Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: My guest tonight.
Speaker 1: She's the editor in chief of the Economists. Please welcome
Speaker 1: to the program, Zanny Minton Meadows.
Speaker 2: Love way to see the chairs move.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all right. It was here nine years ago.
Speaker 1: We almost killed Jimmy Carter with the rolling chase. He
Speaker 1: almost went all the way back this way. It does swivel.
Speaker 1: We have the Economy. This is your magazine. We have it.
Speaker 1: We brought it with us. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can see that there. We're out there and it's got
Speaker 1: a posted note in there for there. I thought there
Speaker 1: was a centerfold that wasn't there. I don't know what
Speaker 1: was that. Well, we were a show that we very
Speaker 1: much appreciate. I wanted to ask you. You know, The
Speaker 1: Economist wrote about some of Joe Biden's issues a year ago.
Speaker 1: You wrote, is he going to be up for the
Speaker 1: job in the second term? What were the concerns that
Speaker 1: you guys had done.
Speaker 3: So we wrote after the midterms that he should not
Speaker 3: stand for a second term. And you know he when
Speaker 3: he came in, it was he was hoping to be
Speaker 3: He said pretty much that he wanted to be a
Speaker 3: one term president.
Speaker 1: He was a grown up. He would save the country
Speaker 1: for there was the bridge. He was the bridge case
Speaker 1: he was the bridge. He didn't say which bridge Wasn't
Speaker 1: the bridges one of those bridges in thirty mins?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think we after the midterms, we thought
Speaker 3: that it was time for him to kind of make
Speaker 3: that clear. He would have been had he said he
Speaker 3: was going to be a one term president, he would
Speaker 3: have been a remarkable one term president. He's achieved an
Speaker 3: unbelievable amount for one term. But now we are where
Speaker 3: we are here, and huge majorities of the American people,
Speaker 3: including huge majorities of the Democrats, think he is too
Speaker 3: old for a second term. It's really alarming that the
Speaker 3: only person between us and the return of Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is a frail eighty one say that, like.
Speaker 1: Baltimore, you said, the return of Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It really worries me and it may be a little weird.
Speaker 3: But for those of us outside the US.
Speaker 1: Oh can they say that? If you say I had
Speaker 1: a remarkable first term, what's to say I won't have
Speaker 1: a remarkable second term.
Speaker 3: He's eighty one years old, what you know? He is
Speaker 3: the same age pretty much as my father. I love
Speaker 3: my father, dearly. My father's a wonderful man. But my
Speaker 3: father should be nowhere near the most important job in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: He probably never should have been.
Speaker 3: But in an eighty one year old, eighty one year old,
Speaker 3: he doesn't watch this thing?
Speaker 1: Does it? Does he watch.
Speaker 4: This?
Speaker 3: May this maybe a little explanation will have to go.
Speaker 3: But he an eighty one year old. You know what
Speaker 3: they're like at eighty one. You know what they're going
Speaker 3: to be like at eighty five. You know, time travels
Speaker 3: one way and people go in one direction at that age.
Speaker 1: Why are you looking at me like that when you
Speaker 1: say it? That seemed awfully personal.
Speaker 3: As you said the show, you're good twenty years younger,
Speaker 3: you know you got a long time still it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you. So, there is obviously a
Speaker 1: press pool, there's a White House press corps. There's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of mystery that seems to surround this. All
Speaker 1: the people behind the scenes are saying, you don't know,
Speaker 1: like we know he's leading these meetings. He's unbelievable. You
Speaker 1: I wish you could see it. But certainly there are
Speaker 1: press people that travel with the president. Surely I have
Speaker 1: not seen people come out with first hand accounts. They
Speaker 1: have not come out founding a long f force R
Speaker 1: right or just said I follow the president. I'm with
Speaker 1: him every day. He is unbelievably sharp. He's just camera
Speaker 1: shy or whatever it is. But nobody is making those
Speaker 1: It makes it seem conspiratorial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's what is clear is that
Speaker 3: it is quite hard to get access to this president.
Speaker 3: He is very carefully shepherded around. He doesn't do very
Speaker 3: many press conferences. He doesn't do very many interviews. I
Speaker 3: assume that's for and I hear the same thing. You know,
Speaker 3: he's very sharp. He talks for a long time. You
Speaker 3: can outlast anybody in a meeting. I'm perfectly prepared to
Speaker 3: believe that on some subjects, that's true. Joe Biden knows
Speaker 3: a huge amount of that foreign policy. He is exactly
Speaker 3: the right person to have in the oval office in
Speaker 3: the world as it is.
Speaker 1: We have today.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure on certain things he can go for
Speaker 3: hours and hours and hours. He can probably be in
Speaker 3: negotiations for a long time. But does that mean he
Speaker 3: should be president for another two terms. I think it's worrying.
Speaker 1: Now when you say one, Yeah, the world order is
Speaker 1: changing and there is a part, you know, the economist
Speaker 1: is certainly you know it does represent a certain mainstream
Speaker 1: point of view or establishment.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Actually, interestingly, we we stand for good classic English liberalism.
Speaker 3: It's not the same as an American liberal, which is
Speaker 3: more of a lefty, but the English liberalists.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get tested on this because I don't I.
Speaker 3: Missed that with a little lesson Now, we believe in
Speaker 3: individual freedom, free markets, limited government. We've kind of believed
Speaker 3: in that for a long time. And for a long time,
Speaker 3: You're right, our view was the kind of mainstream view,
Speaker 3: you know, Reaganism, Thatcherism, even Clintonism. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 3: too far apart. That was the mainstream view. But now
Speaker 3: we're absolutely not the mainstream view. Now.
Speaker 1: You know I should have said establishment. I think it's
Speaker 1: establishment statis qua.
Speaker 3: We're absolutely not the establishment view. And now industrial policies
Speaker 3: in big state is in protectionism, is in all manner
Speaker 3: of things that we traditionally didn't believe in. And so
Speaker 3: our kind of liberalism, I think is very much not
Speaker 3: the mainstream view now, and we're championing liberalism in the
Speaker 3: face actually pretty concerted resistance to it and people going
Speaker 3: in different directions, So the whole kind of trumpest assault,
Speaker 3: if you will. There's another in fact, our cover, this
Speaker 3: week's cover is going to be about this almost certainly
Speaker 3: unless something dramatic happens, which is about national conservatism. It's
Speaker 3: this idea which you know the Maga Republicans have, but
Speaker 3: also a bunch of conservatives in Europe Victor Auber and
Speaker 3: Georgia Maloney in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France. There
Speaker 3: are differences between them, but they're united by an idea
Speaker 3: that they want to be anti globalist. They're anti trade,
Speaker 3: they're very skeptical of migration. They want to push back
Speaker 3: against what they see as progressive, woke ideas.
Speaker 1: Can you say this is perhaps a new world order
Speaker 1: that they are they would love that. Oh no, They're
Speaker 1: the ones who always talk about there's a conspiracy to
Speaker 1: create a new world order, when if you really look
Speaker 1: at it, they're the ones trying to create it. They're shifting.
Speaker 1: There was an old paradigm right which was America postwar
Speaker 1: aligned itself with liberal Europe against communism. That was the
Speaker 1: stability of the world since World War II, was capitalism
Speaker 1: versus communism. It looks like there appears to be a
Speaker 1: realignment along the lines of not capitalism and communism, but
Speaker 1: woke and unwoke. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: it is what ties Putin to Trump an Orban to Trump.
Speaker 1: If you listen to Putin when he talks about orthodox
Speaker 1: Christianity and Western society and anti gay rhetoric, he sounds
Speaker 1: like an AM radio host.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And there are people in the Republican Party now
Speaker 3: who are who wore more to Putin than to Ukraine,
Speaker 3: for example. So I think you're right, Well, I think
Speaker 3: all of them, No, not.
Speaker 1: All of them, not all well Mitch McConnell, but he
Speaker 1: just stops working every now.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a really serious point. There's a
Speaker 3: complete you know, one way of thinking about it is
Speaker 3: a maga takeover the real Republican Party. But another I
Speaker 3: think there's something more profound going on, which is there
Speaker 3: is potentially a kind of revolution and conservatism which may
Speaker 3: end up being as big as the kind of Thatcherite
Speaker 3: Reaganite revolution, which is taking it in a completely different direction,
Speaker 3: which is it's a.
Speaker 1: Popularism and a nativism, but it's combined with this anti
Speaker 1: wokeism that almost seems to be the more powerful unifying
Speaker 1: theory than it is. We used to be economic theories
Speaker 1: and now it's theories of social culture.
Speaker 3: Issue identity, social culture. Absolutely, no, I think there is.
Speaker 3: That's definitely a fault line, and the people you cite
Speaker 3: are definitely on.
Speaker 1: One side of it.
Speaker 3: Whether it's a new World order yet, I don't know.
Speaker 1: We did not talk about NATO. Donald Trump very famously
Speaker 1: came out and said I would encourage Russia, this was
Speaker 1: years ago, to attack them so that they would pay
Speaker 1: their bills, as though the value of NATO is in
Speaker 1: what they can contribute financially.
Speaker 3: What is your He sounded like, he sounded like the mobster. Right,
Speaker 3: they got to pay, They got to pay, that's right.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump doesn't I think understand what collective security is about,
Speaker 3: Like the NATO is basically, if you attack the smallest
Speaker 3: NATO country, you're attacking America. That basic deal was understood
Speaker 3: by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. That's why
Speaker 3: we haven't had an attack on NATO. I think that
Speaker 3: is undermined by him basically saying it's a protectionist racket,
Speaker 3: which is what he so. I don't think Donald Trump
Speaker 3: cares about alliances. But the reason it's so disconcerting and
Speaker 3: worrying if you're in Europe right now. Is this is
Speaker 3: happening at a time when Vladimir Putin has already done
Speaker 3: a full scale invasion of Ukraine. He is rearming much
Speaker 3: faster than Europe. Europe is a fundamentally more dangerous place.
Speaker 3: So even with Donald Trump nowhere near the White House yet,
Speaker 3: him saying it right now is destabilizing. It makes it
Speaker 3: much more likely that Putin an aggressive dictator.
Speaker 1: You know, it pushes further.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, you have this aid for
Speaker 3: Ukraine held up here in this country. And to be clear,
Speaker 3: aid in Ukraine. Giving the money into Ukraine is the
Speaker 3: cheapest possible way for the US to enhance its security.
Speaker 3: It's just the fighting is being done by the Ukrainians.
Speaker 3: They're the people who are being killed. The US and
Speaker 3: Europe are supplying them weapons and in doing so we
Speaker 3: are pushing back against Putin. I mean, I've been to
Speaker 3: Kiev twice and lived there thirty years ago, and you
Speaker 3: can't go there and not think this is a European
Speaker 3: country that is looking westward and for the US to
Speaker 3: abandon it now, if it does, it's always to dropping.
Speaker 1: The unfortunate part for Ukraine seems to be that it
Speaker 1: also holds a place in our culture war. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any principled opposition from the right in terms
Speaker 1: of sending arms. There might be in terms of the
Speaker 1: amount or the money or some of those things. I
Speaker 1: think they're really caught in the idea that Putin and
Speaker 1: Urban and that illiberal order are their natural allies, and
Speaker 1: so Ukraine they have to paint that as notazified or
Speaker 1: utterly corrupt, as though Russia is somehow fundamentally, you know,
Speaker 1: just this unbelievable Valhalla. But I think that's where I
Speaker 1: think that's why, if Russia has done there somewhere else,
Speaker 1: Ukraine happens to hold a very strange place in this
Speaker 1: whole barisma Hunter Biden illiberal like e is.
Speaker 3: Actually Donald Trump doesn't like Voladimir Zlensky because of the
Speaker 3: whole issue around the first impeachment and and all of.
Speaker 1: That stuff, and we hold her for grudges.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't like Zelenski, and he likes Pujin because
Speaker 3: Putin's tough, that's right kind. Then I think there are
Speaker 3: a bunch of Republicans who are genuine what you might
Speaker 3: call old fashioned isolationists who just don't think the kind
Speaker 3: of us should be involved in this stuff. Then there's
Speaker 3: a bunch who have perfectly reasonable concerns about whether the
Speaker 3: money is being well spent.
Speaker 1: Corruption in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: There is plenty of corruption in Ukraine, whether it's all
Speaker 3: well spent.
Speaker 1: And then I think you're right.
Speaker 3: There are these and let's call them the Tucker Carlson
Speaker 3: Republicans who who kind of have a sense that there
Speaker 3: is somehow the you putin is the hero and Ukraine
Speaker 3: is the villain, which is sort of hard to get
Speaker 3: your head around, but that does seem to be what
Speaker 3: they think.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's I do think that's the world order
Speaker 1: that they would be pushing towards. But this gets back
Speaker 1: to journalists in this country. It's all about the money,
Speaker 1: and there's very little talk about even after September eleventh,
Speaker 1: when Article five was invoked and they came to our defense, the.
Speaker 3: Defense of the United States.
Speaker 1: It's it really does boil down to, oh, is this
Speaker 1: just a financial transaction gone awry, or is this, uh,
Speaker 1: the valuable alliance that's kind of held together the world,
Speaker 1: or and which, by the way, though we have to
Speaker 1: be able to criticize what it did in Iraq and
Speaker 1: all these other things. But if we can't talk honestly
Speaker 1: about it, we end up shutting down all the conversation.
Speaker 3: Of course, I think there is discussion about it. I mean,
Speaker 3: NATO most of the time for most Americans is not
Speaker 3: something that's probably top of mind.
Speaker 5: But I think there is a kind of thing's.
Speaker 1: Not been to a party where it's not the first
Speaker 1: thing people talk about.
Speaker 3: Can we move in serious circles?
Speaker 1: I do generally, it's you go in, it's a little
Speaker 1: NATO talk, and then keg stand. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for being here. It's really fantastic ladies. The general for
Speaker 1: the economists can forgive.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 1: My guest tonight. All I love them so much. They're
Speaker 1: law professors and constitutional experts. Elitist who co hosts the
Speaker 1: podcast about the Supreme Court called Strict Scrutiny. Please welcome
Speaker 1: to the program, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw.
Speaker 2: Play right now.
Speaker 1: Let me first, I want to apologize. So you have
Speaker 1: a third Leah Littman, who couldn't be here because of
Speaker 1: the delicate configurations of our desk. We would have loved
Speaker 1: to have Leah be here as well, but she's in California,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't want to let that pass. I
Speaker 1: want to start with you, guys, this is a simple question.
Speaker 1: John Oliver has offered Clarence Thomas a Winnebago and a
Speaker 1: million dollars a year two and this is his words,
Speaker 1: not mine. Get the off the Supreme Court will in
Speaker 1: your court watchers, your experts on this court, will he
Speaker 1: accept this offer?
Speaker 5: I think this is a Harlan Crowe counteroffer opportunity.
Speaker 1: You believe that his benefactor is going to have to
Speaker 1: counter But what do you counter with? It's a beautiful
Speaker 1: Winnebago and a million dollars year. Is there anything else
Speaker 1: to life?
Speaker 5: Not if you enjoy spending time in the parking lots
Speaker 5: of Walmart, as Justice Thomas wanted to do.
Speaker 1: He says he does, but apparently he likes to quail
Speaker 1: hunt in a robe. I want to ask you, there's
Speaker 1: a strategy that's starting to bubble up, which is getting
Speaker 1: Americans comfortable with authoritarianism and getting us to not think
Speaker 1: critically about the differences between a free society and not
Speaker 1: a free society. And in that regard, they are starting
Speaker 1: to paint Trump as navalny, that the trials that he
Speaker 1: is facing in America are similar or the same as
Speaker 1: what Putin did to Navalney. Please explain to me why
Speaker 1: that's horseshit.
Speaker 5: Well, we are not experts in Russian criminal procedure, but
Speaker 5: I think it's safe to say that Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: likely receiving more procedural protections right now in the four
Speaker 5: criminal indictments that he's currently subject to than Alexey Navalney
Speaker 5: had in his time in Russia. So I think this
Speaker 5: is not the same situation.
Speaker 1: Would you say that Donald Trump was actually received duer
Speaker 1: process than most people in America? I mean, this guy
Speaker 1: is clearly on the Platinum Due Process Plan, the Harlan Cross,
Speaker 1: the Harland pro due Process like he's getting every the
Speaker 1: duist process, the newest of processes. So how is this
Speaker 1: even comparable.
Speaker 4: It's not at all comparable. And I do think it
Speaker 4: is interesting, as your last segment made clear that Trump
Speaker 4: is adverting to the situation in Russia right now and
Speaker 4: invoking Navalney, and I think that it's right to draw
Speaker 4: comparisons right now. But of course the casting is all
Speaker 4: wrong right now in the arguments that Trump is making
Speaker 4: in some of the pending criminal cases against him. He
Speaker 4: is a sally, casting himself as above and beyond the law.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're essentially seeing what.
Speaker 2: He had a state.
Speaker 1: Presidents should have complete and total immunity, because if you
Speaker 1: can't kill people, then what fun Well, this was actually.
Speaker 4: A hypothetical that came up in the lower federal court
Speaker 4: argument in this immunity case, Trump's lawyer was asked, so,
Speaker 4: you're saying that a president could order sealed Team six
Speaker 4: to assassinate a political rival and the criminal law couldn't
Speaker 4: get him for.
Speaker 5: That sounds familiar, it was, And.
Speaker 4: Trump's lawyer basically said, unless he's been impeached and convicted first,
Speaker 4: the criminal.
Speaker 1: Laws in a political process, So you have to get
Speaker 1: our criminal laws are suspended for the president didn't fight
Speaker 1: a war about that.
Speaker 5: We not only fought a war, but our whole constitutional
Speaker 5: structure is designed to prevent consolidations of power within the
Speaker 5: presidency exactly. And so this whole idea you've got an a.
Speaker 2: In our constitutional laws is law.
Speaker 5: But I mean, what Kate is describing is essentially very
Speaker 5: authoritarian forward. I mean, the person that Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: is not Alexey Navali, It's Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: Right, that's what he wants to be, that's who he admires.
Speaker 1: But in our judicial systems defense, in my mind, over
Speaker 1: these past few years, it was one of the few
Speaker 1: institutions in America that actually held pretty strong. And you
Speaker 1: are frowning at me, you disagree with this.
Speaker 5: Well, on our podcast we take different roles, Kate, is
Speaker 5: I think much more amenable to your position. I think
Speaker 5: I think, well, okay, well explain like there's something to this.
Speaker 4: I do think that there is a way in which
Speaker 4: courts really did stand as a bulwark against some of
Speaker 4: Trump's worst instincts and impulses while he was in office,
Speaker 4: and even since you know, sixty plus lawsuits he filed
Speaker 4: around the twenty twenty election, all unsuccessful. Right, He argued
Speaker 4: for different versions of immunity in civil and criminal cases previously,
Speaker 4: those have been unsuccessful essentially throughout. But we are in
Speaker 4: a real test moment of that proposition, in that the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court is right now facing this question of whether
Speaker 4: he will ever stand trial for the January sixth events
Speaker 4: and the grant.
Speaker 1: Him blanket immunity. We don't have a republican anymore. We
Speaker 1: don't have a constitutional republic if the head of it
Speaker 1: has an immunity. The thing I liked about what the
Speaker 1: courts did is they set a standard of evidence. Anybody
Speaker 1: can say whatever they want on a basic cable show
Speaker 1: wherever they go, or at a rally or anything else,
Speaker 1: but when you bring it into a court, as Juliani
Speaker 1: famously said, no, we don't have any evidence. But we
Speaker 1: got slots of theories and they threw them out.
Speaker 5: So that just suggests that the bar is in hell.
Speaker 4: Yes, of course, the.
Speaker 5: Courts are a bulwark against the most toutalitarian impulses in
Speaker 5: our society. But we forget that the court system. We have,
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court, we have, the debates we're having about
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court are all right now. The product of
Speaker 5: what Donald Trump did like this is a person who
Speaker 5: not elected by the posts.
Speaker 1: Saying these questions would have been utterly unimaginable in preview.
Speaker 5: Right down debating whether or not in the next presidential
Speaker 5: term we are going to see a national ban on abortion,
Speaker 5: we wouldn't be having that discussion if Donald Trump's six
Speaker 5: or three conservative supermajority had not rolled back Roll versus WAD,
Speaker 5: we wouldn't have that discussion at all.
Speaker 1: For the immunity discussion or anything.
Speaker 5: All of this, he has created the conditions for the
Speaker 5: way we talk about this court.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that ultimately is at stake in
Speaker 1: all this. I want to thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for coming on. You're fabulous. Check out their podcast, Please
Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny. New episodes drop on Mondays. It's a fine
Speaker 1: day to drop them. Melissa, Marie and Khall.
Speaker 2: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 2: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
Speaker 2: The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central on
Speaker 2: Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Bear Amount Plus.
Speaker 2: This has been a Comedy Central podcast. Yeah.