Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty Armstrong.
Speaker 2: And Jettie and he Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3: President now claiming quote some progress in the effort to
Speaker 3: end the war in Ukraine, saying he thinks Putin quote
Speaker 3: has had enough, but Putin giving no indications Russia is
Speaker 3: any closer to a ceasefire. President Trump now saying he
Speaker 3: will leave it up to Ukraine and Russia to negotiate
Speaker 3: for now.
Speaker 2: What about the Putin call? Remember we had a clip
Speaker 2: of that? What was that about? Show years ago? Show
Speaker 2: the Putin call? That's from like eight years ago, So
Speaker 2: I don't remember that at the very beginning of Trump one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: any who, Trump was on the phone with Vladimir Putin
Speaker 2: for about two hours yesterday, and the takeaway seems to
Speaker 2: be I'm gonna let them work it out. Which where
Speaker 2: does that leave things? It leaves it as a win
Speaker 2: for Putin. I think yes, although the ball is in
Speaker 2: Trump's court because he has not said, at least as
Speaker 2: of yet, Okay, if you're going to let them work
Speaker 2: that out, does that mean them working it out while
Speaker 2: we continue to give a tremendous amount of aid, intelligence
Speaker 2: aid maybe being the most important to Ukraine or not,
Speaker 2: Because if it's or not, it's a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like those of us who would like to
Speaker 4: see the US backing Ukraine are digging through about our
Speaker 4: fifteenth pile of manure looking for the pony in Trump's negotiations,
Speaker 4: just this. Maybe he's got this up his sleeve, you know,
Speaker 4: feeling or hope.
Speaker 2: It's just it's been dashed over and over again. Well,
Speaker 2: he does have to go one way or the other.
Speaker 2: We are either going to continue to back Ukraine the
Speaker 2: way we have for three years or not. And if
Speaker 2: we're not, that's a major change. I think it's more
Speaker 2: likely that one happens. Will he announce it or will
Speaker 2: it will it just become evident at some point, I
Speaker 2: don't know, after this period of Zelensky in Ukraine and
Speaker 2: Europe doing everything conceivable conceivable to make.
Speaker 4: It clear we want peace too, We're with you on this,
Speaker 4: and putin never giving a single sign that he has.
Speaker 2: Any interest in Trump's piece too.
Speaker 4: No, if it if the US policy becomes well and
Speaker 4: you all are on your own, we're not going to
Speaker 4: support a Ukraine well.
Speaker 2: Then we've but it's not a nothing we've cided with
Speaker 2: right now. In my opinion, I know one hundred that's
Speaker 2: exactly my point. Yeah, And what seemed to be the
Speaker 2: lean is indeed coming true. It was it was less
Speaker 2: than Putin showing you wasn't interested in peace right now.
Speaker 2: He gave Trump a long lecture about why Ukraine belongs
Speaker 2: to Russia, and he said this will not end until
Speaker 2: the underlying problems are solved. Well, the underlying problems will
Speaker 2: not be solved until he has Ukraine correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: As Rich Lowry writes in The National Review, the play
Speaker 4: for the Kremlin is obvious here. It wants to keep
Speaker 4: pinching ahead with territorial gains, and if it continues to
Speaker 4: string along the negotiations, has to hope that Trump tires
Speaker 4: of the whole thing and cuts off USA to Ukraine.
Speaker 4: That would reward Putin's intransigent with an important diplomatic victory
Speaker 4: is split between the US and Europe and a chance
Speaker 4: to make major advances against an increasingly hard pressed Ukraine.
Speaker 4: And the only reference really to Trump being tired of
Speaker 4: Putin and understanding that he's being played was that reference
Speaker 4: to Putin's tapping me along.
Speaker 2: But I mean to.
Speaker 4: Come out of the call yesterday and say, yeah, I
Speaker 4: think we made progress.
Speaker 2: I don't know who that is.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: Jd Vance presented it as as well, if you guys
Speaker 2: aren't interested, then hey, we're out. As if that is
Speaker 2: a actually a neutral position. That is not a neutral position,
Speaker 2: that's a taking the side of Russian position. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if they're just trying, if they're trying to
Speaker 2: fool people by presenting it is like we're just staying
Speaker 2: neutral on this or what. So the ball is first off,
Speaker 2: I think in Trump's court, but then absolutely in Europe's
Speaker 2: court as they got to figure out what to do.
Speaker 2: So they had a big meeting over the weekend of
Speaker 2: European leaders with a couple of interesting things that came
Speaker 2: out of it. A big defense meeting of the Germany,
Speaker 2: the big people Germany, Britain, France, poland a couple of things.
Speaker 2: They announced. Germany is going to lift their prohibition on
Speaker 2: nuclear energy that they've had since World War Two, so
Speaker 2: they are going to, like France, start using nuclear energy
Speaker 2: so that they don't have to buy energy from Russia.
Speaker 2: So that's a pretty big deal economically for Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they a so announced in that meeting that Russia will
Speaker 2: does not present NATO a dilemma in five years like
Speaker 2: had previously been thought if the war were to end soon,
Speaker 2: but could within a year, like they could be back
Speaker 2: up to speed enough within a year to present NATO
Speaker 2: a real dilemma of what do we do now? If
Speaker 2: they move on Estonia, they would be strong enough. That's
Speaker 2: what the European countries announced over the weekend. And then
Speaker 2: I really liked this quote that came out of it.
Speaker 2: I think from the leader of Poland. Russia has been
Speaker 2: playing hockey for years. We are not going to figure
Speaker 2: skate our way out of this.
Speaker 4: Oh that's some good ice sport metaphor slinging there, sir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thatam well done. That went with also one of
Speaker 2: the leaders saying the years of two percent funding of
Speaker 2: our military are over. It's going to have to be
Speaker 2: more like five percent. Yeah.
Speaker 4: There are days I wish we had unlimited time for
Speaker 4: this sort of thing because it's so interesting.
Speaker 2: I have all sorts of interesting.
Speaker 4: Well I suppose you all will be the judge of
Speaker 4: that when I delivered it, but I found it really
Speaker 4: really intriguing analysis of Europe and everything that's wrong with it.
Speaker 4: I think the Russia attack on Ukraine following the annexation
Speaker 4: of Crimea, and the attack on Georgia and everything else
Speaker 4: has has.
Speaker 2: And Germany continuing to buy oil from Russia after that happened,
Speaker 2: and all those kinds of things, well, right, I think
Speaker 2: it's finally gotten to the point that it's shaken the dopey,
Speaker 2: dopey Euros out of their torpor, their their their sleepiness,
Speaker 2: their fantasy land that they've been living in for the
Speaker 2: past a bunch of years after you know, the US
Speaker 2: security umbrella and enabled them to invest vast sums of
Speaker 2: money into welfare states and socialism and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: And I would I.
Speaker 4: Would like to issue a hammering indictment against them for
Speaker 4: all of that crap.
Speaker 2: But I think they're right about Russia and Ukraine. We're
Speaker 2: not going to figure skate our way out of this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that. Here's the takeaway.
Speaker 4: And this was going to be the takeaway after I
Speaker 4: built a case over many, many minutes, but I'll give
Speaker 4: you the takeaway. We need to work every day as
Speaker 4: a country to not become Europe.
Speaker 2: And there are a couple of examples of a.
Speaker 4: Great piece by Walter Russell Mead about why democracy is
Speaker 4: in retreat, and he cites several cases in Europe about
Speaker 4: anybody who does not go along with the very very
Speaker 4: mainstream view of who ought to get elected and what
Speaker 4: policies ought to be passed is decried as undemocratic and dangerous,
Speaker 4: like the AfD party in Germany. And I could go
Speaker 4: into detail on that. The more I learned, the more
Speaker 4: interested I get. But their definition of democracy is the
Speaker 4: results I want, and anything that challenges that is swept aside.
Speaker 4: Like the AfD ought to be in an alliance with
Speaker 4: the party that won the most seats. It's obvious the
Speaker 4: efforts to keep them out because of a few crack
Speaker 4: pots and being a little soft on Russia or whatever
Speaker 4: is just it's twisting the German political system into knots
Speaker 4: were sucsessed with it.
Speaker 2: The men declared a terrorist organization or whatever so people
Speaker 2: can listen to their phone calls and read their emails.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, but actually, as long as we're talking about
Speaker 4: this is let me click over.
Speaker 2: I think it's right there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So last week the German government officially designated the
Speaker 4: opposition party AfD as a confirmed extremist organization. The announcement
Speaker 4: came from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,
Speaker 4: their domestic intelligence agency, blah blah blah. Then on Wednesday
Speaker 4: they abruptly withdrew the extremist label. They will now monitor
Speaker 4: the party only as a suspected case, which still allows
Speaker 4: some surveillance in a way Americans would find repugnant, but
Speaker 4: under much stricter judicial oversight. And somebody leaked the report
Speaker 4: and it reveals that the evidence against the AfD consisted
Speaker 4: not of plans for violence or insurrection, but just controversial
Speaker 4: rhetoric and deeply nationalist views, none of which should have
Speaker 4: triggered that designation. So it was the quote unquote mainstream
Speaker 4: powers that be trying to label as extremist anybody who
Speaker 4: dared shake their hold on power, which is exactly what
Speaker 4: I was driving at. Their definition of democracy is democracy
Speaker 4: with the right results, and that's terrible. The other thing
Speaker 4: I really wanted to talk about is the Wall Street
Speaker 4: Journal had a great piece about how huge tech is
Speaker 4: in the world economy right now, technology in general, and
Speaker 4: how tiny.
Speaker 2: Europe's share of it is.
Speaker 4: The EU rivals, I mean, it's it's in the same
Speaker 4: weight class more or less. If you take it as
Speaker 4: a whole, the US economy and the Chinese economy, it's
Speaker 4: a juggernaut. But you want to talk tech, Oh, it's sad,
Speaker 4: it's pathetic. Apple's market value is bigger than the entire
Speaker 4: German stock market, for instance. There's no Google, there's no Amazon,
Speaker 4: there's no Meta. In Europe, there's nothing even slightly close.
Speaker 4: And this Journal article goes into depth and has a
Speaker 4: bunch of different examples of native born tech people, German
Speaker 4: tech people who brought what they learned back from Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley to Europe and were immediately crushed by strict labor laws,
Speaker 4: a risk averse business culture, suffocating regulations, smaller pool of
Speaker 4: venture capital, lackluster economic growth, no demographic growth, and said no,
Speaker 4: and back to California they went, or other places. Yeah
Speaker 4: and so, and you know that list. I'm going to
Speaker 4: hit it one more time and we freemar marketers. So
Speaker 4: hold old dragon fans. I know we're sad. And then
Speaker 4: we ought to have industrial planning in tariffs and the
Speaker 4: rest of it. But Europe is crushed by a timid
Speaker 4: and risk averse business culture, strict labor laws, suffocating regulations,
Speaker 4: smaller pool of venture capital, and lackluster economic growth.
Speaker 2: Don't become Europe.
Speaker 4: That's what we as a country need to repeat to
Speaker 4: ourselves every morning. You gotta make your bed. It's a
Speaker 4: small act of discipline and positive something or other. I
Speaker 4: believe in it very much, and say, let's not become
Speaker 4: Europe today.
Speaker 2: Like when you get up in the morning, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be a good person today or whatever your mantra is, right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do kindness, whatever, do God's will today
Speaker 2: and stay positive. Let's not become Europe today.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're going to build a utopia through a million regulation.
Speaker 2: Yes. Hour two. I'll get into a little of what
Speaker 2: I pulled out of the first part of Jake Tapper's
Speaker 2: book that I started reading last night when I was
Speaker 2: in bed again unintentionally hilarious, along with some interesting nuggets
Speaker 2: about what was going on there. It's the biggest failure
Speaker 2: of media in our nation's history, and it should not
Speaker 2: just disappear as a minor thing. Luckily it has not
Speaker 2: been for at least the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 6: Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The
Speaker 6: Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2: So I watched the Minecraft movie over the weekend with
Speaker 2: my son Henry, and I was about to talk about it,
Speaker 2: and I thought I should look up a little of
Speaker 2: how successful this movie was to back up my premise,
Speaker 2: and I googled it first. Then I remembered what you
Speaker 2: keep saying, No, you got to use the chat GP two.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get out of a habit of googling
Speaker 2: and go to chat GPT. The answer I got on
Speaker 2: chat GPT about I just asked chat GPT, was the
Speaker 2: Minecraft movie a financial success? It's answer so much better
Speaker 2: and thorough than googling it, I mean, not even close.
Speaker 2: So I gotta get out of the habit of googling. Anyway,
Speaker 2: a Minecraft movie has made almost a billion dollars worldwide
Speaker 2: after a budget to make it of only one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million dollars, which I gotta believe all of
Speaker 2: the filming of the acting of that movie could have
Speaker 2: been done in an afternoon probably. I mean, there wasn't
Speaker 2: much to it, and it was all so much was
Speaker 2: green screen. It was all CGI stuff and everything like that.
Speaker 2: And like I mentioned, Jack Black, what an interesting dude.
Speaker 2: I don't know is he married or not. I've seen
Speaker 2: him in various interviews. He's certainly not trying to impress chicks.
Speaker 2: He wears ill fitting clothes, he doesn't wash his face
Speaker 2: or coma's hair. He rolls in, does his line's brilliantly
Speaker 2: because he's really good, and and uh collects his money
Speaker 2: and goes home. What an interesting thing that is? What
Speaker 2: movie star has never wanted to care how they look?
Speaker 2: Like Jack Black, he cames getting fatter and greasier anyway.
Speaker 2: I mean, you ain't gonna be fat if you want,
Speaker 2: maybe you think that's part of your appeal. You can
Speaker 2: wash your face AnyWho. The Minecraft movie, first of all,
Speaker 2: way better than I expected it to be. I thought
Speaker 2: it was. It was only an hour forty five, but
Speaker 2: I thought, uh, I thought this is gonna be kind
Speaker 2: of tough to sit through. And it was quite entertaining,
Speaker 2: pretty dang funny by the end it had it reminded
Speaker 2: me of like all your Lord of the Rings movies. Okay,
Speaker 2: another giant fight sequence. I just I can't do fight
Speaker 2: sequences like a lot of people can, apparently endlessly. I
Speaker 2: get it. But my main takeaway was, and if I
Speaker 2: was rich, I would start if like really like Elon
Speaker 2: rich I would come up with this idea today. It
Speaker 2: was basically a series of popular memes that young people
Speaker 2: get strung together so that everybody could laugh together about Hey,
Speaker 2: I get this meme and feel part of something. That's
Speaker 2: what it seemed like to me. And I'll bet you
Speaker 2: could put one of those out once a month of
Speaker 2: just whatever the most recent hot memes were, right, make
Speaker 2: it like ninety minutes long. It's just a series of
Speaker 2: meme jokes that every teenager gets and things to the hilarious,
Speaker 2: and it would be super popular because that's basically what
Speaker 2: the Minecraft movie was. So just a recognition slash belonging fest, yeah,
Speaker 2: because other things aren't really working, but partially because this
Speaker 2: is a reason to be together in the theater. It
Speaker 2: is fun to recognize the memes together. It was clear
Speaker 2: from my older son when he went and saw it
Speaker 2: in the theater that that was a lot of the
Speaker 2: appeal was all these inside jokes that they get and
Speaker 2: laugh at, and it's fun to see him in a group.
Speaker 2: I think this is a way to rescue movies. It's
Speaker 2: gonna kill old time movies. But like just I don't know,
Speaker 2: the most popular memes put together ninety minutes with a
Speaker 2: loose script. I think that would right. Somebody steal that
Speaker 2: idea and make it work.
Speaker 4: Well, it's either like irony or a perpetual motion machine
Speaker 4: or something that online memes. The enjoyment of online memes together, Yeah,
Speaker 4: in a room might convince kids, hey, this is really fun.
Speaker 2: Wow, good point. Hello, But Mike constantly, my son would saying,
Speaker 2: I know you don't get that, but to to various
Speaker 2: things that were happening, characters and lines and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: because they're here today. I mean, you could have had
Speaker 2: a movie where the Hawktua girl was, you know, a
Speaker 2: co star there for a couple of coffee. Oh please, don't.
Speaker 4: You and people would have go fought with laughter though
Speaker 4: you know they mean studios. Yes, oh yes, now you
Speaker 4: gotta start producing these. This is your ten million dollar idea.
Speaker 2: It's fine. I thought, I'll get another co host. I
Speaker 2: thought of Friday Night. I thought, this is actu brilliant idea.
Speaker 2: It would just take a lot of money to get
Speaker 2: a going. You know, you'd have to pay for rights,
Speaker 2: but you'd have lawyers to do that. They'd be easy. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 2: that's a great idea. Just your monthly meme cinema. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and all the teenagers get together and feel cooler and
Speaker 2: smarter than the rest of us because they get all
Speaker 2: the jokes right. Yeah. We bought it though, cost twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: So Minecraft's available at home now for streaming, but it
Speaker 2: was twenty bucks to in it.
Speaker 4: I think it's got about a six month run. Your idea,
Speaker 4: oh really, don't like, don't invest too heavily, thinking next
Speaker 4: year will be even bigger.
Speaker 6: Trust arm strong, the armstrong and Getty shouts.
Speaker 2: My president decides to do something with an executive order
Speaker 2: or whatever often that they promised on the campaign trail,
Speaker 2: their voters get all excited, Yay, they did it day
Speaker 2: one like they promised, And then then I get an
Speaker 2: alert on my phone. Some judge somewhere I've never heard
Speaker 2: of it said no, you can't do that, and then
Speaker 2: it stops, and everybody's like groans, like, oh, they can
Speaker 2: do that, and it keeps happening over and over again.
Speaker 2: And do we want that system to continue that way
Speaker 2: or not? Is part of what the Supreme Court was
Speaker 2: arguing about yesterday. And as one of the justices said,
Speaker 2: there are six hundred some federal judges and while I
Speaker 2: do not question their motives. Sometimes they are wrong, so
Speaker 2: do we want them to be able to hold up
Speaker 2: the whole country?
Speaker 4: Let us discuss the very interesting and multifaceted oral arguments
Speaker 4: yesterday before the Supreme Court with Tim Sandefer, vice president
Speaker 4: for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, among other auspicious titles,
Speaker 4: author of eight books, including most recently Freedom's Theories. How
Speaker 4: Isabelle Patterson, Rosewilder and Ein Rand found Liberty in Age
Speaker 4: of Darkness?
Speaker 2: I've recommended it many times. It's terrific. Tim. How are you, sir?
Speaker 2: Just great?
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: Guys published poet, gotta throw that in there. True, Yes,
Speaker 2: a polymath as they say.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Tim, So, ostensibly everyone's talking about that we are
Speaker 4: going to discuss birthright citizenship in front of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: and that did come up. But would you agree that
Speaker 4: the more significant discussion was about nationwide injunctions by individual
Speaker 4: federal judges. Oh?
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely. That was the focus of the argument, and
Speaker 5: it was a very interesting argument. But I don't think
Speaker 5: that it's a hard question. I think the answer is
Speaker 5: obviously nationwide injunctions are perfectly fine. They're the ordinary way
Speaker 5: of doing business in the courts, and people who complain
Speaker 5: about them either don't understand the system or are trying
Speaker 5: to get away with something illegal.
Speaker 2: Yeah I don't. I don't always like that it happened,
Speaker 2: but I can't see what the alternative would be. As
Speaker 2: somebody pointed out, so you're gonna let me. I guess
Speaker 2: it was you that pointed it out yesterday in Twitter.
Speaker 2: The idea that so every time a president does something,
Speaker 2: it's got to work its way all the way through
Speaker 2: the courts up to the Supreme Court, and then a
Speaker 2: decision by the Supreme Court before the Supreme Court might
Speaker 2: say sometimes nine nothing, you can't do that.
Speaker 5: And during that whole period of time, the government is
Speaker 5: still doing the illegal thing.
Speaker 2: Right right. Wow.
Speaker 4: So clearly it's two to one for a judicial takeover
Speaker 4: of the government.
Speaker 2: But I will stand up for liberty.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Is there no middle ground? Has got to be three
Speaker 2: judge panel and not a single ya who in a
Speaker 2: rural Tennessee.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think. I think having a single unit yae
Speaker 5: who in rural Tennessee is perfectly fine because that's what
Speaker 5: the appellate process is sort of. That's why you appeal cases.
Speaker 5: And by the way, that's why you should avoid appointing
Speaker 5: yahoos to the federal bench. Might mention that too. The argument,
Speaker 5: the argument against nationwide injunctions always seems to boil down to, well,
Speaker 5: this is a democracy and the majority should always get
Speaker 5: what it wants. And the answer to that is no where.
Speaker 5: What happened to all of my friends who used to say,
Speaker 5: this is a republic, not a democracy. The whole point
Speaker 5: of our system is that the majority has to act lawfully,
Speaker 5: and if it acts unlawfully, I can go in front
Speaker 5: of a judge and get that give an order from
Speaker 5: that judge prohibiting the government from violating my rights. And
Speaker 5: the idea that we should do this piece meal, that
Speaker 5: only a judge down here, that his order only applies there. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: the government can do illegal things to everybody else in
Speaker 5: the country until the case reaches the US Supreme Court
Speaker 5: makes no sense at all.
Speaker 4: The underlying theme here being folks, that what we really
Speaker 4: need to fear is the power of the government in
Speaker 4: this country. That's kind of the idea of forming it.
Speaker 4: So there's no question that these nationwide injunctions were relatively
Speaker 4: or practically completely unknown for one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 4: Then there were a handful of them, and the number
Speaker 4: of them is now skyrots.
Speaker 2: Every day. It seems like on my phone I see
Speaker 2: a judge jumped in somewhere.
Speaker 5: Actually, right, I actually don't think that that's true. I
Speaker 5: think that what happened was we just started calling them
Speaker 5: by a different name. You know, there were been injunction
Speaker 5: injunctions against unconstitutional government actions since before there was a constitution.
Speaker 5: One of the points that was brought up during the
Speaker 5: arguments was that British judges used to do this before
Speaker 5: the American Revolution, and that was considered perfectly legitimate. It's
Speaker 5: just that nowadays we call the nation right injunctions or
Speaker 5: we have some judges who write sloppily and don't explain
Speaker 5: what they're actually saying or something. And okay, that's a problem,
Speaker 5: I suppose. But the idea that you should limit the
Speaker 5: injunction power of federal courts is what that is is
Speaker 5: that's open door to the majority violating individual rights on
Speaker 5: a scale that I mean, they already do it, but
Speaker 5: you can imagine what it would be if we took
Speaker 5: away one of the most important protections for individual rights
Speaker 5: in this country, which is getting an injunction from our
Speaker 5: federal court. To protect your freedom, and it's insane.
Speaker 2: So I didn't want to get to this part too
Speaker 2: fast because you're a lawyer, and this part can't be
Speaker 2: fixed with the law. It seems to me that we've
Speaker 2: got a cultural problem in that presidents are way more
Speaker 2: likely than they used to be to want to challenge
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, either to like legitimately they don't think
Speaker 2: the law is correct, or they don't care if they're wrong.
Speaker 2: They just want to get the political credit for trying.
Speaker 2: And perhaps I don't know this, but it seems like
Speaker 2: a likely response. The six hundred some federal judges out there,
Speaker 2: there's a lot more of them who are willing to
Speaker 2: let their politics get ahead of their judge reasoning and
Speaker 2: jump in and stop somebody they hate.
Speaker 5: Yes, you're absolutely right about that, and especially the thing
Speaker 5: about the President and Congress being willing to do things
Speaker 5: that they know are unconstitutional because they know that the
Speaker 5: judges are going to strike it down and they can
Speaker 5: blame the judges and say, oh, those evil activist judges,
Speaker 5: or they can get away with their unconstitutional things. So
Speaker 5: it's win when if you want to do something unconstitutional,
Speaker 5: and honestly, every president's done this to some degree. Obviously,
Speaker 5: Franklin Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: Did this a lot.
Speaker 5: But the one that I always six in my memory
Speaker 5: is George W. Bush when he signed the McCain fine
Speaker 5: Gold campaign finance law and said when he signed it
Speaker 5: that he thought it was unconstitutional, but that he would
Speaker 5: leave it to the courts to deal with. Well, I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: but if you're the president, you take an oath to
Speaker 5: support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And
Speaker 5: if you ignore that oath and sign something that you
Speaker 5: know was unconstitutional just because you think the courts will
Speaker 5: clean up your mess for you, I think that's disgraceful.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, a lot of the pieces I've read that
Speaker 2: have been following the growth of this use that as
Speaker 2: kind of like the patient zero, because he said it
Speaker 2: out loud, and then other presidents thought, hey, I can
Speaker 2: do that, I just won't say it out loud, and
Speaker 2: Obama did it, and Biden did it, and Trump did
Speaker 2: it in whichever order, and then Trump again, and and
Speaker 2: it's so, how do we fix this?
Speaker 5: Well, there's a long answer and the short answer. The
Speaker 5: short answer is elect good presidents. The long answer is
Speaker 5: that we have to restore respect for the Constitution.
Speaker 2: In this country.
Speaker 5: I think it's the long term damage that's been done
Speaker 5: to Americans understanding and appreciation of the Constitution is horrifying.
Speaker 5: We have prominent law professors. There was a law professor
Speaker 5: at at Georgetown Law School a few years ago published
Speaker 5: an article in the Washington Post saying the Constitution is obsolete.
Speaker 5: I don't respect it at all. Well, you're a teacher
Speaker 5: of constitutional law for crying out loud. And if we
Speaker 5: don't respect the Constitution, we don't love it. It cannot
Speaker 5: protect us. The Constitution is just a promise, and if
Speaker 5: we don't honor that promise, then it's not worth the
Speaker 5: paper it's written on.
Speaker 4: We should have written a law specifically putting him in jail.
Speaker 4: In my opinion, Tim Sandefer is online from the Goldwater Institute,
Speaker 4: a little constitutional humor for exactly design.
Speaker 2: For punish one man.
Speaker 4: That's a good idea, so you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Disclaimer about it's difficult to read the tea leaves of
Speaker 4: the oral arguments, blah blah blah. Did it strike you
Speaker 4: that the justices, the sane ones that we like, we're
Speaker 4: leaning in any particular direction as to the nationwide injunctions judges,
Speaker 4: et cetera that we've been discussing.
Speaker 2: Some of the.
Speaker 5: Judges have made clear for a long time that they're
Speaker 5: against these what they call nationwide injunctions. Justice Thomas in particular.
Speaker 5: Some of the others are a little harder to read.
Speaker 5: Justice Barrett for example, and Justice Roberts, who have become
Speaker 5: really the swing judges on this issue. I thought the
Speaker 5: most interesting judge if you want, if anybody wants to
Speaker 5: go and listen to the argument online, I thought Justice
Speaker 5: Jackson was the one who is the most interesting. She
Speaker 5: clearly understands how this area of the law works, and
Speaker 5: she rightly says there's no there there that nationwide injunctions
Speaker 5: are perfectly legitimate. They always have been and there's no problem.
Speaker 5: So she'd be the one that I find most interesting.
Speaker 5: But how to predict I think you're going to get.
Speaker 5: I think Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett going to side
Speaker 5: with the liberals and say, we don't have a problem
Speaker 5: per se with nationwide injunctions, but maybe some of them
Speaker 5: aren't very good, but as a as a blanket matter,
Speaker 5: they're okay. And then they're going to want to hear
Speaker 5: the underlying case about birthright citizenship, which obviously is a
Speaker 5: huge deal.
Speaker 2: To me.
Speaker 4: Is it even worth getting into what happened on that
Speaker 4: topic yesterday or do you think it's.
Speaker 5: Well, they really just talked about whether or not they
Speaker 5: have a legitimate case in the first place, and they
Speaker 5: haven't really briefed it or argued it yet. But that's
Speaker 5: important because in order to get an injunction, you kind
Speaker 5: of have to first show that you have even an
Speaker 5: arguable point to make, and that was what they were
Speaker 5: arguing about. And I will say, I know this is
Speaker 5: talk radio, and we're all supposed to think that we
Speaker 5: clearly have the right answer and everything. I think the
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship question is a very hard question. I don't
Speaker 5: think it's an easy question on either side.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that when we come back from the break.
Speaker 2: I want to hear. I want to hear the arguments
Speaker 2: on both sides of that. That's interesting And clearly you've
Speaker 2: probably seen the breakdown. Who speaks the most words? The
Speaker 2: chicks talk too much? Is that given?
Speaker 5: Well, jessic so to my art, does love cutting off
Speaker 5: lawyers and not letting them answer her question?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the chicks talk too much. I think that's been
Speaker 2: and the new gal talks more than anybody. That shouldn't
Speaker 2: happen in any organization. I'm strong and get the reality
Speaker 2: is this is fabulous. I thank you. That's enough of that.
Speaker 2: This is crazy. That's just why it is. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: damn it.
Speaker 6: We weren't allowed to ask about the big guys. This
Speaker 6: is the United States of America.
Speaker 2: God, let's not play games.
Speaker 6: This is the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4: Discussing the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday with
Speaker 4: Tim Sanderfer, vice president for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.
Speaker 4: It was advertised as a birthright citizenship hearing it or discussion.
Speaker 4: It really was much more a discussion of individual federal
Speaker 4: judges and nationwide injunctions and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 4: to the question of the Fourteenth Amendment, Tim, you said
Speaker 4: before the break that it's not an easy call. I'm
Speaker 4: glad to hear you agree. I've thought the same thing.
Speaker 4: What should we know about fourteenth Amendment even come to
Speaker 4: a semi intelligent opinion on this?
Speaker 5: Well, the first sentence of the fourteenth Amendment says all
Speaker 5: persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
Speaker 5: to the jurisdiction thereof are US citizens. And all of
Speaker 5: this case, all of these arguments turn on that phrase
Speaker 5: subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What does that phrase mean.
Speaker 5: It's really tough because the word jurisdic is one of
Speaker 5: those words that can mean all sorts of different things.
Speaker 5: It basically means power, but there's all sorts of different
Speaker 5: kinds of power, and so that's what the argument turns on.
Speaker 5: Some people think that it means you have to follow
Speaker 5: the law. If you're born here and you have to
Speaker 5: follow the law, then you're subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
Speaker 5: and then that means you're a citizen. But that doesn't
Speaker 5: really make a lot of sense because even foreign tourists
Speaker 5: who come here for a vacation have to follow the law.
Speaker 5: I mean, they have to stop at the red lights
Speaker 5: and they can't steal things, So that can't be what
Speaker 5: that means, right. Instead, the other side argues, jurisdiction thereof
Speaker 5: means some kind of loyalty or allegiance, that there's citizenship jurisdiction,
Speaker 5: as opposed to follow the law jurisdiction, and that different.
Speaker 5: You can see that difference For example, in this if
Speaker 5: you're a foreign spy and you sneak into the country
Speaker 5: and you spy for some foreign country and you get arrested,
Speaker 5: you can be prosecuted for espionage, but you cannot be
Speaker 5: prosecuted for treason. Why because you're not a US citizen
Speaker 5: and you don't owe loyalty to the US, so you
Speaker 5: cannot commit treason against the US. And so there's two
Speaker 5: different kinds of jurisdiction, is the argument. And so those
Speaker 5: who are against birthright citizenships say, subject of the jurisdiction
Speaker 5: thereof means that your parents owed loyalty to the United
Speaker 5: States as opposed to some foreign country. And that would
Speaker 5: mean that illegal aliens, if they have a child here,
Speaker 5: that child is not assistant in the United States. Now,
Speaker 5: that's also there's a problem with that. There's a couple
Speaker 5: problems that. One of the problems of that argument is
Speaker 5: that nobody has ever said that that's what it means.
Speaker 5: In the one hundred and fifty years since this has
Speaker 5: been in the Constitution, everybody has active like if you're
Speaker 5: born here, you're a citizen all of that time. And
Speaker 5: so suddenly discovering that, what turns out that we've been
Speaker 5: misreading the Constitution for one hundred and fifty years. Would
Speaker 5: be a huge, enormously radical transformation and how our system works.
Speaker 5: That would cause tremendous disruption nationwide, and that would be
Speaker 5: a real problem. But all of this, the real problem
Speaker 5: here in answering this question is that when the Amendment
Speaker 5: was adopted, there were no such things as the illegal
Speaker 5: aliens because there were no laws against immigration. And that
Speaker 5: means if you're an originalist and you think the competition
Speaker 5: should be understood the way it was originally intended, the
Speaker 5: framers didn't ever think about this because it wasn't against
Speaker 5: the law back then, So we don't know what they
Speaker 5: would have thought about this.
Speaker 4: Question, right right, Well, at the point that this enormously radical,
Speaker 4: disruptive president has overturned, that's when you tag me and
Speaker 4: Tim and I come in and explain to the good
Speaker 4: folks that look, the nature of global transportation, the movement
Speaker 4: of people or peoples from one place to another has
Speaker 4: changed so vastly.
Speaker 2: Joe's a living Constitution guy. You can hear it coming.
Speaker 4: Out of what No, don't you dare no that the
Speaker 4: very nature of comings and goings from countries has been
Speaker 4: so radically transformed a Chinese national with not the slightest
Speaker 4: notion of making life in the United States can depart China,
Speaker 4: arrive here, give birth, go back to China, all in
Speaker 4: the span of seventy two hours. I'm inducing labor in
Speaker 4: this case probably or getting very lucky, and that child
Speaker 4: had citizenship. That's an eventuality unimaginable back in the day,
Speaker 4: is the case?
Speaker 5: I think so, And that's sort of true. But on
Speaker 5: the other hand, the Chinese question came up back then
Speaker 5: because there were so many Chinese in California in the
Speaker 5: eighteen sixties. And Senator's rast, well, isn't this going to
Speaker 5: make the children of the Chinese immigrants who back then
Speaker 5: did not intend to stay in the United States. They
Speaker 5: intended to go back to China. The senator's rast, does
Speaker 5: this make their kids us? Senator US citizens? And the
Speaker 5: Senator from California said yes, and then he was immediately
Speaker 5: thrown out of office. So what does that mean? Nobody
Speaker 5: knows what that.
Speaker 4: Means a single case from eighteen ninety eight, or is
Speaker 4: there more precedent?
Speaker 5: Really there really isn't. There's really just a handful of
Speaker 5: presidents and no Supreme Court case has ever said that
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship is in the in the Constitution. There have
Speaker 5: been some that have kind of mentioned it or kind
Speaker 5: of assumed it, but none has said so outright.
Speaker 2: I am surprised. The polling shows that only about a
Speaker 2: third of Americans want to do away with the way
Speaker 2: we do it now. I'm surprised by that. I do
Speaker 2: want to get to this. This is a journalistic question,
Speaker 2: but I think it has an effect on people's respect
Speaker 2: for the law. It has come up recently. It has
Speaker 2: become a pattern that anytime the media mentions a judge,
Speaker 2: they mentioned what president appointed them. Do you think that's
Speaker 2: a good idea or not? They didn't just barely got
Speaker 2: a minute.
Speaker 5: I think I think it's fine. I think people should
Speaker 5: know where these For instance, I think it would help
Speaker 5: a lot of judges. You know a lot of Republican
Speaker 5: appointed judges have been ruling against the Trump administration, and
Speaker 5: I think it would be helpful for people to know
Speaker 5: that these questions are not things where it's all partisan.
Speaker 5: The law is not just partisan politics. It's something much
Speaker 5: more profound and much more important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I agree, but it implies that judges I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 5: True. I used to think.
Speaker 2: I didn't used to think about it ever. If a
Speaker 2: judge ruled, I just thought't want that's interesting now it's
Speaker 2: all who appointed him? Oh, of course he.
Speaker 5: Said that that is true. That is a risk. But
Speaker 5: I think we should air on the side of informing
Speaker 5: people as opposed to keeping people in the dark.
Speaker 2: So that's always true. Tim Sander for the Goldwater Institute
Speaker 2: on the line, Tim, final question, I've called for a monarchy.
Speaker 2: You in favor of it? Yes or no?
Speaker 5: No, I'm against him monarchy. I'm for the constitution.
Speaker 2: Joe. One more question. As a published poet, I was
Speaker 2: thinking about this yesterday he won the Nobel Prize. Bob
Speaker 2: Dylan good poet or not lousy poet?
Speaker 5: Now read Robert Hayden or Richard Wilbur instead.
Speaker 4: How about Ringo Star Octopus's Garden creative Tam. It's always
Speaker 4: great and enlightening. Thanks Millian for the time. Let's talk
Speaker 4: again soon.
Speaker 6: Thanks guys.
Speaker 2: All right, I was actually thinking about this listening to
Speaker 2: Dylan lyrics. Why do they stick in everybody's head so much?
Speaker 2: Why do people keep going back to them? If it's
Speaker 2: just gobbledegook, like a lot of real poets claim.
Speaker 6: It can't be.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't lodge. It wouldn't it wouldn't make the market made,
Speaker 2: would it all? Right?
Speaker 4: He was famously moody about his career and his music
Speaker 4: in his Life's Philosophy. I think some of his stuff
Speaker 4: is absolutely brilliant, and I think some of it's gobbledegook.
Speaker 2: Huh. Maybe maybe more on that another day, or maybe not.
Speaker 2: We got plenty of stuff to tell you. I hope
Speaker 2: you can stick around if you missus. Segmann. I thought
Speaker 2: that tim thing was really really good, and you want
Speaker 2: to listen to it again and get the podcast Armstrong
Speaker 2: and Getty on demand.
Speaker 4: Armstrong, arms Strong and Getdy on demand.
Speaker 2: We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and
Speaker 2: tedious and depressing. It makes you angry.
Speaker 4: You don't want to live your life like that Armstrong
Speaker 4: and Getty show.