Department of Justice legal practice, where the Department of Justice not always, but tends to practice at the highest levels of professionalism and ethics, have created an almost de facto system where courts where will give the benefit of the doubt to assertions of fact or truth by the government. And I think that's going to go away and it's going to go away pretty quickly. So when I read this, I mean, look, I think, yeah, these, these are reasonable suspic suspicion standards. If all you're doing is checking ID and somebody's moving on, that's a very minimal intrusion. But in reality, these standards are not being followed. The ID checks are not being sufficient. And, and what's actually happening isn't a temporary stop, but actual arrest in many cases.
- [15:10]
B
Two things. One, I hope you're correct that the courts are exhausted with the misrepresentation that the Trump administration is giving them about what, what they're actually doing. One of my concerns is as much as the courts and the Supreme Court might want to slap the hand of the president or the agencies that are working for him, is there a concern that. Well, and I think there might be some pattern to this, the court decides. As much as we want to do that to the Trump administration, we don't want to make any ruling that would tie the hands of future administrations, of future presidents who aren't as immoral or abusive of their power, and therefore we have to tolerate the abuses of this administration in order to constitutionally protect the presidency for future administrations. That's, that's concern number one. Concern number two, and I am no constitutional scholar, certainly no attorney, but in my citizens reading of the Constitution and my understanding of American law, this republic is supposed to be a place where the burden is put upon the agent of the state, not upon the citizen. And so the fact that we are now living through an era in which I feel the need, I literally have my passport in my Backpack because I get stopped frequently, even here in Wheaton before the Trump administration, I've been profiled many times. The fact that I feel compelled that I have to carry my proof of citizenship with me everywhere I go. But the ICE agent who stops me does not feel the need to show their face, does not have to have their name or badge on the, like, the agent of the state gets anonymity, but me, the citizen doesn't is a really backwards reality in America.
- [16:51]
A
One million percent backwards, Sky. And to tell you how much this is a reversal for the conservative movement, I once did a Prageru video on transparency. This is Prager University. So this is 10 plus years ago on the. Transparency is for the government, not for the citizen. The citizen has privacy, the government has transparency. And, and, and just to put this in context, sky, this, this masked law enforcement agency in context, we weren't masked in Iraq when we were taking on Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, we had name tapes. We weren't, it's not just that we weren't masked. We had name tapes identifying us, we had rank identifying us. So if a, if a Al Qaeda terrorist and I met many who spoke English well, who could read English, they would know if they, once they were released from detention, if they wanted to reach out after somebody, they could remember a Captain French. Right? They could remember that. And it's not hard to figure out who I am in that circumstance. Right. And so we're taught, and your cops who walk the beat every day, your FBI agents are out there, they're often dealing with some of the worst people in the world. And they've got their face, they've got their badge, they have body cameras. They're known. They're known. But what's happening here, sky, is because there is such hostility towards immigrants and there's such a commitment to purging illegal immigrants from this country that they're very willing, I think, to, to just not to, to amp up the intimidation factor. I think that masking, it's being justified to prevent doxxing. And, and look, doxxing is terrible. We've both been doxxed. You know, I mean, it's terrible. Being doxxed is terrible. But look, journalists are doxxed, all police officers are doxxed. Polit, I mean, you name it, ICE agents are in a special brand of human. They get special anonymity to do their job. I think that what's happening here is, though, is really the doxing is the pretext for the creation of a very intimidating masked force that has two Purposes. One purpose is to actually go out and arrest people and to deport them. The other one is to terrify people into leaving. Right. So I think that the. The terrifying people into leaving part is a giant part of this Trump strategy, and I think the masking and the brutality are all part of it as well.
- [19:43]
B
Go back to my first concern, though, the idea that the courts might want to slap the administration's wrist on how they're behaving, but they're reluctant to because they don't want to tie the hands of future administrations and the appropriate constitutional authority of the presidency. If you were advising, I don't know who, the Supreme Court or anyone else about a proper legal or statutory remedy to this problem, what, what would it be? How do we solve this?
- [20:07]
A
I think the answer here, sky, is that is not to create new rules that are negative to the president because Trump is so bad, but it's to strip the benefit of the doubt from the presidency. Okay. And I think that's important, not just for Trump purposes, but going forward. And because I do think that one thing that has happened is that we have created a structure that has, both over, explicitly and implicitly, just devolved an enormous amount of discretion up to the president, United States, and away from members of Congress in particular, but that the presidency has to be trimmed back some. Now, some of that can only happen through statutes or constitutional reforms like constitutional amendments, but there are some things that are within the law that are applied to normal, everyday people all the time that will really help pull back or rein in the Trump administration. Here's one. This is. We don't need to get too nerdy about this, but let me just give you one example. There's a doctrine under law called unclean hands. And what that means is, is that if you walk into a court and you're asking the court to intervene for you to enter an injunction for you. Injunctions always involve what they're called the balance of the equities. There's always going to be a sense of just subjective fairness related to a decision to grant or deny an injunction. Now, that means when I'm going to ask the court to rule for me that a fairness demands that you rule for me, I need to come into the court with clean hands. In other words, I'm not lying to the court, my conduct has been above board, I'm not sending mixed messages, I have not done anything that violates the rules of the court, etc. Etc. Etc. And so if you walk into a court with unclean hands, sometimes the benefit disappears. The balance of equities begins to move against you. And one argument that I made in the Times is it's time to apply this doctrine to the President. When the president is seeking equitable relief like an injunction, and you're balancing equities, which again, are subjective senses of fairness, then the fact that Trump is lying voluminously, the fact that the, you cannot trust the assertions of the Department of Justice mean that those balance of equities move against the administration. And you know what? They'll stay that way until you have an administration that plays by the rules. And then you, they have clean hands and they once again enjoy the benefit of clean hands. So you're not changing the rules to undermine the presidency. What you're doing is you're applying the rules, as should happen in a small r Republican form of government to the President. And a president who behaves with integrity will enjoy the traditional legal benefits of integrity. And a president who shows no integrity and suffers the traditional legal consequences of the loss of integrity.
- [23:26]
B
Okay, one of the things, and then we'll, we'll wrap up and move on to something even more salacious. One of the things I've heard you say many times, and Sarah Isger as well on advisory opinions, is that the Supreme Court does not decide cases. It decides questions.
- [23:39]
A
Questions. Yeah.
- [23:40]
B
What you just described there with clean hands feels like a decision of a case. You have a plaintiff and a defendant, and you're looking at who's got clean hands here or who might not. And if you don't, well, then we're not gonna give you the benefit of the doubt on this. Does that apply to the President? When a question comes before the Supreme Court about what the executive branch can do, do they weigh something as case specific as the, the reliability and trustworthiness of the administration?
- [24:11]
A
Well, the way it would come up would be much more. It would not be so much along the lines of was the administration untrustworthy here? Which is often a fact based determination that the Supreme Court does, doesn't do. It would be the district court in Oregon and the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied their administration's request for injunction because they said, in part because they said the administration was coming to the court with unclean hands. Question was the application of the unclean hands doctrine to the President in this circumstance in violation of Article 2 of the Constitution. That would be the way it would come up.
- [24:45]
B
Okay. And if one of those lower courts decided not to give the administration a benefit of the doubt because they had unclean Hands goes to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court just said, we're not even going to look at this because, yeah, we agree it was appropriately applied and off we go. I mean, unless there's. Was it. Four justices would have to say, we want to hear it to get it all the way.
- [25:02]
A
Four justices would have to. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly.
- [25:04]
B
All right, well, thank you for that, that schooling.
- [25:06]
A
And we just let off with the most boring stuff sky. Like, people are like, oh, man, what's he going to do next? Cite statutory sections to us?
- [25:16]
B
Well, I just, I'm trying to figure out what's our way out of this. I mean, the ultimate way out of this is obviously to have a different administration and a different leadership and all that. But even then, you've created thousands of and deputized thousands of people into these pseudo masked military forces. I don't know what happens to them. Do they just get decommissioned? Do they decide, this is not a big deal. We've unleashed all of this.
- [25:40]
A
This is a huge issue. This is a huge issue. So you recreate ICE as the largest law enforcement agency in the entire United States of America. You grant them impunity, with masks, et cetera, to terrorize countless American citizens and lawful residents of the United States of America. And then you, let's say you elect President Josh Shapiro, well, he's got a 50, a 60,000 strong, or however much it is, I don't know the exact number. Heavily radicalized masked law enforcement agency. What do you do with that? Well, you're going to have to.
- [26:16]
B
What do you do with all the people, whether rightfully or unrightfully, who've been detained? Do you just go let them out? I don't think. I mean, it's just a huge mess that's been created.
- [26:26]
A
It's huge. Huge mess. Huge. I mean, there are certain policy fixes you can make, like get rid of the masks. You can. Right. You can change procedures, you can diminish the size of the workforce. I mean, there are things that can be done, but what you are doing and what they're trying to do, I think with ice, almost more than any other part of the government is create a new sort of permanent, magnified part of the bureaucracy is what they're trying to do. So it's not what they're wanting to do isn't so much into the deep state as change the deep.
- [26:58]
B
Yeah. That makes you think if, if you could rewind to January 6, 2021, imagine if Trump had had this ice force, how would, how different would that day have looked, or the post. I mean, post election would have looked. We might find out after the midterms. We'll see. Okay, let's move on to another story that's been in the news a lot and kind of has different permutations. And I don't know what to call it exactly, except it feels like there is a lot of Nazi flirtation going.
- [27:31]
A
On on the right.
- [27:32]
B
Maybe it's more than flirtation.
- [27:34]
A
Oh, way more than that.
- [27:36]
B
The first story that came out, I forget how long ago now was there was a leak of a group chat of Young Republican, Young Republican National Federation officials. And despite their title, these young Republicans were mostly between the ages of 24 and 35.
- [27:50]
A
So we're not talking about grown men.
- [27:53]
B
These are not children, teenagers, or even college students. These are grown grown men. And the group chat had thousands and thousands of messages in it. I don't know entirely how many people were a part of it, but it was pretty awful. So in the group chat were statements about loving Hitler.
- [28:09]
A
Uh, and.
- [28:10]
B
And it's clear that a lot of this is done in jest, but it's really grotesque. So I love Hitler. Everyone that votes no on this particular thing should be sent to a gas chamber. There's incredibly racist remarks about African Americans. The N word is thrown around casually all over the place. There's praising of slavery. There's jokes about rape and sexual violence. There's jesting that Americans of Indian descent don't bathe properly. It just goes on and on and on. But what stood out to a lot of people was the. The Nazi rhetoric in a lot of this. And then more recently, Tucker Carlson, formerly from Fox News, now doing his own independent online news stuff, did an interview with Nick Fuentes. A lot of people hopefully don't know who this clown is, but Nick Fuentes had dinner with Donald Trump some years ago. He was in some ways a foil to Charlie Kirk. Even though they were both on the right. Charlie tried to hold up some Christian ideals and values and things like that. But Nick Fuentes is an unashamed pro.
- [29:14]
A
Nazi fan of Adolf Hitler.
- [29:16]
B
He said, I'm a fan of Adolf Hitler. So he's interviewed by Tucker Carlson, which gives him even more platform and credibility. And in his interview with Carlson, he said all kinds of outrageous things. And Carlson's taken a lot of heat because he really didn't push back much at all. He talked about how too much of America is in the hands of what he described as organized Jewry. He said he was a fan of Joseph Stalin and that I mean, how does that not warrant a further questioning by Carlson?
- [29:44]
A
Can we pause on that for a second?
- [29:46]
B
Yeah.
- [29:46]
A
He loves Hitler and he's a fan of Joseph Stalin. I love the way that. Who was it? Was it Rod Dreher called that a one man Molotov Ribbentrop pack that, you know. Anyway, Anyway. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
- [30:01]
B
I mean, what do those two figures have? I mean, they were at war against one another, right? Stalin was an ally of ours during World War II.
- [30:07]
A
They were mortal enemies.
- [30:08]
B
Yeah, they're mortal enemies. So what do they share in common? They were both very efficient at exterminating their enemies en masse.
- [30:14]
A
Right.
- [30:14]
B
So he likes Joseph Stalin. He said that he thinks the Holocaust is exaggerated. And he says when we take power, they. And he specifies Jews and non Christians need to be given the death penalty. Okay, then, last bit of fact before we open up the conversation here. In response to this, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, for those of you who forgot, Heritage foundation was the lead authors of the Project 2025 manual that is now governing a lot of the Trump administration's work. The president of the Heritage foundation came out to defend Tucker Carlson and is now facing a bunch of blowback from his own ranks saying, look, enough's enough. Like, we can't be defending defenders of Nazis. Like, this is insane. Okay, taking a step back from all of that, what the hell is going on on the maga, right? With this sense that people who espouse pro Nazi and pro Stalinist are ideas are now completely acceptable.
- [31:23]
A
So I thought you were going to say what the heck is going on with the backlash against Kevin Roberts? Because the acceptance of this kind of behavior has been going on for 10 years, Sky.
- [31:38]
B
Yeah, but don't you think it's getting.
- [31:39]
A
More and more altitude steadily increasing? Steadily increasing.
- [31:44]
B
It's always been there in the dark web and stuff, and it's kind of popped up. And then when Twitter changed all.
- [31:49]
A
No, no, no, no, no, no. Much more prominent than that. Much more.
- [31:54]
B
But the president of the Heritage foundation and Tucker Carlson are now thinking it's totally fine.
- [32:01]
A
Three years ago, the former president, not of the Heritage foundation, not a popular podcaster of the United States, Donald Trump, met with Nick Fuentes. Okay. With minimal blowback.
- [32:16]
B
Okay, I.
- [32:17]
A
Yes, minimal. Fair.
- [32:18]
B
But for some reason, Donald Trump is in his own category. And I don't know exactly why, but I feel like even some of his supporters and fans know he's not very bright and they give him a pass on all this stuff. And he came out. So I Didn't really know who Nick Fuentes was. I didn't know what his views were. He said that recently about somebody he gave a pardon to. Like he just, he plays dumb and people go, oh, it's just Donald, you know, who knows? But Tucker Carlson's built his entire career on presenting himself as not dumb, as informed. And the president of the Heritage foundation, this is a massively influential think tank. His whole reputation is we're the people writing the blueprint for Project 2025. Like we are in the know. We cannot plead ignorance here. So I don't want to let Donald Trump off the hook, but everyone else seems to let him off the hook. It's the people around him that I can't that's figure out.
- [33:17]
A
No. So, okay, let's walk through this first. There was no threshold crossed when, when Carlson interviewed Fuentes. Okay, let's just get that 1 billion percent clear. The threshold was crossed a long time ago. Okay, so Carlson has a fawning interview of Vladimir Putin, right? However bad Nick Fuentes is, and Nick Fuentes is bad bad, he is not as bad as Vladimir Putin, okay? Vladimir Putin is a, has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, okay? We have had Tucker Carlson interviewing Nazi apologist, revisionist historians. We have had Tucker Carlson involving in gross 911 conspiracies. We have had Tucker Carlson involved in some of the most gross anti Semitic kind of selective criticism and, and snarkiness towards Jews that you. I mean this has been going on for a long time, okay? And Nick Fuentes has been out there for a long time. Marjorie Taylor Greene headlined one of his conferences. When Marjorie Taylor Greene headlined his conference in 2021, JD Vance was asked to disavow her. And he was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing that.
- [34:38]
B
Well, his defense of the young Republican group chat is fascinating too. He, he basically dismiss it as, well, these are kids, these are teenagers and they shouldn't be held responsible for dumb remarks.
- [34:50]
A
And the reason why I'm so emphatic about that and I feel very passionate about this very issue is I think we're giving people too much of a pass because it's all been there and it's all been big and it's all been prominent for a long time. Hex guy in 2023. Two years ago I wrote a piece about the lost boys of the American right where I went pointed out a group text scandal after groups tech scandal. There was a, an Advisor on the DeSantis campaign that was fired after posting a video that contained the Nazi sondenrad symbol and fascist image. I mean, this has been going on and on. To me, this. This Carlson and Fuentes is just another turn of the very same wheel. The thing that's interesting to me, sky, more than the fact that this has been happening for 10 years and it keeps happening and growing and metastasizing, et cetera. Why the blowback?
- [35:48]
B
You're surprised that there's actual.
- [35:50]
A
I'm surprised. Resistance and heritage at the level of hit resistance. Okay, I'm surprised.
- [35:55]
B
So what's your excellence? Why. Why is there.
- [35:57]
A
So I think two things are coming on. I do, I do. Are some people for whom Fuentes is just a difference of kind. Okay. That they would look at everything that I said and they're like, oh, fringe. Oh, doesn't really matter. Oh, Trump didn't know who that was. Who, you know, oh, these are just young men. Oh, you know, rationalize, rationalize, rationalize. And for some people, like the Fuentest does, you know, for intangible, not maybe not even fully rational reasons, it's just like, okay, enough. Right. And if it wasn't Fuentes, it might be something else. Okay. So I do think that there are, for some people that. But there's also something else going on. And that is a lot of people, when Trump rose that, there are a couple of ways that they responded to that. One is they just sort of threw all of the standards out the window. The greater enemy is the left. Cruelty in the defense of conservatism is no vice. Decency in response to your opponents is no virtue. And they just went all in on this. But there's also another group of people who realize very quickly that there was just no way to be in this coalition and attack Donald Trump. Look at what happened to everybody who attacked Donald Trump. Look at them. They're out. They have no influence. They have no careers. They're hounded everywhere they go. In conservative world, I don't want that. I have no influence if I do that. And so they say, okay, I'm going to give Donald Trump a pass. Maybe they don't like it, maybe they're not happy about it, but I'm going to hold standards for everybody else. And. And with the hope that once this moment ends, and it will end, that they'll have kept the candle burning ideologically, they'll have kept the candle burning, you know, from an integrity and character standpoint, and they'll be able to have a GOP maybe not completely unchanged from pre Trump. No one's arguing that anymore, but a GOP that still has a recognizable moral core. And I think that what's happening now is that there are a lot of people who have that view who are now realizing that they're losing that what used to be fringe is now mainstream, and what was mainstream is now fringe. And if there's any moment, any moment at any point where they're going to have an opportunity to change this momentum, to arrest this slide, it might be now. And. And it's. It is. I also think it's rooted in. You've already seen some early stirrings of this, like the dispute over Epstein. Now, notice how that tore apart the MAGA world for. For a, you know, for a hot minute now, again, left Trump largely untouched. Very few people would go after Trump, but they'd go after Patel and they'd go after Bondi. Right. And it was a huge. A huge fight. This is another iteration, in my view, of the same thing. It is the internal divisions in MAGA that are emerging and will continue to emerge more and more as Trump becomes more of a lame duck.
- [38:59]
B
Okay, so if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that some of the pushback at the Heritage foundation, some of the pushback to Tucker Carlson, having Nick Fuentes on, isn't coming from a principled rejection of Nazi beliefs and rhetoric. It's coming from the practical reality that, oh, maybe we're losing and we need to shed these guys or distance ourselves from these fringe guys because it's not good politics.
- [39:27]
A
Well, and I would say, look, none of the people who are attacking Carlson right now are closet Nazis just making a cult. They've always had an objection to Nazism, always. But they've always done an objection to.
- [39:41]
B
Say anything objectionable about Nazism. Do you really have an objection to Nazism?
- [39:46]
A
But they've kept their powder dry, that that's the problem, because there's always the bigger issue, and then what. But what's even worse, guy? What's even worse is that not only did they keep their powder dry, some of the people who are raging right now against Carlson and Fuentes raged against friends of ours for saying this was coming, like, raged against us, raged against us, that the argument that we were making that GOP was on this path that it is so clearly on, and they successfully pushed a lot of us way out of the conversation. And not only that, they then replaced us by saying, you really should listen to Tucker. And then now it's very hard for them to say, no, don't listen to Tucker anymore. We're gonna make the same critique that we've banished people for making for 10 years.
- [40:38]
B
Yeah.
- [40:39]
A
Okay.
- [40:41]
B
As a child of the 80s, I was born in 76. A lot of my childhood was the 80s. The villains in, like, every single 80s movie were the Nazis. I mean, Indiana Jones, they're always Nazi. Even Star wars, they're basically Nazis. They're space Nazis is what they are. And so I just. It's incredible to me that there's a movement in this country that doesn't recognize Hitler and the Nazis as universally bad, that has tolerated that presence. The same movement that will criticize you or me or some of our colleagues for saying such horrible things like even undocumented citizens should have human rights. We'll get destroyed for making that kind of a comment from people who. Who don't see the moral depravity of Hitler and Nazism. And so whether it's Tucker Carlson or anyone else who's flirting with this stuff, I have written off those people as a source of any kind of moral voice. They've completely lost it in my mind. So the fact that some people are now finally, after 10 years, to use your words, who've kept their powder dry, are willing to speak up. I'm sorry, it's too late. Like, it is way too late.
- [41:58]
A
I'm going to try to hold two thoughts at once. Sky, here. Here's thought number one. A lot of this is on you guys. You are madder at us for saying that there is a Nazi problem, then you are mad at the Nazi problem. I mean, that. That's the. Yeah, you're madder at the people identified the Nazi problem than you were at. You were. Then you were at the problem itself, and then it cut. Should come as no surprise that when you're suppressing and mocking and deriding the very people who say there's a problem, guess what? You're going to allow it to grow. To use a medical analogy, if somebody comes in, says that, you know, I think that there's a tumor growing inside me, and you go, well, I'm not pro tumor, but I'm definitely anti. Chicken Little about tumors, right? And you're just crying wolf. This is Chicken Little. No, no, it's there. No, you're crying wolf. No, no, it's there and then it's there, and then they finally acknowledge it. When it's stage four, then, yeah, I think it's appropriate to say a lot of this is on you guys. But at the same time, once they acknowledge it and once they act, then also we should be going, let's go get them. Let's get them. Because the stakes are way too high to just sort of say, well, you should have been there before. And because you weren't there before, you know, good luck.
- [43:22]
B
Yeah.
- [43:23]
A
No, I think the stakes are just too high. Maybe the comparison is like, you know, an altar calls. I've never seen a church when somebody's coming down the altar. That someone smacks the person on the way to the altar with their. With a rolled up church bulletin saying, why didn't you do this five months ago? Right. Maybe they should have. Of course. Of course they should have. Right. But they're there now. They're there now and they're leveling both barrels at Nazism and anti Semitism. And I'm just, I'm just. If you're going to level both barrels at Nazis, I'm team you.
- [43:56]
B
Well, okay, to that degree, yeah. If someone is repenting having not said anything for the last 10 years and now they're finally speaking up, I agree. I'm glad they're speaking up. But that doesn't mean. If they're doing it because they're trying to revive their movement or to gain moral credibility for the future. I'm sorry, I'm not, I'm not there to follow you. You've shown me you do not have the moral compass to lead this country, let alone a classroom. At that point, you shouldn't be leading anything if you can't see Nazism as intrinsically bad and need to be called out. Let's go back to the group chat stuff because I don't obviously know any of the people that were involved in that group chat, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I'm going to guess that none of them are actually Nazis. And yet they found this an acceptable form of humor. Not just the Nazi rhetoric, but all of the racist stuff that they put in there. This was just okay. And again, they're not teenagers. These aren't kids who are do dumb things and deserve to grow up and have another chance at it. These are grown men. Is this a case of the fish rotting from the head down? Like, you can go back, was it 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlotte and the neo Nazis, the Jews will not replace us and all that stuff. And Donald Trump saying, hey, there were very fine people on all sides and is it a case where, okay, if this kind of rhetoric is acceptable from the president all through the movement, then it's fine for us to do it? Too and to joke about it and it's no big deal. And a thought is we will never face a consequence for this. Is that what's driving this kind of stuff?
- [45:35]
A
Well, yeah, there's a few things. Kind of the fish rotting from the head down is, I think 100% correct. And let's put a pin in that and come back to that because I think that's so, so, so important. But there is another thing that is what is the right right now? And if the right is anything, it's just anti left. So Ben Shapiro said this very well to Ezra Klein. Ezra interviewed him not long ago. He goes, look, the right is not conservative. Stop thinking of it as conservative. He said, think of it as anti left. That's what it is now. And I agree with Ben. I think that that is if you're going to look at sort of it's pro Trump and it's also anti left and that's very, very, very different from being conservative. Those two things are not the same thing. So if you're in an instinctively oppositional stance towards your opponent instinct, you don't what they care about, you don't care about what they hate. You love like, and, and if the left is centering itself around say anti racism, anti fascism, you know, etc. Now the traditional conservative critique is, wait, you don't own the anti fascist lane. You don't own the anti racist lane. We're against fascism, we're against racism. But the more effective way to be against fascism and racism is that this right, right. We don't say, well, the left is against racism and fascism. Racism and fascism suddenly seem more interesting. But that's kind of the way that these things have gone. It's so instinctively oppositional. And also this is the fish rotting from the head down cruel that it's going to be drawn to exactly this kind of conduct. It's, it's predictable as night following day and going back to the fish rotting from the head down. I'll just say something that until roughly November 2016, I would don't know of a single evangelical who would disagree with, and that is leaders. The character of the leader defines the character of the movement. I don't know who would disagree with that.
- [47:39]
B
I think the Southern Baptist passed a resolution about that some years ago when it came to politics and political leaders. Yeah, yeah.
- [47:45]
A
So if you take a position that I'm going to preserve, try to preserve the character of the movement while sacrificing any commitment to character on the part of the leader of the movement, you're going to lose that a hundred times out of a hundred. And that's the fundamental miscalculation that a lot of people made in staying with Trump. A lot of them thought, I can preserve something virtuous and good. I can do this. Some. Some remaining decency and virtue. I can do this. I can do this without impacting and Trump. Now, that doesn't mean that they can't preserve any decency. Sure, absolutely. You can. You can create islands of sanity, for example, in a sea of madness, you can create islands of sanity, but the sea is still going to be the sea because of what the leader, who the leader is. And so this sort of bargain that people made where they thought they could abandon the movement leadership to very cruel, amoral man, a depraved man, really, and then believe that the movement as a whole could maintain its hold in connection to integrity and virtue through the strength of lesser figures, trying to keep that alive, that's just. It's impossible. It was never going to work.
- [49:09]
B
Okay, in the minutes we have left, that's a good transition into a final topic I want to cover, and that is the future, not just of the Republican Party or the movement on the right, but also the Democratic Party. So, as we mentioned at the beginning, we couldn't record last week. We're recording this on Friday, November 7th. Let's start with the Republican Party, since that's what we've been talking about. Trump's not going to be around forever, but his fingerprints are gonna linger on this party and this movement. I don't know if you saw, but there's this photograph that came out from the Oval Office yesterday of somebody who had a medical emergency, I think, collapsed in the Oval Office. And everyone in the frame of the photograph is rushing over to assist the person, and the President is standing behind the Resolute desk looking quite resolute. He's just standing there, oblivious to the human need. Literally.
- [50:00]
A
Right.
- [50:01]
B
Yeah.
- [50:01]
A
They're elevating his legs. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's a scary moment thing, but.
- [50:06]
B
It captures a lot of the way people feel about Donald Trump in a single frame.
- [50:11]
A
It's.
- [50:12]
B
He doesn't care what's going on in the country. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about inflation. He doesn't care about. He's tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build himself a ballroom. He's flirting with dictators and getting seven four sevens gifted to him by, you know, funders of Hamas, and on and on. It's just like he's oblivious. But first question on that side of the aisle, do you have any thoughts now that we're a year into this presidency of what's going to come next?
- [50:39]
A
So first, I hesitate to predict because if you were going to ask me four months ago what's next, I would not have thought arm airstrikes against random Venezuela, alleged Venezuelan drug boats, possible invasion of Venezuela. Now adding to that possible invasion of Nigeria. Like that was not on my radar screen at all. Okay, so, so some of that, some of this stuff can be very, very unpredictable. I mean, I would have not been shocked if there'd been airstrikes, say in Mexico against cartels based on what he said. But the launching of this, this Venezuelan campaign now. So who knows what the future holds. But here's what I think. Here's one thing that I'm worried about. I'm worried about election integrity and I'm worried about the use of ICE and other law enforcement assets as sort of poll watchers. Poll monitors the use of federal or an abuse of federal law enforcement and federal military assets across the United States to, quote, unquote, monitor the election. Creating deterrence for people to show up to the polls is one thing that I'm worried about. But you know, it's funny because at some point you just, there's no longer any need to say if Trump wins, he might to sort of try to raise the alarm. It's now Trump has won and he is. And what the is, is, is he's done multiple things worth impeachment already. Multiple things.
- [52:17]
B
But there's no chance that's going to happen.
- [52:19]
A
And there's no chance, right?
- [52:21]
B
Yeah.
- [52:21]
A
And there, I mean, if there is a wave, I mean a wave that blows us all away and it's, it's size and scope and it would shock us all and you actually end up with V2, V2 proof majorities, then it would be back on the table. But until something like that, that has no, I mean, but even in the.
- [52:40]
B
Best foreseeable outcome in 2010, 86 for the Democrats, that's not in the cards.
- [52:45]
A
They can't get that.
- [52:46]
B
Speaking of the Democrats, this earlier this week, there were some off cycle elections, most popularly the mayor election, mayoral election in New York City. There were some other governors that were elected. The referendum in California for redistricting. And we don't have to get in all those details. The headlines are enough. It was a massive night for the Democratic Party, seen as a repudiation of the Trump administration. I'm Concerned that the Democrats might just be learning the exact same lesson that they learned in 2018 and 2022, which is the country doesn't like Donald Trump and we don't have to change anything. We're going to get swept back into power just by not being Trump. Do you see any new leadership emerging from the Democrats that would not just be an anti Trump message, but actually take the Democratic Party into some positive new territory?
- [53:45]
A
I think Mamdani got way too much attention. I think he gets way too much attention and for a very good reason. There's a good reason why I think that in not to, not to take anything from the way in which he worked very hard in his campaign, the way in which he was, you know, somebody who came across, even though I really dislike almost all of the guy's policies and I'm very worried about his, I'm very worried that he's actually anti Semitic. He was very sunny in his disposition. He was very disarming. He was very effective and neutralizing some of these attacks against him because he was disarming. I'm not saying he did nothing to win, but what I am saying, in many ways he's an accidental mayor. You had the mayor of New York who was indicted and then struck a weird deal with the Trump administration that ended his political career, then here and then who does the establishment Democratic Party turn to to come rescue New York? Andrew freaking Cuomo, you know, a guy who botched Covid, who resigned after sex scandals, sexual harassment scandals. And that's who Mom Dan, Mom Donnie is running against and he wins by like 8 or 9. So it's important. The mayor of the New York is an important office, there's no question about it. But I think it's a very, very unique one off type of situation.
- [55:06]
B
Yeah, but even if you put aside those political on the ground realities, the fact that a democratic socialist like Mom Dumi and the, the things he's proposing turned out to be quite popular to New York voters, doesn't tell me much about the Democratic Party nationally. Because, no, I don't think the primary obstacle that the Democrats are facing in much of the country, and this is going to sound strange, I don't think they're primarily economic. The Biden administration. I heard a statistic recently said that 80% of the funding that was passed through the Biden administration benefited rural white Americans in red states. And yet they didn't vote for the guy anyway or Kamala Harris. Right. So I'm not trying to dismiss the importance of inflation and Cost of living, all these real problems that Americans are facing. But mom, Dhommi, it's okay. But it's New York City. That doesn't tell me anything about how they win Georgia or Arizona or Colorado.
- [56:02]
A
Exactly. And that's why I think we're giving way too much oxygen to the Mamdani race here. We should be giving them a lot more oxygen to New Jersey and Virginia. And this goes directly to your point, Sky. The candidates the Democrats selected to run in New Jersey and Virginia are not two people, Cheryl and Spanberger, who come across as hyper woke 2019 era democrats. They are national. They have a strong national security background. They're squarely within the moderate that. They're squarely within the, the middle of the Democratic Party. They're not, they're not extreme left. This is. And they're, they're not trying to build cults of personality. And then whether it's, this is a classic way that a political party zags away from the, from an unpopular zeitgeist to the moment is by selecting very different candidates than say, a Donald Trump or even some of the candidates who failed in the past. And so I think that the Spanberger and Sheryl victories, and not just the nature of their candidacies, but also the size of their victory, is much more instructive than Mamdani. They both won, they won in New Jersey and Virginia. And Virginia is blue, but it's purplish blue. And she won by 16 or so points. That's a rout.
- [57:30]
B
What about this theory? Maybe this is some link between Mamdani and these other races that you're talking about. I think when a lot of Americans look at the current Republican Party under Donald Trump's leadership, it's marked by three qualities. Cruelty, incompetence, and corruption. And when you have candidates to come along, I don't care what party they're in, but when you have candidates come along and they show competence and kindness and some integrity, most Americans are like, yes, thank you. We will take that. And you can disagree with Mondami's proposals and ideas, but he did come across as kind, he did come across as competent, and he doesn't stink of corruption like the other candidates in that race did.
- [58:13]
A
Right? Yeah.
- [58:14]
B
And same thing with these other Democratic winners in New Jersey and Virginia. Is that the winning formula here? I mean, you have to customize policies to different states and cities and parts of the country. But if the Democrats can come across as kind, including to their opponents and not as elitists who look down their Nose. Somebody's recently said that the Republicans come across as crazy, but the Democrats come across as preachy.
- [58:40]
A
You're right.
- [58:41]
B
That arrogance. So I wonder if just kindness and competency and integrity is enough to win against MAGA in a lot of these places.
- [58:52]
A
I, I actually think that it is. I would feel better those guy. Although I, I feel like the Spanberger Cheryl is a good way for Democrats to turn the page. I'd feel better if Jay Jones lost. The fact that Jay Jones won his race much narrower than Abigail Spanberg. And Jones, for those who don't know, is the. The Democratic nominee for Attorney general who was caught on text messages wishing death on his political opponents and their children. And their children.
- [59:20]
B
Yeah, there's, there's your cruelty piece. Yeah.
- [59:23]
A
Yeah. And he won.
- [59:24]
B
Yeah.
- [59:24]
A
And he won. Now he won by much narrower margin. So rational Democrats should look at that and say, you know, it's a one good way to diminish our margin for error is to wish death on our opponents and to be Trumpian in our, you know, the way in which we treat other people. Hopefully that's the takeaway. But I was very discouraged that he won anyway because I don't think we're going to really ever turn the page on this moment until it is a very consistent and clear message from both sides of the aisle that cruelty is completely, and, and cruelty, especially cruelty. The point of wishing death on people is so far beyond the pale. You can't have a career in public life when you do that.
- [60:01]
B
But it's work so well for Donald Trump.
- [60:03]
A
I mean, I mean, it's just so discouraging. It's so discouraging that that wasn't disqualifying. Sky.
- [60:12]
B
Amen. All right, David. Well, I'm glad we were able to, to get this in this week. Thank you for making that work and for your insights, both helping me understand the, the legal dynamics of what's going on with all the immigration stuff. And then we can lament the cruelty and flirtation, more than flirtation with. With Nazi ideas. But maybe there's a light at the end of this tunnel coming. We'll see. Thanks for being with me again.
- [60:36]
A
Yeah. Amen. Thanks, Sky. Always enjoy it.
- [60:41]
B
French Friday is a production of Holy Post Media featuring David French and me, Sky Giatani. Music and theme song by Phil Vischer. This show is made possible by Holy Post patrons. To find out how you can become a Holy Post patron and to find more common good Christian content, go to holypost.com.