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Speaker 1: So joining me now. As everybody knows, I enjoyed putting
Speaker 1: on people that are running for office. This is no
Speaker 1: just ordinary candidate. Somebody I've known a long time, George Conway.
Speaker 1: I first got to know him as a conservative attorney,
Speaker 1: sort of a political attorney is probably the best way
Speaker 1: to do it, involved in sort of legal debates from
Speaker 1: a conservative side. His prominence rose with he and his
Speaker 1: former wife Kelly and Conway, And of course if you've
Speaker 1: followed if you've not lived in a coma or stuck
Speaker 1: your head in the sand, you know very well about
Speaker 1: George's journey away from the conservative movement and the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: And the journey has moved all the way into registering
Speaker 1: as a Democrat and running for as Democratic of a
Speaker 1: congressional seat as I could think of that includes both
Speaker 1: the Upper West and Upper East side of Manhattan. George
Speaker 1: A you okay with that introduction? What would you add?
Speaker 2: What would I would add is I think the Republican
Speaker 2: Party moved away from planet Earth and moved away from
Speaker 2: me and all that is right and decent and just
Speaker 2: and things like you know, I mean, we have a
Speaker 2: Republican bar today that believes in tariffing the shit out
Speaker 2: of every country in the world for no apparent reason,
Speaker 2: and and you know, depriving people of their civil liberties
Speaker 2: by taking them off from the into dungeons. And it's not,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not the Republican Party I joined in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and I, you know, it's just a completely
Speaker 2: I don't think it's conservative at all.
Speaker 1: I think right, and I you know, I take you
Speaker 1: as somebody because I it's funny. I think we all
Speaker 1: go on these journeys. You you sort of figure out
Speaker 1: your own politics when you watch the two parties sort
Speaker 1: of carve things up differently. Yes, and I realized I
Speaker 1: was more libertarian than I thought I was. I had
Speaker 1: no idea right until you until you start to see
Speaker 1: and it's on. You know. I always said the Republican
Speaker 1: Party was made up of sort of you know, various coalitions.
Speaker 1: There was your you had your Evangelicals, your Christian Conservatives,
Speaker 1: you had your sort of Chamber of Commerce types. But
Speaker 1: then they were also the libertarian conservatives sort of you know,
Speaker 1: get government off my back. Am I wrong to assume
Speaker 1: that that's probably what threw you to the party, that
Speaker 1: drew you to the party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, I mean I was more I was
Speaker 2: more like an I mean what drove why the reason
Speaker 2: why I became a Republican in nineteen eighty, I mean
Speaker 2: I became a Republican after the election of Reagan.
Speaker 1: I was that was a year's not to get religious here,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people sort of sort of embraced
Speaker 1: being a Republican nineteen eight. My father was one of
Speaker 1: those people. He was from this Reagan Democrat that never
Speaker 1: voted Democrat again, you know I.
Speaker 2: In high school. If he would ask me what I
Speaker 2: was in nineteen seventy seven, when I was in ninth grade,
Speaker 2: which is in the Lake of Watergate, I consider myself
Speaker 2: a Scoop Jackson Democrat in nineteen eighty, which was my
Speaker 2: first my freshman year in college that fall when the
Speaker 2: election happened, and I was kind of done with Jimmy
Speaker 2: Carter and I actually, if I had been old enough
Speaker 2: to vote, I was only seventeen, I would have voted
Speaker 2: for John Anderson. And then when Reagan won, it was like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't really disagree much with what he said, as
Speaker 2: he wants a strong national defense, and I have been
Speaker 2: you know, I my education on economics was listening to
Speaker 2: Teddy Kennedy talk about wage and price controls and reading
Speaker 2: about wage and price controls how historically they didn't work,
Speaker 2: and then watching the documentary Free to Choose, remember that
Speaker 2: on PBS with Milton and Rose Friedman, and it was like,
Speaker 2: I don't think the government needs to run everything, and
Speaker 2: that was that was the source of my conservatism. And
Speaker 2: as a legal you know, legal conservatism, you know, that
Speaker 2: was an era where legal the law was kind of
Speaker 2: in turmoil constitutional as turmoil, because the question was how
Speaker 2: far could judges take vague or not even just principles
Speaker 2: in the Constitution that they just create on their own,
Speaker 2: because I think they want to make the world a
Speaker 2: better place. And I know it's like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 2: I read the document. What does the document say? And
Speaker 2: what do you know? If we don't like the document,
Speaker 2: there's a whole thing you do to change it. And
Speaker 2: so I became a legal conservative as well. I was
Speaker 2: never evangelical or religious conservative. It was more I was
Speaker 2: kind of a you know, a legal conservative in the
Speaker 2: sense that I read texts and I try to be
Speaker 2: objective about what they say. I was a economic conservative
Speaker 2: of the sense that I didn't believe in, you know,
Speaker 2: Teddy Kennedy's price price controls, and rumored the only person
Speaker 2: who did price controls in our lifetime was rich Out,
Speaker 2: a side cool figure.
Speaker 1: And there's always a Richard Nixon. Well, now there'll be
Speaker 1: the Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Nixon was one of the most liberal presidents of our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Not even close exactly. I mean, you.
Speaker 2: Know, you can't explain to the kids what's.
Speaker 1: Funny about it is that you know who would have
Speaker 1: agreed with that was Nixon himself, because Nixon would have
Speaker 1: argued he was simply responding to what was clearly popular.
Speaker 1: It was popular to get the government more involved in things.
Speaker 1: Medicare was popular, the civil rights you know, we were through.
Speaker 2: Thebay he started. I mean, he did all that shit,
Speaker 2: and he had you know, and and and you know
Speaker 2: you ever, I'm sure, of course you've watched.
Speaker 1: And by the way, he would have signed off on
Speaker 1: some form of the version of Obamacare today was essentially
Speaker 1: what Nixon would have agreed to if Kennedy would have
Speaker 1: signed off on it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and remember remember when he got back from China.
Speaker 2: There's there's this opening scene to all the President's met
Speaker 2: which begins his State of the Union address in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two or none of it was a jointed address
Speaker 2: to Congress after coming back from China, and it's democratic Congress,
Speaker 2: like overwhelmingly a democratic Congress, like democratic has ever been
Speaker 2: in our lifetimes, and he's getting a standing ovation. Of course,
Speaker 2: the deep down hated him because he was stealing their
Speaker 2: thunder and co opting them and all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 2: but they got all, you know, he was he was
Speaker 2: actually a very liberal president. He was corrupt as hell
Speaker 2: and and did all sorts of illegal ship and covered
Speaker 2: it up. But you know, he was he was a
Speaker 2: little president. But anyway, you know, it's the point is
Speaker 2: that the party. You know, when I try to explain
Speaker 2: to people, younger people today, like they say conservative Republican,
Speaker 2: they think conservative Republicanism was always trump Ism. I know
Speaker 2: it wasn't the case. They were. I mean some conservatives
Speaker 2: they were, you know, Reagan somehow managed to bring the
Speaker 2: evangelical conservatives with the more libertarian conservatives and the military
Speaker 2: hawks all together, and it was That's what political parties are.
Speaker 2: The coalitions today. You know, the Republican Party isn't a coalition,
Speaker 2: It's a cult.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about that is, I think the question that
Speaker 1: I have as sort of I now call myself a
Speaker 1: political anthropologist more than anything else these days.
Speaker 2: But this is the perfect conversation for you.
Speaker 1: That's because you know, it's sit there, and what iruggle
Speaker 1: with is can the Democratic Party handle this many coalitions
Speaker 1: under its tent? I said, you know, you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about the twenty twenty coalition for Biden, you
Speaker 1: had everybody from AOC to John Kasek and Liz Cheney
Speaker 1: and when you try to stretch a tent, eventually it
Speaker 1: might split in the middle. Yeah, and that is a concern.
Speaker 1: At what point can can the Democratic Party successfully take
Speaker 1: all of you refugees right and still have a coherent,
Speaker 1: a coherent, proactive view of governance. I think it's very difficult.
Speaker 2: Oh look, I mean we don't get to that question
Speaker 2: until the current crisis.
Speaker 1: Is over, no, which I find This is what I thought.
Speaker 1: Your candidacy is so interesting to me because of how
Speaker 1: honest you are about why you're running.
Speaker 2: Right, and we don't get to have those policy Frankly,
Speaker 2: I'm not I don't think them much different on policy
Speaker 2: than your Abigail span Burger or your Nikey Sheryl or
Speaker 2: you're who's the guy in Kentucky. I don't think, you know,
Speaker 2: And I you know, Okay, I'm not a Mom Dannie Democrat,
Speaker 2: but I you know, I get you know, we're an
Speaker 2: AOC Democrat. But I get what they're trying to do.
Speaker 2: And I you know, I kind of I admire that
Speaker 2: they have this, you know, object of helping people, and
Speaker 2: I have no problem with that. Is a question of
Speaker 2: what the means are and how much it costs. We
Speaker 2: don't get to have those debates now because we explain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, explain your rationale. It's very unique. I think it's.
Speaker 1: I like that how straightforward you are about your running.
Speaker 1: And it's two terms. And here's my mission, right, tell
Speaker 1: it to the tell it to my.
Speaker 2: There it is okay. I'm sixty two years old, which
Speaker 2: is why I remember, you know, Nixon going to China.
Speaker 2: And I Never've always been kind of a political jerkie,
Speaker 2: right I was. I grew up on Watergate, and I
Speaker 2: was fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think that's really why we hit it off so well, right, right,
Speaker 1: I talk about.
Speaker 2: On Watergate and and I developed two things. A fascination
Speaker 2: with politics, with our constitute, no free things, our constitutional system.
Speaker 2: And I also developed this hatred of corrupt politicians of
Speaker 2: any party, of any strike, and of people abusing their offices,
Speaker 2: which is why you know, I mean, I'm the guy
Speaker 2: who helped Paula Jones, and I'm the guy who helped
Speaker 2: Egene Carroll. And I'm the guy, you know, I'm the
Speaker 2: guy who hated Nixon, and I'm got who hate Trump,
Speaker 2: hated Trump, and it's it's it's just sort of my
Speaker 2: through line makes sense to me. But you you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't make sense to somebody necessarily who's just saying, well,
Speaker 2: he was a conservative republic look at what these conservative publicans.
Speaker 2: How could you have ever done? And if you're politically
Speaker 2: sophisticated in your older you get it, and if you're
Speaker 2: listening to me, you get it. But anyway, my whole
Speaker 2: point about running now I kind of went off the
Speaker 2: question here. Okay, at age sixty two. The reason why
Speaker 2: I'm doing this I should be retired. I am retired.
Speaker 2: I'm a retired Laura. I worked a few blocks away
Speaker 2: from here, I about twenty blocks away from here, and
Speaker 2: I you know, I did well for myself. I should
Speaker 2: be skiing in Park City right now. Okay, I should
Speaker 2: be doing something or going on a world cruise. I
Speaker 2: should be doing all this. I can't because this is
Speaker 2: just this is just the last few years have been
Speaker 2: so absolutely appalling to me. And you know, at this point,
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot I don't think enough people get,
Speaker 2: even Democrats, what we have to do here. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of I went to something last night at the
Speaker 2: City Bar, which is this great panel with my friend
Speaker 2: Judge Looting, and basically the lawyers are talking about, oh,
Speaker 2: how can what can the courts do? And Louting is
Speaker 2: saying the Supreme Court sucks and and it's it's disaster,
Speaker 2: and other people saying, what about nationwide injunctions? All this
Speaker 2: technical stuff about the law and how district judges are
Speaker 2: doing their best and the Supreme Court's kind of screwing
Speaker 2: them up, and then the administration is attacking the judges.
Speaker 2: It's like the Framers did not He're gonna put my
Speaker 2: federalist society or religious original on which you know, I
Speaker 2: shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: The campaign people like, yeah, don't ever say don't say
Speaker 1: the work, the effort worst you could say the other
Speaker 1: f work.
Speaker 2: You can't say this way, okay, the originalist view of
Speaker 2: how you deal with a fucker like Trump, that's the
Speaker 2: f work.
Speaker 1: I think that's the that's the word you're allowed to use. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: Impeachment and removal the joke they didn't intend. The courts
Speaker 2: cannot play. The courts don't have barneys, they don't have
Speaker 2: police officers. At the end of the day to enforce
Speaker 2: their orders. It requires the Justice Department to bring temper
Speaker 2: seedings or the Justice Department to put people in jail.
Speaker 2: They won't do that, and they can disobey orders anytime
Speaker 2: they like. And what they do, and they're kind of
Speaker 2: doing it in kind of a half assed way. What
Speaker 2: they do is they basically, oh, they kind of comply
Speaker 2: slowly with an with one order, like you know when
Speaker 2: you're kind of you know, your kid is grudgingly doing something,
Speaker 2: and they kind of take a long time.
Speaker 1: So they always you're absolutely right, they complied just enough
Speaker 1: to say they're complying with something.
Speaker 2: Right, and then and then the courts can't hold them
Speaker 2: in the contempt. And then they do the same thing
Speaker 2: to the next person like they've done it like thousands
Speaker 2: of times.
Speaker 1: It's a total slow walk.
Speaker 2: It's a strategy, right, it's a total strategy. And then
Speaker 2: meanwhile they're attacking the courts. The courts cannot they cannot
Speaker 2: fix this problem.
Speaker 1: Okay, the problem, you're right, the framers.
Speaker 2: Fixed by Congress. That's what they intended. That's why they
Speaker 2: put the impeachment clauses in there.
Speaker 1: They understood, you couldn't that a president was not going
Speaker 1: to get a fair trap in our system. You couldn't
Speaker 1: create a system to make it fair right in either
Speaker 1: in any direction, which is why it had to be
Speaker 1: done the separate way. My only concern about a third
Speaker 1: impeachment is, I don't I don't want to presume why
Speaker 1: you're you're focused on this, but I which is I
Speaker 1: assume you want to say, look, we've got to send
Speaker 1: that this is this is how you do it, this
Speaker 1: is how the system is supposed to work, and look,
Speaker 1: we'll do it again if we have to do it.
Speaker 1: Do you worry that it's simply just weakens the weakens
Speaker 1: it so much it just stops being a useful deterrent?
Speaker 2: What what weakens impeachment?
Speaker 1: Impeachment?
Speaker 2: You know, it's never been weaker. That's the problem. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: the problem is we've kept.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is Mitch McConnell and that vote. I mean,
Speaker 1: I go back. I mean everything was done exactly how
Speaker 1: the founders intended, and Mitch.
Speaker 2: Mccon hold a real trial. But let's set that aside.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, yeah, it's tough whatever a real tril's supposed
Speaker 1: to look like with it comes to this in fairness, right.
Speaker 2: You have to actually that's what they did with Andrew Johnson.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's actually what was done with Clinton.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We had a few witnesses. Yeah, they didn't actually one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah on video, but so we I take your point
Speaker 1: on that. But ultimately we were there and Mitch McConnell choked,
Speaker 1: and you know.
Speaker 2: He deserves to burn. I mean, I'm not gonna use
Speaker 2: that language. He deserves, he deserves, he deserves.
Speaker 1: I always say this. I hope he regrets the rest
Speaker 1: of reprobation for that. I hope he loses ship every
Speaker 1: night of his life.
Speaker 4: He you know, he he he was, He was scared,
Speaker 4: and he had he had the moment, he could have
Speaker 4: he could have could he have gotten the requisite number
Speaker 4: of what's I think?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I know he gets Rob Portman, I know
Speaker 1: he gets you know, probably till us. You know, there
Speaker 1: were a handful that we're waiting for the signal, and
Speaker 1: you know they would have come. I mean, if Cassidy
Speaker 1: and Burr were there, imagine who else would have come
Speaker 1: if McConnell had.
Speaker 2: Voted absolutely And what he thought was, which is the
Speaker 2: thing you cannot a mistake you cannot make with malignantly
Speaker 2: narcissistic leaders like a Trump or a Putin or whatever.
Speaker 2: You can't assume they're just going to go away. They don't.
Speaker 1: He thought, shame would push push them away.
Speaker 2: You know, he's not gonna go away. They always like,
Speaker 2: they always come back for more, and they always seek retribution.
Speaker 2: They never stop. They can't stop. They're not capable of stopping.
Speaker 2: Which is why this guy's going to get worse and
Speaker 2: worse and worse. Now in terms of whether we impeach
Speaker 2: the power, if the power isn't is the most is
Speaker 2: as weak as it's ever been, precisely because people say, oh,
Speaker 2: we tried it twice, we can't do it. And if
Speaker 2: that's true, and we're not going to try this president
Speaker 2: in the Senate, if we're not going to try to
Speaker 2: impeach this president and have a trial in the Senate
Speaker 2: of this guy for doing every fucking illegal thing in
Speaker 2: the book he could think of, and grifting off the
Speaker 2: presidency and indicting UH political enemies on bullshit and and
Speaker 2: and disobeying, you know, hutting government programs without acts of
Speaker 2: Congress and usurpacing usurping Congress's power, and try and find
Speaker 2: to rename everything, holding holding out this is the Gateway project,
Speaker 2: right right that that's the Gateway project. They're going to
Speaker 2: build an Amtrak tunnel there. And he wants he's holding
Speaker 2: that hostage even though the money has been appropriated, and
Speaker 2: even though the government has legal contracts obligating it to
Speaker 2: fund this program, he's holding it costage because he wants
Speaker 2: Penn station named after him in Dallas Airportner. This is
Speaker 2: this guy, This is insane, and he's he's basically violates
Speaker 2: his oath of office every minute of every hour of
Speaker 2: every day, and except when he's tweeting in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night. And and but you know, but is
Speaker 2: if we can't impeach and remove this guy, then there
Speaker 2: is no impeachment clause in the Constitution. There is no
Speaker 2: impeachment provision in the country. There is no Article one anymore,
Speaker 2: because Congress is basically seating its authority to a guy
Speaker 2: who's basically saying I can make the law. So it's
Speaker 2: really an all or nothing thing here. Do we want
Speaker 2: a constitutional government? Do we want the rule of law?
Speaker 2: Or are we just going to say, oh, we tried
Speaker 2: impeachment twice and I don't We don't we want to.
Speaker 2: We want to keep it in our back pocket and
Speaker 2: keep it for the next time.
Speaker 1: What's that know what? And that's this? Look, I sit
Speaker 1: here and I will put my political anthropologist slash observer
Speaker 1: hat on and say, boy, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is good politics, right, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: good for twenty twenty eight I don't know if people
Speaker 1: are what do you do about the exhausted middle? But
Speaker 1: here's the thing I can't push back on you on
Speaker 1: you're not wrong about any of this, and and and ultimately, no,
Speaker 1: you're not wrong about any of this. So it is.
Speaker 1: It is sort of and the decision I'm thinking out
Speaker 1: loud here. But the number of times that collectively political
Speaker 1: figures and political parties make these compromises because of what
Speaker 1: we'll play in the next election versus what is right
Speaker 1: versus wrong right is probably why most Americans don't trust politicians,
Speaker 1: because most politicians always take the easy path, the easier path,
Speaker 1: the non conflicting path, because they think that's actually what
Speaker 1: voters want, and no, they want me.
Speaker 2: Look, it's this isn't a political calculus, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, there was a lot of, you know,
Speaker 2: between Nadler and Pelosi and all the you know, all
Speaker 2: the dynamics of the Democratic Caucus about whether to impeach
Speaker 2: the guy, how much to impeach him on and how
Speaker 2: quick the trial should be. You know, look, I get
Speaker 2: politics place, these are political branches, but at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, with what's going on here and now,
Speaker 2: it's no longer a question of political calculus. It's a
Speaker 2: moral and legal and constitutional obligation of Congress to do this.
Speaker 3: Well, mate, let's make the other I think it's a
Speaker 3: I would be a violation of the oath of office
Speaker 3: for a member of Congress not to push for impeachment
Speaker 3: when it is possible.
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Speaker 2: weapons in the entire armed forces of the United States
Speaker 2: of America. And he's destroying our alliances and he's assuring
Speaker 2: our relationships with foreign countries. He's basically holding projects or
Speaker 2: infrastructure and healthcare spending hostage because of his whim. He
Speaker 2: wants things named after him, and he wants to control
Speaker 2: people's He's creating his own private basically his own army,
Speaker 2: domestic domestic army with fifty billion dollars that he wants
Speaker 2: to spend on ice to control the cities. And you
Speaker 2: know this is not separate from the elections in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six. You know, he was saying maybe you know
Speaker 2: what Bonnie was saying, maybe we could He's up on
Speaker 2: ice if you give us your voter roles. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is he is trying to establish all powerfulness. He's
Speaker 2: taking away Article one powers of Congress. He's defining the courts.
Speaker 2: He's threatening to to to fuck with the elections, and
Speaker 2: he will do that. This is not this isn't even
Speaker 2: close to normal. This is this is the republic. The
Speaker 2: rule of law, the constitution are all on the line,
Speaker 2: and they are on the line now. And and if
Speaker 2: you know, the only way you we stopped this is
Speaker 2: a combination of people being out in the streets and
Speaker 2: voting for members of Congress who will have the colhonis
Speaker 2: to stand up to the guy and say that's enough.
Speaker 2: We're not going to fund this. We are going to
Speaker 2: impeach you and remove you. We're going to impeach and removed. No,
Speaker 2: we're going to peach and remove Bondie We're going to
Speaker 2: peach a reroove of Robert Kennedy for for for for
Speaker 2: his crazy shit. Okay, and we have to do all
Speaker 2: that or else. You know, we're not gonna last three
Speaker 2: more years of this. We we aren't. I just don't.
Speaker 2: I just don't think. I don't think there's enough alarm
Speaker 2: and enough I think people are just thinking because we
Speaker 2: we we have a country where, yes, a lot of
Speaker 2: people are feeling the squeeze of of higher prices and
Speaker 2: of unaffordable housing and healthcare. But we have a lot
Speaker 2: of people who just it's like, Okay, well, I'm living
Speaker 2: my life. It's nice. It's I get to I watch
Speaker 2: my favorite shows on Netflix, and I get to watch
Speaker 2: the watch the sports on TV, and I live in
Speaker 2: a nice, warm house, and I just can't deal with
Speaker 2: all that stuff that's going on there. Well, that's how
Speaker 2: democracies die. That's how, how, how how the rule of
Speaker 2: law dies. That's how self government dies. And it is
Speaker 2: dying before our very eyes unless we exercise the power
Speaker 2: that Congress and the duty that the Framers impose the
Speaker 2: Congress of the United States to impeach and remove corrupt
Speaker 2: executive officials. And we have never seen never in two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years, we have never seen a government
Speaker 2: in the United States as corrupt as this one. And
Speaker 2: if we can't get rid of this this one, we're screwed.
Speaker 2: It's done. I still go my still just quit.
Speaker 1: Harting was close. Harting was close. It was closer than Watergate.
Speaker 2: I don't you know, I mean.
Speaker 1: Hard handed over like just parts of the government. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like people.
Speaker 2: Do prosecute did he prosecute political enemies that.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I'm just saying on the financial corruption,
Speaker 1: it was, It's not worse than Trump. Trump is the
Speaker 1: worst since Parting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm talking about I'm not so talking about financial corruption.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about moral corruption. I'm talking about corruption of
Speaker 2: the political is the corruption of office corruption And.
Speaker 1: And I think this is actually probably is what made
Speaker 1: it so hard to stop Trump is that where do
Speaker 1: you start, right, It's such a target rich environment when
Speaker 1: it comes to him that I you know, I've always
Speaker 1: thought that that it's it's not a strategy, but it
Speaker 1: happens to help him, that he so sprays the entire
Speaker 1: sort of area with corruption that you're like, well, am
Speaker 1: I focused on the pay for play on pardons or
Speaker 1: the personal enrichment on crypto or what he's doing over
Speaker 1: here when it comes to I, you know, it is
Speaker 1: in some ways. And I don't know whether this is
Speaker 1: an indictment of our media ecosystem, but I feel like
Speaker 1: that's also part of the challenge of trying to concentrate
Speaker 1: the American mind on how this corruption is sort of
Speaker 1: upending the entire system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, I mean the Internet only has
Speaker 2: so much bandwidth, the media is only so much bandwidth,
Speaker 2: and our brains have only so much bandwidth. And yes,
Speaker 2: by basically giving everyone the green light to do the
Speaker 2: worst things in the world, Okay, by by setting off, uh.
Speaker 1: The we could do an entire five hours and just
Speaker 1: how RFK Junior is destroying an entire generation of kids.
Speaker 2: We can do we could talk about, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: if you wanted to, if we wanted to make a
Speaker 2: list of impeachable offenses and start kind of tallying up,
Speaker 2: we could we could we could you know, do this
Speaker 2: for several hours, and then we'd have to have we'd
Speaker 2: have to break and and and and we'll figure out
Speaker 2: all the things we've missed. As I find throw darts,
Speaker 2: pick something I don't care. But the whole thing in
Speaker 2: totality is there is no question. We have a government
Speaker 2: that does not give a ship about what the law is,
Speaker 2: and thinks that it's making up the law, and thinks
Speaker 2: that its purpose is to serve one man, even though
Speaker 2: that man has taken a oath of office to to
Speaker 2: to execute faithfully the laws and constitution of the United States,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't do that. He doesn't give a fuck
Speaker 2: about that. He couldn't tell you what the laws and
Speaker 2: the constitution of the United State. He still thinks, as
Speaker 2: he said in his first term, that Article two allows
Speaker 2: me to do whatever I want. Okay, that's that's the
Speaker 2: case for impeachment right there. Okay, you you just you
Speaker 2: could you just find fifty five examples of what he's done.
Speaker 2: You could, just you could, you know, it's like, there's
Speaker 2: no It's like in law, we have this thing called
Speaker 2: summary judgment, where basically the facts are not disputed.
Speaker 1: The facts, these are disputed facts.
Speaker 2: If there are not disputed facts anymore, and and and
Speaker 2: and that's if we and again, if we cannot do
Speaker 2: this now here and now throw out we have to
Speaker 2: throw out the impeachment clauses. We'll be throwing out the
Speaker 2: beach fault, which is effectively throwing out the one last
Speaker 2: check that that that Congress has to guard its own
Speaker 2: legislative power on an Article woman, which means we're throwing
Speaker 2: out Article one, which means we're throwing out the entire
Speaker 2: structure of the Constitution and throwing out the rule of
Speaker 2: law and democracy all at once if we do not
Speaker 2: do this. So i'ms for impeachment and I don't. I
Speaker 2: think it's irrefutable, and you know I don't. Again, it's like,
Speaker 2: let me rant from.
Speaker 1: Just go ahead on more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like, it's not a political game, it's not
Speaker 2: political calculus anymore. It is a matter of survival. It's
Speaker 2: a moral it's the moral obligation that people commit to
Speaker 2: when they swear an oath to the Constitution as members
Speaker 2: of Congress.
Speaker 1: Do you think your toughest, look do you? If you win,
Speaker 1: you obviously are going to believe voters gave you this mandate.
Speaker 1: The person you're gonna have to convince of this first
Speaker 1: is akeem Jefferies. Have you had this conversation with him?
Speaker 2: No, I haven't. I haven't spoken with with hopefully Speaker Jeffries.
Speaker 1: Right, do you have, what's your mind is the best
Speaker 1: strategy to get him to accede to this because he's
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot of donors that tell him one thing.
Speaker 1: He's gonna have a lot of I mean, here, here's
Speaker 1: my calculus.
Speaker 2: Here, I get why politically, somebody would be not taking
Speaker 2: this position. Now, okay, because it's a it's a big tent.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on in the tent, a lot
Speaker 2: in flux. But the two things will change. One is
Speaker 2: I firmly believe that there will be a Democratic House
Speaker 2: of Representatives come January third, twenty twenty seven. Two is
Speaker 2: in the next eleven months, Trump is going to do
Speaker 2: stuffed it will make We haven't even foreseen that's worse
Speaker 2: than what he did during his first thirteen months because
Speaker 2: it just it just we know what the trend line is.
Speaker 1: As I like to quote Haley Barber, good gets better
Speaker 1: and bad gets worse.
Speaker 2: Bad gets worse, and he only gets worse. He's a
Speaker 2: he's a malignant narcissist, the narcisstic sociopath at any strength.
Speaker 1: That's not going to change.
Speaker 2: Only they never change, and you know, we get worse,
Speaker 2: particularly when they get older and more.
Speaker 1: You know, oh, the filter is definitely whatever filter existed
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: Are no checks because he surrounded himself, you know, the
Speaker 2: first term, he surrounded himself with some fairly smart people
Speaker 2: here and there.
Speaker 1: Okay, well he did and Mike Pennce sort of, uh
Speaker 1: did a lot more to protect us than we fully
Speaker 1: appreciated it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and and and and and General Kelly and you know,
Speaker 2: these those were.
Speaker 1: You know, they were they were patriots, they were they
Speaker 1: were you know, they.
Speaker 2: They you know, it's you can't work for Donald Trump
Speaker 2: without compromising yourself somehow. But at the same time, if
Speaker 2: they weren't there, we would have had what we have today.
Speaker 1: I always say this about people that work for Trump,
Speaker 1: bar even bar right, no, no, no, no, but this
Speaker 1: is every and this has been true. I've studied, I've
Speaker 1: gone back, and I've gone deep onto trump on. You know,
Speaker 1: he never keeps an inner circle more than about five
Speaker 1: or six years. It always rotates because he always throws
Speaker 1: these people away. He always throws everybody away.
Speaker 2: Why people don't think that they're going to be the
Speaker 2: next on the ball.
Speaker 1: They won't be next. I always want to tell Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio Heylo, Marco, when when the when the public goes
Speaker 1: south on one of these international adventures. Maybe it's Iron,
Speaker 1: maybe it's Venezuela, maybe it's Cuba. You're getting the blame
Speaker 1: for this. You're the magabus is.
Speaker 2: Going to go in Hungarian citizen has been worked for horbon.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I want to go to something bigger
Speaker 1: because you're you're at your You're I'm obsessed with the
Speaker 1: fact that the reason our politics deteriorated over the last
Speaker 1: forty years, arguably since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 1: basically since the Cold War, has because is because of
Speaker 1: the weakness of Congress. That Congress, right, they continue to
Speaker 1: sort of not do their job. And what it did
Speaker 1: was I find it interesting, Why did you join the
Speaker 1: conservative legal movement? You really joined because Congress didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell it was doing. I joined it, and
Speaker 1: so well, no, let me let me just finish here
Speaker 1: in my framing because and so what it did was
Speaker 1: it made the courts because the article, the guys in
Speaker 1: charge of Article one failed to sort of respond to
Speaker 1: the public. People felt they had no choice but go
Speaker 1: to the courts. Go to the courts for reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: go to the courts to open up to desegregate schools,
Speaker 1: the fact that Congress wouldn't do its job to desegregate schools,
Speaker 1: to protect people's voting rights, to protect women's reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: people had to go to the courts. So everything became
Speaker 1: about the courts and the only.
Speaker 2: Way Congress courts. And then and then the question who
Speaker 2: put all of this ship in the court's hands?
Speaker 1: Okay, Congress failing to be definitive on its exactly right.
Speaker 2: But we have elected represented No, this is the point
Speaker 2: that So.
Speaker 1: The point is is that what you're identifying and circling
Speaker 1: and it gets it a bigger question that I'm obsessed with.
Speaker 1: How do we strength? There's are two things I think
Speaker 1: we need to do right. I'm you know, I gave
Speaker 1: a lot of credit to Don Bacon for co sponsoring
Speaker 1: the pardon constitutional amendment that's been introduced. I don't know
Speaker 1: do you know about this? So Oluski Johnny o'luski is
Speaker 1: a Democratic Member of Congress from Maryland. Fairly new member.
Speaker 1: He introduced a bill basically a pardon Nullification Act kind of,
Speaker 1: and he wants to introduce it as a constitutional medment
Speaker 1: that if twenty members of the House five members of
Speaker 1: the Senate object to a presidential pardon, and then then
Speaker 1: they can be brought to the floor. Two thirds of
Speaker 1: Congress basically can overturn the same way you'd overturn a veto,
Speaker 1: but it's a constitutional amendment. And Don Bacon became the first.
Speaker 1: You know, look, I have a lot of other ideas
Speaker 1: and how for that.
Speaker 2: That's fine. I would frankly make it less than two thirds.
Speaker 1: A I agree, And I think I could make a
Speaker 1: case of just repealing the entire presidential pardon for an individual.
Speaker 1: I might come up with a party board.
Speaker 2: Chris the power of pardon in Congress to designate a
Speaker 2: pardon board like they had.
Speaker 1: A pardon board exactly. You could two most senior members
Speaker 1: of the cort Attorney General, President, vice president, Speaker pro tem, etc.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And it made me think that maybe, just like during
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, that we might be
Speaker 1: in an era where people are focused on Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to remodel our democracy a little bit. Right. One
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, we realized we had to tax these
Speaker 1: robber barons, so we did the income tax. We had
Speaker 1: to make sure we had a democracy for everybody, so
Speaker 1: we got rid of we let women, we gave women
Speaker 1: the right to vote, and then we and then we
Speaker 1: decided we we better directly elect senators because state politicians
Speaker 1: were so corrupt. It was all being so, what do
Speaker 1: we need to do in our constitution today to sort
Speaker 1: of deep to sort of trump proof going forward? Like,
Speaker 1: because that's a conversation I think we also need to have,
Speaker 1: is how do we ump proof our constitution?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's something I talked about when I first announced,
Speaker 2: which was I want to be in Congress for two reasons.
Speaker 2: One is accountability, which includes investigating and impeaching and removing
Speaker 2: and I'm really talking more about that these days because
Speaker 2: of how bad things have gotten. But the second is,
Speaker 2: and hopefully this will be a second of my two
Speaker 2: terms in Congress, as you mentioned, would be a reconstruction,
Speaker 2: a kind of modern American reconstruction. And I think all
Speaker 2: of these things, you know, I mean, you know how
Speaker 2: hard it is to amend the Constitution, So a lot
Speaker 2: of things will have to be done from a statutory standpoint.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would love to see this pardon constitutional
Speaker 2: amendment pass, but it's going to be hard because again
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's a process that is got to
Speaker 2: be two thirds there isn't three quarters of the states,
Speaker 2: but you know, I'm all for that, But we also
Speaker 2: have to focus on statutory things that can be done
Speaker 2: for examp, but with pardons, you know, Congress could pass
Speaker 2: a law requiring disclosure of and and this requiring and
Speaker 2: creating a body that investigates the circumstances that uh that
Speaker 2: let lead to a partner and so that we have
Speaker 2: a full disclosure of how a pardon came about. If
Speaker 2: it's not through the regular process, then has been adhere
Speaker 2: to for years in the Justice Department from the Parton office,
Speaker 2: and it's some you know, somebody contacts correctly.
Speaker 1: As we all learned, what Trump has gotten all of
Speaker 1: us to realize is don't assume norms can come back.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to legislate norms correct.
Speaker 2: And legislating norms. The the unwritten rules about interrupting the
Speaker 2: Justice Department, they have to be codified, and they have
Speaker 2: to and there have to be penalties for people who
Speaker 2: violate them. Maybe not the president because the president, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the separation of powers.
Speaker 2: It's a problem of powers, and this fucking community decision
Speaker 2: went too far. But everybody else, you know, if you
Speaker 2: if you're participants. Everybody else can be regulated. Congress is
Speaker 2: the wind. I mean, Congress has the power to do this. Okay,
Speaker 2: the duty ultimately, in fact, the executive is to enforce
Speaker 2: an execution laws enacted by Congress. Congress gets to set
Speaker 2: the rules, which goes back to your point about how
Speaker 2: Congress has been basically defaulting on its obligation to set
Speaker 2: the rules for a very very long time on many
Speaker 2: many things. So again there has to be like, once
Speaker 2: we get rid of the current circumstance, M, we have
Speaker 2: to really focus on reconstructing and reconstructing our legal and
Speaker 2: political system at the federal level by codifying these norms
Speaker 2: that involve the Justice Department and everything else. And so
Speaker 2: that's hard, but job one has to be we have
Speaker 2: to get to a pososition where we don't have these people,
Speaker 2: these corrupt and evil people running the government for their
Speaker 2: own personal satisfaction and for the satisfaction and grift and
Speaker 2: profit and ego of one evil, stupid man.
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Speaker 1: pushbacks you're going to get is this idea of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you succeed, don't we just ebed? You know that
Speaker 1: everything is just going to be, that this is basically
Speaker 1: a cold civil war that will continue, that that there's
Speaker 1: going to be no detent. There's not you know. And look,
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to this question other than
Speaker 1: I always say the American voters figure this out over time,
Speaker 1: and they're going to figure this out. I'm going to
Speaker 1: trust them. I just don't know how many people have
Speaker 1: to die before voters figure it out.
Speaker 2: Here's the metaphor that just popped into my head. Okay,
Speaker 2: what was the name of that pocket in Southeast Korea?
Speaker 2: When when when the Allies got pushed all the way
Speaker 2: back before? Yeah, yeah, okay, that's where we are, okay,
Speaker 2: and we're all we're almost done here. We're running. Our
Speaker 2: backs are to the Sea of Japan. Or whatever body
Speaker 2: of water is there. We don't have much more time,
Speaker 2: and we have to do you know, we have to
Speaker 2: age in politics in a way that has not been
Speaker 2: engaged in because we've never had to engage in it.
Speaker 2: In order to get back to at least the DM
Speaker 2: the demolitraized Zome. We can't, you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: lose the war to save our democracy if we don't fight.
Speaker 2: And is it gonna Is this all going to resolve
Speaker 2: itself in the next two or four years, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think there's gonna be a lot of damage to
Speaker 2: the require decades to repair.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll tell you we're on that.
Speaker 2: We're on the precipice now. We can't worry about where
Speaker 2: we're going to be five or ten years from now
Speaker 2: if we don't fight back now.
Speaker 1: No, and I and and I understand that mindset. Here's
Speaker 1: where I struggle. And I'll just use the example of
Speaker 1: the redistricting fight, which is, you know, the Democrats spent
Speaker 1: fifteen years making the case that no, no, no, no, we've
Speaker 1: got to take politics out of this. And obviously there's
Speaker 1: no doubt right that that the Republicans Trump Abbott, Paxton
Speaker 1: we're trying a little power game of politics. And it
Speaker 1: was finally, all right, if you're going to do that,
Speaker 1: then the Democrats are going to fight back, And I
Speaker 1: get it. And yet at the same time, I'm uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea that the disenfranchising of voters in Texas
Speaker 1: that the best way to fight back is to disenfranchise
Speaker 1: voters in California or disenfranchised ight. You know, you get
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from on this, And.
Speaker 2: It's like, basically, we're doing things that we didn't ever
Speaker 2: want to do.
Speaker 1: Correct And it's like and then of course it just
Speaker 1: feeds into the what about ism and then it actually
Speaker 1: the other side will say, well, see they're willing to
Speaker 1: break the rules too, so there are no rules. Fuck them.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is why you know, you have to
Speaker 2: you have to win the war to enforce the peace. Okay,
Speaker 2: Well you just tapped into something.
Speaker 1: Not all Democrats believe this is a war, right, is
Speaker 1: that a.
Speaker 2: Problem they need? They're gonna they're gonna have to learn
Speaker 2: and that's and I think this is I mean, I
Speaker 2: think you see people who understand, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of people who do understand in the Democratic Party that
Speaker 2: this is I don't like the word war because it's
Speaker 2: it cannotes violence.
Speaker 1: No, but I'm worried about that. We've already had two
Speaker 1: people get killed essentially for political protest.
Speaker 2: Correct, absolutely, I mean, uh, but you know, it's not
Speaker 2: a civil war. It's not that. I hope it doesn't become.
Speaker 1: Know what, what if Tim Wallas had called in the
Speaker 1: National Guard?
Speaker 2: No, we are but again this is you're absolutely right,
Speaker 2: we are.
Speaker 1: On the mean, we're a lot closer than people want
Speaker 1: to realize.
Speaker 2: Correct, And that's why we can't get fussy about the
Speaker 2: political tactics and the land. You know, I would never
Speaker 2: call them the president president of the United States of
Speaker 2: any party, a fucking piece of shit on a podcast
Speaker 2: until today he is a fucking piece of shit, okay,
Speaker 2: because and this is where we are, all right, someday
Speaker 2: I would you know, I want to go back to
Speaker 2: in America where I can't make the case that the
Speaker 2: president is a fucking piece of shit, all right, where
Speaker 2: I would never think of using that language, even when
Speaker 2: he did something bad or she whoever. It is, all right,
Speaker 2: there are moments we have to we are to use language.
Speaker 2: We have to use political legal legal devices, including this
Speaker 2: business nothing illegal about what's what. But they didn't count
Speaker 2: afford to the courts of Uphelder. The Supreme Court is
Speaker 2: upheld it.
Speaker 1: Now. They went to the voters. I mean, I will
Speaker 1: give him that. They went to the voters and national
Speaker 1: to the voters.
Speaker 2: They did it, and you know, frankly, it's not really
Speaker 2: disenfranchising people. Just you know, it's not dis ef you
Speaker 2: get to vote. You're not being denied the right to
Speaker 2: vote just because you are. You know your neighbors vote
Speaker 2: the other way, okay, and.
Speaker 1: No you we're not. Look I look at what the
Speaker 1: Virginia maps.
Speaker 2: You want to have a portional representation system, amend the
Speaker 2: freaking constitution. I wouldn't be terrible. Of course, you have
Speaker 2: the problem of a crazy multi mum. You know, well, no.
Speaker 5: I'm for would have two part I get you to
Speaker 5: hear something else we have Israel and no, no, no,
Speaker 5: we got a better There's a simpler way to solve
Speaker 5: our congressional map, and all it takes is an Act
Speaker 5: of Congress uncap the House.
Speaker 1: The House is too damn small. I know. The last
Speaker 1: thing people think we need are more politicians. But congressional
Speaker 1: districts shouldn't be eight hundred thousand people that there's point
Speaker 1: that that they and I actually believe if you essentially
Speaker 1: and you could put this as a constitutional amendment, which
Speaker 1: is no congressional district could be more than zero point
Speaker 1: zero three percent of the population, which right now would
Speaker 1: put you in about three hundred and fifty four hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: you'd actually solve the electoral college disparity problem immediately. And
Speaker 1: then and you probably minimize the power of gerrymandering simply
Speaker 1: because it's a lot easier to draw a community of
Speaker 1: interest more districts. Yeah, that's right, districts, and you can't
Speaker 1: you know, there's only so many ways you could jerry mander.
Speaker 2: When you have more districts, you need AI to do it.
Speaker 2: But you know, to cherrymandering that many districts and they
Speaker 2: would be ridiculous of the.
Speaker 1: DISI but but anyway, that's it. Look, that's a that's
Speaker 1: one of my pet issues. I think that if we
Speaker 1: double the size of Congress, we'd also get we'd lower
Speaker 1: the bar of entry, barrier to entry in a financial way,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting thought. And and and and I see
Speaker 2: your point. The question is can a legislative body function
Speaker 2: with that many people. That's that's the question.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that is a function now,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and and in fact, i'd argue
Speaker 1: the problem with it is that they don't let the
Speaker 1: body function that only four people control Congress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not arguing with you on this. I'm just
Speaker 2: I thought it through.
Speaker 1: I just that's the that's the no I look, and
Speaker 1: that that's the reason why they cap it. Well, we
Speaker 1: don't have enough office space, you know. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like almost like you're like, we can all you
Speaker 1: know exactly Downtown DC's empty, right.
Speaker 2: You can you could, you could, you could have your
Speaker 2: laptop and in your apartment and be a that means
Speaker 2: that as your office. But anyway, they probably the SaaS
Speaker 2: would be smaller so you wouldn't need it.
Speaker 1: But let me go, let me go at another issue,
Speaker 1: another way to tackle this issue of of sort of
Speaker 1: what do you say to the the Trump voter who's
Speaker 1: not a fan of Trump's character but keeps voting for
Speaker 1: him because they just you know, they've got this policy
Speaker 1: reason here, policy reason there, and and and I want
Speaker 1: to take I'm going to assume the best that that's
Speaker 1: the reason that there isn't some hidden thing that they're hiding,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. You know, I think there's some people
Speaker 1: that are there for racist reasons when they're not going
Speaker 1: to say it, but I'm going to set those people aside.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people just looked at it and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, politics has been terrible. We needed a
Speaker 1: disruptor like Trump. And I'm no fan of him, but
Speaker 1: I'm lad it's making everybody squirm. How do you get
Speaker 1: that voter back in the fold?
Speaker 2: I think that voter is going to get back in
Speaker 2: the fold when the prices or prices of everything go
Speaker 2: up even more than they already have. When they see
Speaker 2: chaos and disorder on the streets, which they are seeing
Speaker 2: and they will see more of, I think they're going
Speaker 2: to realize that they're not really you know, for example, immigration,
Speaker 2: I mean it's like this isn't you know if you
Speaker 2: if you're a restrictionist, an immigration restrictionist relatively speaking of
Speaker 2: the sort that you know you had. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: old enough to remember in the nineties when Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: created a Commission on Immigration where they were basically it
Speaker 2: was restrictionist, and the Chamber the Republican leading Chamber of
Speaker 2: Commerce opposed the restrictions on immigration. I'm old enough to
Speaker 2: remember that. But you know, no one has, No one
Speaker 2: has done more damage in the long term, for example,
Speaker 2: two restrictionist immigration policies than Donald Trump, because he's associated
Speaker 2: them with this tyranny, to the point where even Republicans
Speaker 2: who voted for him because they wanted immigration to be
Speaker 2: more restrictive and they wanted more immigration enforcement are repulsed
Speaker 2: by what they're seeing on their TVs and on their phones.
Speaker 6: So I think that I think that the people who
Speaker 6: are actually thoughtful about policy issues, okay, what they are
Speaker 6: going to come back.
Speaker 2: Over and you're going to have left the core of
Speaker 2: the people who have the malicious motives, of which there
Speaker 2: are unfortunately many, but not enough to elect the president.
Speaker 1: How did the Republican Party you joined in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: end up Trump acolytes. Give me some not just a
Speaker 1: broad brush, but give me sort of like I you know,
Speaker 1: when it go now looking backwards, right, you were there.
Speaker 1: You were on the inside.
Speaker 2: That wasn't there. I was practicing law here in New York.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: But when I say that you were at least invited
Speaker 1: to the parties, okay, and you might have been able
Speaker 1: to get inside the velopt rope. I think was it
Speaker 1: always ends justifies the means.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. But I do think there
Speaker 2: was this insolarity that was created in the conservative movement
Speaker 2: where they made themselves. I mean, they felt persecuted. They
Speaker 2: didn't get invited.
Speaker 1: The victimhood is the is clearly the currency of the right.
Speaker 2: Well that's what that's what led us there. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know the feeling. I mean, you look at a
Speaker 2: guy like Sam Alito, Okay, he is the most aggrieved
Speaker 2: victim ever to ever see.
Speaker 1: I mean, by god, I think we'd all trade we'd
Speaker 1: all love to have the professional career event.
Speaker 2: Right, but he you know, but you can just see
Speaker 2: it in his writing and his personality and his and
Speaker 2: that when he does make public comments. You know, these
Speaker 2: people are all deeply, deeply aggrieved and resentful, and they
Speaker 2: spent years kind of resenting people who had different views
Speaker 2: from them, who traded them, didn't always treat them with respect.
Speaker 2: I'll give them that, but it's not about you. It's
Speaker 2: not about me, it's not about them, it's not about individuals.
Speaker 2: It's about the country. And I think these people. I
Speaker 2: think there's it's a what happened to the Republican Party
Speaker 2: was this? And again I might change this is I'm
Speaker 2: just spinning this off here just because it's what's coming
Speaker 2: to my head. And I you know, I would love
Speaker 2: to spend I would love to be in a position
Speaker 2: not running for public office and would this all over,
Speaker 2: be able to think about it and maybe write a
Speaker 2: book about it. But I think it's just a crazy
Speaker 2: form of narcissism where people put their own resentment and
Speaker 2: feelings about how they are not part of this liberal elite,
Speaker 2: and they made that they define themselves that way to
Speaker 2: the point where they oppose everything that the people they
Speaker 2: oppose are for. Right, it's this, it's the freedom of
Speaker 2: speech and democracy and all that.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw it with the Second Amendment. Suddenly where
Speaker 1: they where they alex gun in his hand.
Speaker 2: Where does it say in the Second Amendment that liberal
Speaker 2: protesters get to carry guns? Doesn't say that, I mean,
Speaker 2: come on, I mean, but they're right.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny to me that your that should be
Speaker 1: the caution cautionary tale for the left, meaning be careful,
Speaker 1: don't get the same viru. My biggest concern about Trump
Speaker 1: coming back for a second term, and the real damage
Speaker 1: is that it was going to change the psyche of
Speaker 1: the political opponents of Trump, which is where suddenly where
Speaker 1: you just well, we got to oppose everything the guy's
Speaker 1: doing because he can't be seen as doing anything right.
Speaker 1: And I worry about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean I don't. I guess maybe because
Speaker 2: I'm a little more process oriented in some ways than
Speaker 2: a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: Well, I always say I'm an incrementalist and a b
Speaker 1: still wanting. I still I don't trust institutions, but I
Speaker 1: trust that a good institution with better incentives is better
Speaker 1: than any And that's.
Speaker 2: The reason why sort of like as I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: an incrementalist too, which is why I was a conservative,
Speaker 2: And okay, because I thought that was.
Speaker 1: My father's definition of conservatism. Hey, he used to say,
Speaker 1: I want the Democrats to come up with the ideas
Speaker 1: and the Republicans to manage them. His theory was I'd
Speaker 1: rather have the empathy of the left and the you know,
Speaker 1: managerial of the right. That was sort of his mindset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought there's something to that.
Speaker 2: There's something to that, and that's that's actually the way
Speaker 2: a healthy political system should function. Some people are pushing
Speaker 2: for something and other people say, wow, not.
Speaker 1: So fastive, slow down, let's slow down, let's think about this, right.
Speaker 2: Because democracy is a dialogue. It's a dialogue between the
Speaker 2: people and their elected leaders. It's a dialogue among the people.
Speaker 2: It's a dialogue between the elected leaders. And that's how
Speaker 2: we you know, people are pushing for change and other
Speaker 2: people saying, well, let's slow this down or maybe where
Speaker 2: the change should be different, and you can't. But what
Speaker 2: we have now is basically a nihilistic effort to destroy everything.
Speaker 2: And that's what Trump. You know, there's just this nihilistic,
Speaker 2: narcissistic animus among what is now you know, the the
Speaker 2: the h what's the name of the ombu given he's
Speaker 2: an example of that advance and all these people there,
Speaker 2: there's just a nihilistic disc vo right and and and Miller.
Speaker 2: They want to destroy everything because they hate it so much.
Speaker 2: They developed this sort of irrational hatred of everything that
Speaker 2: exists because you know, it represents the enemy, which is liberalism.
Speaker 2: And it's not about that, it's it's it. That's not conservatism,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's nihilism. And you know, these institutions that
Speaker 2: took generations to create, whether or not you would have
Speaker 2: created them in the first place. Right, there's a reason
Speaker 2: why they're there, Okay, there's a they're a purpose is
Speaker 2: that they serve. Yes, maybe they can be reformed, maybe
Speaker 2: at some point they can be replaced or modified as
Speaker 2: they should be over time. But to take a sledgehammer
Speaker 2: to everything that's not conservative, it's insane. And you know,
Speaker 2: the truth of the matter is today it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: my kind of the Democrats are the conservatives today, which
Speaker 2: is why incrementalists today in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 2: and and and they they they're the people who are saying,
Speaker 2: we can't do that. Hold on, what about what about
Speaker 2: the people that it's going to affect? What about the
Speaker 2: what about the you know? And and that's basically what
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, that's a way of looking at
Speaker 2: what I'm doing today. That's why I'm a Democrat today.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be anything else.
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Speaker 1: I want to get you out of here on something
Speaker 1: that I've been and it gets it to how to speak,
Speaker 1: how to convince some Trump voters that that there's a
Speaker 1: better way. The George W. Bush essay about George Washington.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I thought it was a very clever
Speaker 1: subtweet of the current occupant in the White House. I
Speaker 1: saw some of our friends and I'm going to say
Speaker 1: that on including including at where you've previously were hung
Speaker 1: your hat every now and then at the bulwark, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're not alone of people that vacillate. Well, George W.
Speaker 1: Bush doesn't speak out enough. He should have more directly
Speaker 1: taken on Trump. And I look at Bush and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy realizes it becomes at Trump the
Speaker 1: wrong way. He could weirdly strengthen Trump and it doesn't help.
Speaker 1: And I think he thinks about those things, and I
Speaker 1: think about that essay and go. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who voted Trump, voted for Trump, will read
Speaker 1: the essay because it doesn't mention Trump, and maybe a
Speaker 1: few people it will break through. The entire essay was
Speaker 1: about Trump and the fact that it so I loved it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, what do you make of the criticism
Speaker 1: that it wasn't more that he didn't take a sledgehammer?
Speaker 2: Essentially, I'm okay with not taking a sledgeham. I just
Speaker 2: think he should have written that a few years ago.
Speaker 1: That's fair.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the problem I have. He should have written
Speaker 2: it in twenty.
Speaker 1: But you understand where they come down. I understand.
Speaker 2: I understand that not everybody can take the Conway sledgehammer approach.
Speaker 1: We don't well, and with Bush it could boomerang and
Speaker 1: help Trump weirdly, and he didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2: No, that's absolutely right. But you know there are things
Speaker 2: that he could have said that, don't you know. I
Speaker 2: have no problem with people. Look, I started out when
Speaker 2: I went off the reservation in twenty eighteen, or the
Speaker 2: reservation left me.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, Yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: which came first.
Speaker 2: You know, I left the camp in the camp, the
Speaker 2: camp left me, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You want to Yeah, they took away your pass, whatever.
Speaker 2: Whatever metaphor you want to use. I started out by subtweeting, remember, yeah,
Speaker 2: like I would just like, you know, here I am,
Speaker 2: I got my phone. Oh here's a nice op ed
Speaker 2: saying that Trump is, you know, destroying the.
Speaker 1: Justice for right? Interesting read? Yeah, yeah, what.
Speaker 2: What is what is Kelly and Conway's husband doing retweeting
Speaker 2: this liberal whose writing this? You know? And it was like,
Speaker 2: that was my way of doing it, you know, And
Speaker 2: I have no problem with people taking different approaches. I
Speaker 2: think the criticism that I would still have of George
Speaker 2: Herbert Walker Bush now George Walker Bush is he could
Speaker 2: have done a little more earlier, okay, and I wish
Speaker 2: he had done that, But I completely respect and what
Speaker 2: he did with this essay, and he does more of it,
Speaker 2: and maybe maybe he's sort of, you know, doing the
Speaker 2: path that I did, where you sort of like, don't
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 1: Well, as I tell my wife this, I remember early
Speaker 1: on in Trump R, you'll you'll like, I think you'll
Speaker 1: appreciate the story. I said, be careful, assuming they're all bad.
Speaker 1: I said, somebody you don't like might be the hero
Speaker 1: of this story. And you know, and of course, and
Speaker 1: then I joked three years later, she's giving money to
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney. And and so I've always said that everybody
Speaker 1: has a line that Trump eventually crosses. It's just that
Speaker 1: everybody's line is in a different place.
Speaker 2: And that's right. I mean, and Liz Cheney's example, even
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 1: Well, that's my point. I think it's it actually proves
Speaker 1: the point. Look, your line was crossed.
Speaker 2: Sooner twenty seventeen, Liz Cheney.
Speaker 1: It took to January sixth, right, That's not I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't think she should be criticized for
Speaker 1: not getting there sooner, is my point. Like, I think
Speaker 1: the only way you're going to win converts is to
Speaker 1: welcome them, don't.
Speaker 2: You absolutely, I absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 1: And you no, don't say, oh, what took yourself?
Speaker 2: That's why I don't. I would never criticize this Cheney
Speaker 2: for for for for voting for Trump twice, okay, because
Speaker 2: you know, she thought wrongly that we could kind of
Speaker 2: get by with him, and then she their line was crossed,
Speaker 2: and thank god it was crossed because she did, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, she what she did in after twenty after
Speaker 2: January sixth was just and nobody else could have done that.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's right. She gave up, she gave she
Speaker 1: gave backbone to the Democrats. It doesn't happen without her.
Speaker 2: And I've been critical somewhat of my Pence right because
Speaker 2: my view of Mike Pence is, yes, he deserves enormous
Speaker 2: credit for what he did in January of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: But actually I think he had a moral obligation to
Speaker 2: concede the election in November or December at the very
Speaker 2: latest when the Electoral College voted in mid December, because
Speaker 2: he knew it was over, and he should have said so.
Speaker 2: And you shouldn't have been afraid of.
Speaker 1: Donald you know, and you know who I was political calculations.
Speaker 2: I was saying, I can't be your friend anymore, right, like, okay,
Speaker 2: but again I wouldn't. I don't. That's the I don't.
Speaker 2: I welcome you. I welcome the things that he's saying
Speaker 2: right now. And I think absolutely, you're right. We have to,
Speaker 2: you know. And there are people, there are people on
Speaker 2: the Democratic side who basically say, oh, you you voted
Speaker 2: for Trump in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, you're part of the problem. You should
Speaker 1: have done the problem.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be heard from it's like, Okay, well, you
Speaker 2: know you're not going to fix the if you if you,
Speaker 2: if you know when somebody toms over to your side
Speaker 2: and tells.
Speaker 1: You you were right, yes, take the wind, take the wind. No,
Speaker 1: it drives me nuts where people want to like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe. I have to say, look, just accept that.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green. Now you know, I actually think she's
Speaker 1: a fascinating.
Speaker 2: Oh, totally Robert Draper piece.
Speaker 1: It's what no, I mean, here's the thing we all
Speaker 1: dream of a citizen legislature. She was a woman who
Speaker 1: owned a gym. She didn't know much about politics, saw
Speaker 1: how Trump did it, and thought, oh, this is I
Speaker 1: guess it works this way, I'll try it. And then
Speaker 1: eventually Trump, like I always tell people trouble, eventually let
Speaker 1: you down. Because he lets everybody down, you name it,
Speaker 1: including his father and mother. He lets every single person
Speaker 1: in his life down. This is what he does. And
Speaker 1: she gets there and I've seen some people say yeah,
Speaker 1: but with her, and it's just like, why don't you
Speaker 1: respect her journey because guess what she did disagree with
Speaker 1: you on some ideological concerns, and yeah, she is a
Speaker 1: bit more of an isolationist and probably a bit more
Speaker 1: of a nationalist, but she also appears to be a constitutionalist.
Speaker 1: I will take anybody who's a constitutionalist, regardless of where
Speaker 1: they stand on on a variety of issues.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean you can't be critical of her
Speaker 2: for the crazy some of the crazy things she said
Speaker 2: about corrects and stuff like that. But you can say,
Speaker 2: thank God, she's doing the right thing now, and you
Speaker 2: know you can't and you shouldn't reject the fact that
Speaker 2: she wants to basically make things better in much the
Speaker 2: same way that we do. And that's like, I welcome that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like you don't win, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: what if the Allies, I mean the Allies, were they
Speaker 2: going to say, Italy, Joseph Stalin, we got it four.
Speaker 2: Let's let's know, we're not going to let you switch sides.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I mean, right, we could have
Speaker 1: easily said, oh screw you. You guys weren't with us at
Speaker 1: the beginning, half you Stalin, and we'd still be fighting
Speaker 1: the war.
Speaker 2: And you're that's not how that's that's Look, the human
Speaker 2: part of the human condition and part is that we
Speaker 2: fun up, we make mistakes, We make judgments, We don't
Speaker 2: see the truth as it really is. Sometimes we deny,
Speaker 2: we convince ourselves. But part of you know, maturity and character,
Speaker 2: and frankly of the kind of spirit that should animate
Speaker 2: a democracy is the humility of knowing that you're not
Speaker 2: always right and that there are times where you have
Speaker 2: to admit that you are wrong. And that is what
Speaker 2: we need to foster among many people who voted for
Speaker 2: Trump once, twice or thrice today and that you know,
Speaker 2: it's like that Saturday Nights Live skit that we saw
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago with the mom. See that
Speaker 2: one where the mom is saying, I have something to say.
Speaker 2: I want you not to say anything in response, and
Speaker 2: she's like kind of trying to force out that I
Speaker 2: may have been wrong in thinking that Donald Trump was
Speaker 2: you know, good for the country. And the kids go, well, Mom,
Speaker 2: don't shut up, don't and we have to be those kids.
Speaker 2: We have to be those kids. And the kids are like,
Speaker 2: you know, they said, Mom, we talked no, no, stop,
Speaker 2: I told you no.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes to be told I told you.
Speaker 2: Nobody likes to be told that they're wrong. Nobody likes
Speaker 2: to be admitted, to admit that they're wrong, But we
Speaker 2: need to make it easier for people, because it really
Speaker 2: is a lot of why trump Ism has persisted is
Speaker 2: that people he led people so far astray that in
Speaker 2: order for them to recognize how far morally they strayed,
Speaker 2: they have to look themselves in a mirror and admit
Speaker 2: how bad he is, which makes them feel bad about themselves.
Speaker 2: So they and everything, and so they leave, They leave
Speaker 2: News Max on, Fox News on so they don't have
Speaker 2: to hear the bad things that are happening. And you know,
Speaker 2: sooner or later at the grocery store, they're going to
Speaker 2: figure out, oh, this isn't working out so well.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm tempted to give you the dumb New York
Speaker 1: City questions to like your favorite bagel joint, metzer Yankees
Speaker 1: and all that, all the nonsense. But you know, in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, when you're out there, what are the you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna get you out here on this, what
Speaker 1: are the questions voters ask of you that are not
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: You know, the ones who come up to me talk
Speaker 2: about Trump.
Speaker 1: I think, well, I that would be my instating.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, I can tell you you know,
Speaker 2: there absolutely is I mean, there's a reason why Zorium
Speaker 2: Mumdani is the Mayor of New York. There are a
Speaker 2: lot and there's a reason. You know, it's not just
Speaker 2: in there are problems with how you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: we're living in an era where healthcare is becoming it's
Speaker 2: the most rapidly growing industry in New York.
Speaker 1: It's our job growth engine, the job.
Speaker 2: Because we're all getting older, and because we're getting older,
Speaker 2: we're getting sicker, and there's higher demand for you know,
Speaker 2: medical services and medicines. And you know, when you have
Speaker 2: increased demand and supply isn't necessarily you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: creating costs that people can't afford, and we need to
Speaker 2: figure out a way to make the necessary care affordable. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: and obviously that's something that greatly confer the the the
Speaker 2: the refusal to to fund the subsidies, and and and
Speaker 2: and and so on. You know, people are concerned about that.
Speaker 2: They're concerned about the cost of housing in New York City. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: it's crazy. It's always been crazy expensive. But it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's no, it's not it's you know, you need more supply.
Speaker 2: But you know, a lot of these problems at least
Speaker 2: from the standpoint of someone from from a federal legislative
Speaker 2: lever position. Can't be dealt with him til he's gone.
Speaker 2: And and you know, and there are things like, for example,
Speaker 2: who who who?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 2: Who took out the salt deduction?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Who is Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: There was?
Speaker 2: That was like his first effort to punish Blue states, Okay,
Speaker 2: and and and New York, New York City, New York State,
Speaker 2: New Jersey. They've been paying the price ever since. But
Speaker 2: we can't, you know, restoring the salt deduction. How are
Speaker 2: you going to do that with Donald Trump being president?
Speaker 2: Can't do it. So my answer to everything is I
Speaker 2: feel your pain, I understand your issue. I agree we
Speaker 2: have to do something about it. I may not agree,
Speaker 2: for example, with Medicare for all. I may support a
Speaker 2: different approach than Medicare for all or whatever, but I'm
Speaker 2: with you. That's what that's what we need to do,
Speaker 2: because you know, we are in we it's become an
Speaker 2: expectation and duty of government throughout the Western world to
Speaker 2: make sure that health care is affordable. But we can't
Speaker 2: do it until he's gone and we have a government
Speaker 2: that actually is rational and is not a criminal enterprise
Speaker 2: designed to fall to support and the financial and egotistical
Speaker 2: impulses of one deranged to brave human being.
Speaker 1: I'm tending to keep going. We've gone a long. I
Speaker 1: usually don't go over an hour around interviews because I
Speaker 1: always worry about whether people fade away. But I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody fades away from you, buch Front.
Speaker 2: I mean, this was an amazing conversation.
Speaker 1: I look, I wanted. I love to do it again.
Speaker 2: I can to talk to a political anthropologist at this length.
Speaker 1: Ah, you're very you're you're you're you're amusing to me
Speaker 1: that you're using my words either against me or with me.
Speaker 1: But uh, I want to do this again because every
Speaker 1: week I think, I just you're a process guy. I
Speaker 1: love process, and we're all trying to ultimately the country
Speaker 1: is better when there's a process to follow, and what
Speaker 1: want to do. Grifters don't want process because they get
Speaker 1: caught when there's When when there's a process. All right,
Speaker 1: my friend, be safe on the trail. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do I assume you worry about those things.
Speaker 2: I do worry about these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we all unfortunately, as my friend Paul Rykoff says,
Speaker 1: stay vigilant, I think it's true. We all need to
Speaker 1: all right, sir, be safe.
Speaker 2: H