Speaker 1: It's Steve Schmidt here with the warning, and I am
Speaker 1: thrilled tonight to be joined by the veteran political journalist
Speaker 1: Ryan Liza at tell Us. I'd urge you to subscribe
Speaker 1: to tell Us. There's some great journalism, some long form
Speaker 1: journalism on there about an incredible abuse of power by
Speaker 1: a mag lawyer. Ryan's entanglement in it reads like a novel. Today,
Speaker 1: Ryan had on Judge Michael Ludig, veteran federal judge, one
Speaker 1: of the pre eminent conservative legal minds of his generation
Speaker 1: and a deeply principled believer in the rule of law,
Speaker 1: the American Constitution. And you can see Judge Ludiic and
Speaker 1: his appearance with Ryan on Ryan's podcast and tell Us,
Speaker 1: and I encourage you to watch it because Judge Ludik
Speaker 1: is going to in that podcast detail in a way
Speaker 1: that's very accessible the lawlessness, the disregard for the Constitution,
Speaker 1: and all of those things we're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 1: To kick off, I wanted to make one initial point
Speaker 1: here as we begin the conversation tonight, and it is
Speaker 1: I see one of our Canadian community members, and I
Speaker 1: was walking into a Canadian grocery store earlier and Every
Speaker 1: item in that store is tagged with the Canadian flag
Speaker 1: to indicate if it is a Canadian product. And the
Speaker 1: pride of the country with regard to its prime minister
Speaker 1: is palpable. And we're going to talk about Mark Carney
Speaker 1: tonight as a portraiture of leadership and the oppositional character
Speaker 1: creates that he has to so much of the Washington
Speaker 1: DC Democratic establishment. Smart able, obviously noncompetulant, and I thought,
Speaker 1: and we'll start this, I do have one fact check
Speaker 1: in the old spirit of things that the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: said that was deeply untrue in this moment, and it's this.
Speaker 1: He said, Canada is not for sale, and that is
Speaker 1: trip but Dan and the Prime Minister motioned in the
Speaker 1: Oval Office and he said, in some places are not
Speaker 1: for sale, but the American Oval Office is most certainly
Speaker 1: for sale. And Donald Trump is renting it out like
Speaker 1: a whore from an old West town, one shekel at
Speaker 1: a time to every hour potentate they can get a
Speaker 1: bitcoin of them and down to Marilago. It is an appalling, palling,
Speaker 1: ethical armageddon and a corruption that we're witnessing. There's a
Speaker 1: staging and I want to talk about that tonight.
Speaker 2: As well. But I want to kick it off just about.
Speaker 1: How you read that room? What went down there yesterday?
Speaker 1: How do you process what? I observe? His madness, insanity incoherence,
Speaker 1: a portraiture of psychological disorder of meglomania manifesting itself. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump surrounded by henchman in sick offense the Canadian Prime
Speaker 1: Minister there in a very high stakes moment that I
Speaker 1: think he acquitted himself with the highest degree of statesmanship.
Speaker 1: I have awesome respect for him, right, maximum respect for
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Mark Carney right, as a as a leader
Speaker 1: who defends liberty, who defends freedom, defends what's right in
Speaker 1: this in this moment, And so like, how did you
Speaker 1: read that room?
Speaker 3: I think I mean two things. I mean, Carney's election
Speaker 3: was propelled by Trump, right, it was propelled by anti
Speaker 3: Trump feeling in Canada. So I'm sure he went in
Speaker 3: there despite all the bullshit that Trump has been saying,
Speaker 3: and all and all the nonsense about Canada being the
Speaker 3: fifty first state. He went in there with you know,
Speaker 3: political wind at his back, recently elected popular, whereas Trump
Speaker 3: is uh suffering from a cratering in the polls in
Speaker 3: recent weeks he's suffering from hit after hit by federal
Speaker 3: judges around the country declaring the that his major initiatives
Speaker 3: so far are don't pass legal muster. And so I
Speaker 3: think that's the sort of setup. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: sometimes we think of Trump as this, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: a titanic political figure because he's, you know, he's had
Speaker 3: this incredible comeback politically and you know, he's back in
Speaker 3: the White House, but he's not doing great right now, Steve.
Speaker 3: In my view, so that was the first thing. Is
Speaker 3: a politician on the up and you know, one coming down,
Speaker 3: and the relationship between them is, you know, this Canadian
Speaker 3: Prime minister has been helped by by Trump's nonsense. Parney was,
Speaker 3: you know, a statesman. He didn't get into. You know,
Speaker 3: it's amazing to me how these traditional politicians are able
Speaker 3: to uh not get in the gutter with Trump and
Speaker 3: not try and come into the Oval office and engage
Speaker 3: in the kind of antics that he does. He must
Speaker 3: be I'm sure it's very tempting for them to do that.
Speaker 3: He didn't do that. He made some jokes. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you agree or not, but Trump kind of
Speaker 3: was a whimp about about everything. I mean, he didn't.
Speaker 3: He didn't he wasn't pushing him on this, on this stuff.
Speaker 3: He made a couple of cracks about it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think a certain sense to me, it was like
Speaker 3: Trump actually understands how idiotic and juvenile the whole thing is,
Speaker 3: and he's almost embarrassed to really push it, uh in
Speaker 3: front in front of this person. So that was you
Speaker 3: know that, that was my basic read on it is
Speaker 3: you know, Trump is very conflict diverse in real life, right.
Speaker 3: I think you know, the the Zelenski meeting maybe was
Speaker 3: an outlier in that sense, but he doesn't like face
Speaker 3: to face uh, confrontation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The stuff from the Apprentice was just you know, bullshit
Speaker 3: TV TV stuff, right, And so yeah, that was my
Speaker 3: basic read, my basic read on it. You're the you're
Speaker 3: the you are the Canadian expert here, Steve. You're there
Speaker 3: a lot, and you're now basically an ambassador to Canada. Uh,
Speaker 3: you're when when you go up there. So what was
Speaker 3: what was your takeaway?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, listen, I crossed the border last night
Speaker 1: in each border guard, uh, you know, at the you know,
Speaker 1: very professional Canadian border services. I apologized uh on behalf
Speaker 1: of the United States and let them know. You know,
Speaker 1: American people are not behind this. Uh.
Speaker 2: I think it's outrageous.
Speaker 1: You know, you think about the World Cup and the
Speaker 1: comments about jd Vance, about the threat implicit to Ice
Speaker 1: Barbie who by the way, you know, a raid at
Speaker 1: a Washington d c restaurant in the footprint really of
Speaker 1: the White House owned by the husband of the CBS
Speaker 1: anchor woman, uh a few days after the way, after
Speaker 1: sixty minutes raises the steaks is deeply suspect to me.
Speaker 1: And so in this moment, I think that it's very
Speaker 1: important for people to see clearly what's going on. And
Speaker 1: what morek Carney did is show the whole world how
Speaker 1: easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump and how incoherent
Speaker 1: he is, and whether the sycophants like Steven Miller who
Speaker 1: go on and they say things on Fox like well,
Speaker 1: you know, look, I'm watching the Grand Chess Master, right,
Speaker 1: You're watching a ship of fools doing real arson. And
Speaker 1: so with regard to people, you know, as you cross
Speaker 1: a border, you know, does.
Speaker 2: Os Donald Trump, do not.
Speaker 1: Spend your money in the United States, do not buy
Speaker 1: an American product, send a signal Tesla is collapsing. They
Speaker 1: cannot get rid of the cyber trucks. He has two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars of inventory. Right, the company is on
Speaker 1: a path to destruction. And all of these things, interconnected together,
Speaker 1: will weaken core pillars of this movement. And we're seeing
Speaker 1: that clay out right now. It's gonna get worse, right,
Speaker 1: Because what I wanted to ask you also, is is
Speaker 1: there a sense in Washington about that seven weeks from now,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be really a fundamental collapse of inventory and
Speaker 1: stores and a high consumption society. So there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of items that suddenly become scarce, Prices will
Speaker 1: go up, jobs will disappear. And when you look at
Speaker 1: agricultural forecasts and some of this maybe the inability to
Speaker 1: pick crops, the inability to move crops to markets internationally,
Speaker 1: which has a real implication for long haul truck drivers,
Speaker 1: which is really the number one living wage job, right
Speaker 1: for a non college educated white guy in the country, right,
Speaker 1: a core Trump constituency. Right, all of this, as we
Speaker 1: move into the September October I think takes Trump down
Speaker 1: to about a twenty nine thirty percent approval level. This
Speaker 1: should be a historic glow. I worried about thirty eight
Speaker 1: thirty nine hovering right there right now. I think he's
Speaker 1: headed to the thirty five, and he's going to get
Speaker 1: lower than thirty five and kind of arc from about
Speaker 1: and the accumulation of all of this is going to
Speaker 1: be really devastating in a lived experience for people. And
Speaker 1: so how do you see that?
Speaker 3: Look, I think you're right. I think the April market
Speaker 3: slide which was scary and created a lot of bad
Speaker 3: headlines and freaked people out and obviously damaged his poles,
Speaker 3: but it was not it was not anything that people
Speaker 3: lived experience. People weren't affected by it in their pocketbook.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe there afore a whole and k's were
Speaker 3: affected by it, but you know, it wasn't like we
Speaker 3: were in the teeth of a recession, right. It was
Speaker 3: just a big, big warning sign from that market drop,
Speaker 3: and it absolutely the bottom fell out of his polls.
Speaker 3: To the extent that can happen for any president these days,
Speaker 3: I think you're probably saying twenty nine to thirty percent,
Speaker 3: because that's probably the sort of dead end or base
Speaker 3: that he has that will, you know, will just never
Speaker 3: say they disapprove of him. And so I think you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right that considering just the freakout of what the
Speaker 3: tariffs could do produced that kind of hit the actual ech.
Speaker 3: And remember, the market has recovered, you know, most of
Speaker 3: what it lost. Trump has not recovered most of the
Speaker 3: polling support that he lost. And so at the actual
Speaker 3: economic effects of these tariffs, which we haven't seen yet, right,
Speaker 3: that is like a storm on the horizon that every
Speaker 3: day that he keeps these tariffs uh intact, uh is
Speaker 3: more likely to uh hit landfall. So I completely agree
Speaker 3: with you if you if you read closely the what
Speaker 3: you know, small businesses, large businesses, what's happening with uh
Speaker 3: uh shipping, and just the sort of uh slow accretion
Speaker 3: of everyone preparing for especially the China tariffs. It's going
Speaker 3: to it's it's going to hit, and it's going to
Speaker 3: hit hard. And he doesn't really have, you know, uh
Speaker 3: a plan to you know, say, oh, sorry, these these
Speaker 3: tariffs are gone now. I mean they only just started
Speaker 3: talking to the to the to the Chinese this week,
Speaker 3: even though Trump said they've been in negotiations for for
Speaker 3: uh for weeks. That was an obvious lie. So I agree,
Speaker 3: you know, I I'm not a I don't make predictions
Speaker 3: about Trump and support anymore, because if you know, if
Speaker 3: I was doing that, I you know I wouldn't be
Speaker 3: very accurate. I never thought he'd be in the White
Speaker 3: House again. So I'm always, I'm always very cautious of
Speaker 3: those predictions, Steve. But I think it's an absolute fact
Speaker 3: that we have not seen the worst hit yet from
Speaker 3: these tariffs, and just the freakout last month produced his
Speaker 3: biggest his his lowest approval ratings as president.
Speaker 1: You live in wash and Ken and I'm genuinely play.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I just had a role play for a second.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pretend I was in the US Senate, right
Speaker 1: and I'm a Democratic senator and we're having our caucus meeting,
Speaker 1: and what I would stand up and I would say is,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, he's not having that fucking parade.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 1: He is not not having a Kim Jong un celebration
Speaker 1: of himself using six thousand active duty soldiers of the
Speaker 1: United States aren't forces on the two hundred and fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the perth of the United States Army, no
Speaker 1: right and all in and stop it, and would do
Speaker 1: whatever is necessary to obstruct the workings of government at
Speaker 1: every conceivable level, from dawn to dusk, around the clock
Speaker 1: until it stops. And I just wonder why there is
Speaker 1: not anybody in the Senate that seems to appreciate that
Speaker 1: the moving of the line two greater absurdities, two greater
Speaker 1: desecrations of tradition of restraint in a democracy and a republic.
Speaker 1: Why do we have such a contaminated.
Speaker 2: Group of leaders that nobody, with very few.
Speaker 1: Exceptions, sorry about that, seemed to understand right that some
Speaker 1: fights come to you, right and you have to meet
Speaker 1: them where they are. What is the strategic gap?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, this is going to sound like the
Speaker 3: real Washington answer, but I think you are confusing democrats
Speaker 3: in the Senate for people who actually have power and influence.
Speaker 3: And I don't I just I think there's this overestimation
Speaker 3: about what they can actually do, all right, that you know,
Speaker 3: I'm you know, not to go to bat for those guys,
Speaker 3: but I'm you know, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument
Speaker 3: of they've got to pick their fights, and pick fights
Speaker 3: where they can actually.
Speaker 1: For sure the nominations, can they can they stop a nomination?
Speaker 2: And for and for how long? So for example, they
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 3: They could do a Tubberville did last you know, in
Speaker 3: the Biden administration and hold up uh, you know, military
Speaker 3: promotions that would be related to the military parade. I'm
Speaker 3: just you know, I'm just thinking off the top of
Speaker 3: my head of what obstructionist techniques have happened.
Speaker 2: Well, everybody wants but why not.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, I'm not I even't thought I
Speaker 3: thought this through. I think there is an argument against
Speaker 3: what Tubberville did. You remember this fight, right, Tuberville was
Speaker 3: holding up all these military promotions that just the way
Speaker 3: they get passed through the Senate is on just a
Speaker 3: big you know, uh as a big group. Well, let's
Speaker 3: think this through. If they did that, I mean, all
Speaker 3: the arguments they made against what Tubberville did would be
Speaker 3: thrown back in their face and they would say what
Speaker 3: they would say, yes, we need you know, this is
Speaker 3: necessary because it's the one tool. I'm just thinking out
Speaker 3: loud here, Steve, because you've you've you've triggered this conversation,
Speaker 3: and let's think of this through whether this would actually
Speaker 3: be politically smart to do or not. They would say, yeah,
Speaker 3: this this parade is a is a disgrace and one
Speaker 3: tool that we have is we can we can hold
Speaker 3: up these military promotions. We uh support them, we uh,
Speaker 3: but we need to make a stand here. I don't
Speaker 3: know I would that sell got wrong?
Speaker 1: Am I wrong about? I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: that I'm right about this?
Speaker 2: Right? They do?
Speaker 1: So the military promotions that were all sentate firmable appointments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talk that that the hold right, the hold that
Speaker 1: they can put on is on any nomination. So any
Speaker 1: senator has the ability to say I'm putting a hold
Speaker 1: on a B or C right, it's not moving forward.
Speaker 1: So if you have forty seven Democratic senators, right, forty
Speaker 1: seven different holds right, stand united on each nomine like that,
Speaker 1: they have that power to.
Speaker 2: Do that under the Senate rules.
Speaker 3: I believe because yeah, yeah, I believe so because that
Speaker 3: Tuberville was able to do that in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: he had blocked reading a piece here from NPR. He
Speaker 3: had blocked all military promotions, uh since since between February
Speaker 3: and December of twenty twenty three, and his he did
Speaker 3: it over objections to Pentagon abortion policy. So so that's
Speaker 3: a one that's a one man operation there. He was
Speaker 3: able to do that single handedly so could they do that? Yeah,
Speaker 3: but what what's is that gonna Is that gonna be
Speaker 3: smart politically to say?
Speaker 2: I think is.
Speaker 3: Is Trump going to care? Does he give a military promotion?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: Well, the point is that it's all nominees across the
Speaker 1: depth and breadth of everything everywhere, right as.
Speaker 3: But remember with other nominees you can't. I mean you can,
Speaker 3: you can, you can draw things out a little bit,
Speaker 3: but nominees are not subject to fill the filibuster anymore, right,
Speaker 3: and so there are certain things Democrats.
Speaker 2: Can do to.
Speaker 1: But they still have the power of that fold on them.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about other nominees if you're just talking about
Speaker 3: the military promotions.
Speaker 1: If you were outside, does a Democratic senator, for example,
Speaker 1: have the ability to say, now that Mike Waltz is
Speaker 1: nominated to be the un UH ambassador, No way, right,
Speaker 1: I'm putting a hold on him.
Speaker 3: They don't. They don't because once it looks he gets
Speaker 3: he goes the process for these other nominees. The basic
Speaker 3: process for judges and for Senate confirmable positions now is
Speaker 3: they go through the committee process, they go to the floor,
Speaker 3: and then it's just a majority vote. It can't be filibustered, right,
Speaker 3: And I'm not enough of a Senate guy to know
Speaker 3: why the military promotions there's something technical about that where
Speaker 3: one senator was able to hold them up. So just
Speaker 3: but there is a distinction between those two things. But
Speaker 3: on the Waltz thing, they can't do it. This guy,
Speaker 3: Ed Martin, Steve, I don't know how much you followed
Speaker 3: Ed Martin.
Speaker 2: This is a.
Speaker 3: Lunatic January sixth or who Trump wants to be the
Speaker 3: permanent US Attorney here in Washington, d C. And you
Speaker 3: know he was on a glide path until yesterday when
Speaker 3: Tom Tillis of North Carolina, Republican senator from North Carolina,
Speaker 3: who you know every one in a hundred times will
Speaker 3: break with like the absolute worst Trump policies. Till Us
Speaker 3: came out against Martin, just shocking that he's the only
Speaker 3: Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee.
Speaker 1: So this guy's a legitimate Nazi sympathizer. He's got a
Speaker 1: legitimate Nazis around him that he's done stuff with, you know,
Speaker 1: weird associations, threatening the lock opponents up, just off the wall.
Speaker 3: Look, this guy. The first thing he did as acting
Speaker 3: US Attorney was dismiss a case that the old US
Speaker 3: attorney was prosecuting, that Ed Martin, the new US attorney
Speaker 3: was the defense attorney on for a January sixth defendant.
Speaker 3: So imagine, Steve, you were suddenly given the power of
Speaker 3: a prosecutor and you were previously a defense attorney representing
Speaker 3: this January sixth defendant, and you just killed the case.
Speaker 3: So that was that was one of his first acts.
Speaker 3: He is a He was at January sixth. He has
Speaker 3: routinely described it as a day of you know, I'm
Speaker 3: paraphrasing here, you know, peace and joy and love, and
Speaker 3: obviously celebrated Trump's pardons of all the January sixth criminals.
Speaker 3: And by the way, he has absolutely zero prosecutorial experience.
Speaker 3: If by my reckoning, he was perhaps in the in
Speaker 3: the top three, but maybe number one in terms of
Speaker 3: the most disturbing Trump nominees if you get past like
Speaker 3: you know, Tulsea and RFK and some of these others,
Speaker 3: but he was in that pantheon and you know, Pambody,
Speaker 3: but really really scary because this guy was going to
Speaker 3: be the US attorney for Washington, d C. Where there
Speaker 3: is a just target rich environment of people and institutions
Speaker 3: that this White House hates and we were looking at
Speaker 3: you know, so right now because Tom Tillis did the
Speaker 3: right thing and said, you know, I'm not a big
Speaker 3: fan of January sixth sympathizers. It looks like Ed Martin's
Speaker 3: nomination is dead. Uh, he's still current, he's still the
Speaker 3: acting US Attorney, but it's going to expire, uh in
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 3: That's one to watch because Trump wants this guy in
Speaker 3: that position, and I don't think he's gonna make it now,
Speaker 3: but he you never know, who knows if Trump goes
Speaker 3: to the wall for this guy and they find a
Speaker 3: way to get him to the floor, but they don't
Speaker 3: have the votes in the Judiciary Committee right now to
Speaker 3: get him out. And I don't think uh, Senate Republican
Speaker 3: leaders really want to, you know, send him to the
Speaker 3: floor absent a committee vote. But it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: still it's still possible. But he's someone that your your
Speaker 3: viewers should keep an eye on because he's just an
Speaker 3: absolute worst of the worst in terms of being unqualified
Speaker 3: and having views that are just so out of step
Speaker 3: with what you would want in a in a US attorney.
Speaker 3: So anyway, right we gotta. I've got to brush up
Speaker 3: on Senate procedure for next time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because my, my, because my fundamental question right, because
Speaker 1: it's definitely entwined with the politics right of the moment
Speaker 1: is and I honestly don't know the answer to the quack,
Speaker 1: which is, you can't filibuster a nominee, but a whole
Speaker 1: is different than a felibuster.
Speaker 3: You can fill it. You can filibuster the way that
Speaker 3: like Corey Booker did, but like you.
Speaker 4: Know, not.
Speaker 1: In an old school sense. Right, the rules changed and
Speaker 1: I got that you.
Speaker 3: Hold the floor if you want to do it, you
Speaker 3: got to hold the floor the way Corey Booker did recently.
Speaker 3: And so there's a human limit to that.
Speaker 1: But still I wonder if there is a and I
Speaker 1: have to find this out, which is does the senator
Speaker 1: still have the power to stop a process?
Speaker 3: They don't. They don't, they don't. You would have you
Speaker 3: would have seen it done with Tulca Gabbard and r
Speaker 3: F k and Pam Bondy. They don't have that power anymore.
Speaker 3: You can, you can delay things, but the majority in
Speaker 3: the Senate will get a nominee to the floor and
Speaker 3: vote it on. If eventually, so you can you can
Speaker 3: delay things, but you can't permanently hold them up. I
Speaker 3: mean that's what we would, you know, call a filibuster.
Speaker 3: The talking filibuster still exists, and we saw Corey Booker
Speaker 3: use it recently. But you gotta you gotta do that.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, there's only so many hours you can
Speaker 3: actually uh do that.
Speaker 1: Do you assass do you assess straight cagically that in
Speaker 1: the strategy room, that the strategy is maximalist, that this
Speaker 1: is your we are one hundred percent obstructionist. This is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the time to assert our maximum
Speaker 1: amount of inherent power, as the article one is.
Speaker 3: This is where I think you're getting out with these questions,
Speaker 3: and that the answer to that is clearly no. Right,
Speaker 3: it's clearly no. And you know, if you talk to
Speaker 3: the real nerds of Senate procedure, you know they'll give
Speaker 3: you a list of things you could do every single
Speaker 3: day if you want, if you wanted to. And you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right that the Democrats in the Senate are not there.
Speaker 3: They are not there, and they're not there because of
Speaker 3: one person, you know, Chuck Schumer. He you know that's
Speaker 3: not what he wants to be doing.
Speaker 2: I want to.
Speaker 1: Talk to you at another point in time on a
Speaker 1: disparate tangent of this, before we get into your conversation
Speaker 1: with Judge Ludik about what.
Speaker 2: I feel and know, and.
Speaker 1: I think it's chiefly true in the moment, is really
Speaker 1: the fundamental corruption of the American bar in this country.
Speaker 1: And I think your story got right out that, right,
Speaker 1: and your long form about the abuse that you went through,
Speaker 1: the abuse that so many journalists are being threatened with
Speaker 1: right now in litigation, the capitulance of all these big
Speaker 1: law firms, their hollowness, their sleaziness, they're transactional scumbaggery, all
Speaker 1: of it. Right, And so one of the reforms right
Speaker 1: for democrats, I think that bar associations, right, should be
Speaker 1: filled with non lawyer, certified professionals that are bound by
Speaker 1: a fiduciary responsibility, by a code of conduct. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you have a couple of doctors on the Bar Association board.
Speaker 1: You have a couple psychologists, right, anybody who has a
Speaker 1: fiduciary trust. You have some accountants, right, you have a
Speaker 1: certified board member training. But lawyers should not be judging
Speaker 1: other lawyers because in the obvious aftermath if any of
Speaker 1: these legal codes of ethics mean anything, and people like
Speaker 1: Pambondi and Marco Rubio and others are going to be
Speaker 1: disbarred over the next over the next decade, right as
Speaker 1: it winds out through a process, through some of the
Speaker 1: illegalities of actions. Because I believe the Constitution is the
Speaker 1: law of the land, and it's immutable, less amended, and
Speaker 1: that we will prevail here, and that what's happening is,
Speaker 1: though an abomination, not unprecedented.
Speaker 2: Our lifetime. But I wanted to just.
Speaker 1: Ask you the highlight of Judge Ludic's comments, write a
Speaker 1: pre eminent conservative jurist, why don't you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about Judge Ludig, who he is, why he matters,
Speaker 1: and really the crux of what he said today.
Speaker 3: Well, I bet a lot of our viewers will will
Speaker 3: remember Judge Lutig from his testimony before the January sixth
Speaker 3: Committee in June twenty twenty two. He gave an incredibly
Speaker 3: powerful statement that day and has been someone who grew
Speaker 3: up on the American right, the judicial right, the federalist
Speaker 3: society right, someone who knows all of the most famous
Speaker 3: jurists in that movement, socially, personally, I'm talking about the
Speaker 3: justice Thomases of the world. You know this, This is
Speaker 3: someone who clerked for Scalia. This is someone who Ted
Speaker 3: Cruz once said. Ted Cruz worked for Judge Lutig. Ted
Speaker 3: Cruz once said that he wishes George W. Bush had
Speaker 3: appointed or nominated Lootig to the Supreme Court instead of
Speaker 3: John Roberts. In other words, that was Cruse's statement of
Speaker 3: saying John Roberts was too liberal. We should have had
Speaker 3: a real conservative like Michael Ludig. And you know, Michael
Speaker 3: lud to his great great credit, has been clear eyed
Speaker 3: about the threat that Trump represents to democracy from the beginning.
Speaker 3: I think he's someone who has become more and more
Speaker 3: outspoken over time, peaking with his public testimony in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two before the January sixth Committee. And he's written
Speaker 3: a piece that's coming out this week that is going
Speaker 3: to be just explosive. And I've known Looted for a
Speaker 3: while now, and we were talking and he started previewing
Speaker 3: the piece with me, and he was kind enough to
Speaker 3: come on Substack Live with me this afternoon and take
Speaker 3: me through what he's going to say in this article.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to start at the end of our
Speaker 3: interview Steve, because I just think this line from Lootig,
Speaker 3: given his pedigree and his history, it just kind of
Speaker 3: unsettled me because I asked at the end, you know,
Speaker 3: you know what, what's your level of optimism that things
Speaker 3: will get better and you know, we'll you're back on
Speaker 3: course here, and he was pretty pessimistic, and he said this,
Speaker 3: He said, it would be impossible to say after Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's first one hundred days in office that America has
Speaker 3: a government of laws, not of men. You know, this
Speaker 3: is a guy who spent fifteen years as a federal
Speaker 3: judge dealing with some of the most complicated cases, especially
Speaker 3: in the wake of nine to eleven, deeply serious person,
Speaker 3: and for him to reach that conclusion is it's it's shocking,
Speaker 3: it's astonishing, it's frightening. And I don't think our current
Speaker 3: media environment and our current you know, public forums about
Speaker 3: what's going on have grappled with this kind of core
Speaker 3: act of the lawlessness that people like Luting see in Trump.
Speaker 3: I think people don't, you know, people are still in
Speaker 3: denial about it. And I want to let me just
Speaker 3: go through his sort of like main paragraph in this piece,
Speaker 3: and I might just read the whole thing, Steve. You
Speaker 3: can cut me off. It goes on too long. Please
Speaker 3: just this paragraph, which is going to blow up the internet.
Speaker 3: We're getting a preview of it here compliments of looting.
Speaker 3: But this piece is gonna blow up there.
Speaker 1: Let me let me just say everybody before you before
Speaker 1: you do it, right, you find Ryan Keellos t E
Speaker 1: l O S.
Speaker 2: Look up that word.
Speaker 1: It will take you down a enlightening path of some
Speaker 1: philosophical understanding. But uh go to Tellos, Uh subscribe to Ryan.
Speaker 1: Follow him there he's doing some great stuff. And over
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Ryan. I'm looking forward to reading this.
Speaker 3: I liked Jeffrey Clark's comment there. He got the pun
Speaker 3: tell Us tell Us news. All right, this is all
Speaker 3: right to be serious here. Now this is from this
Speaker 3: is from Ludig's piece. This is him writing. This piece
Speaker 3: isn't out yet. We're getting We're getting a sneak peek here.
Speaker 3: We're not one of his signature initiatives during his first
Speaker 3: one hundred days in office. Does Donald Trump even have
Speaker 3: the authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States,
Speaker 3: And now he starts listing these signature initiatives not for
Speaker 3: the crippling global tariffs he ordered unilaterally. Not for his
Speaker 3: unlawful deportations of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador Squalid
Speaker 3: maximum security prison. Not for his deportation of US citizens
Speaker 3: to Honduras. Not for his defiantly corrupt vow and order
Speaker 3: from the Great Hall of the Department of Justice to
Speaker 3: weaponized the Department against his personal political enemies. Not for
Speaker 3: his evil executive orders against the nation's law firms and
Speaker 3: lawyers in personal vendetta for their representation of his political
Speaker 3: enemies and clients of whom he personally disapproves. Not for
Speaker 3: his corrupt executive orders against honorable American citizens and former
Speaker 3: officials of his own administration Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor,
Speaker 3: a former DHS chief of staff who dared criticize Trump
Speaker 3: anonymously during his first term. Not for his unlawful bludgeoning
Speaker 3: of the nation's colleges and universities with unconstitutional demands that
Speaker 3: they surrender their governance of billions of dollars of congressionally
Speaker 3: approved funds, or his politically motivated threats to revoke tax exemptions.
Speaker 3: Not for his attempt to alter the rules of federal elections.
Speaker 3: Not for his direct assault on the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright
Speaker 3: citizenship guarantee, not for his mass firings of federal employees,
Speaker 3: not for Elon Musk and DOJ's ravaging of the federal government,
Speaker 3: not for his threats to fire Federal Reserve Board Chairman
Speaker 3: J Powell, not for his unconstitutional attacks on press freedoms,
Speaker 3: and finally, not for his appalling arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan.
Speaker 3: Yet I counted that there's there's basically sixteen policies he
Speaker 3: mentions in there, and he's not just like riffing through this,
Speaker 3: you know, to be cute. These are the inner sixteen
Speaker 3: policies that he goes through and explains as a as
Speaker 3: a judge would why they have no foundation in law
Speaker 3: or authority under the Constitution. And I don't know, just
Speaker 3: blew me away reading this and listening to him go
Speaker 3: through that, because I think so much of the conversation is,
Speaker 3: you know, partly that you know, Trump's bad and things suck,
Speaker 3: but so much of the media coverage of this is like,
Speaker 3: you know, Trump, did you know crazy thing X. It's
Speaker 3: being challenged in the courts, but it's this kind of
Speaker 3: both sides ism without any clear statement of yeah, that
Speaker 3: was that's illegal, Like we don't need a lawyer to
Speaker 3: tell us like that's illegal, like uh, the you know,
Speaker 3: birthright citizenship, like we can read we can all read
Speaker 3: the fourteenth Amendment. And so I think the power of
Speaker 3: looting and his conversation with me today and this piece
Speaker 3: that's coming is just stepping back looking at the last
Speaker 3: hundred days days of the most important things that Trump
Speaker 3: did and explaining only like a federal judge can that
Speaker 3: the rule of law has just evaporated when it comes
Speaker 3: to this president. And this has been one hundred days
Speaker 3: of lawlessness in his view. And I've known looted for
Speaker 3: a while. Well, he's not hyperbolic. He's a really serious guy.
Speaker 3: And it took him a while to sort of, I think,
Speaker 3: get dragged into the to and fro of politics, and
Speaker 3: it's not comfortable for someone like him, like a federal judge.
Speaker 3: And this is to me the most important statement I've
Speaker 3: seen by someone of his reputation and credentials on the
Speaker 3: right explaining the lawlessness of the president. And you know,
Speaker 3: he concludes with what I started with, you know, it
Speaker 3: should be impossible to say, it would be impossible to
Speaker 3: say after Donald Trump's first hundred days in office that
Speaker 3: America has a government of laws, not of men. So
Speaker 3: pretty depressing, pretty unsettling.
Speaker 2: Sure is.
Speaker 1: A real time of testing ahead for the contrary, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it whatsoever. That's really an astonishing paragraph. Thank
Speaker 1: you for reading it, and again, everybody on we have
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred Americans who could be doing a
Speaker 1: lot of things tonight and more. We'll see it when
Speaker 1: we release it. You can find Ryan to tell us
Speaker 1: support good independent journalism, because I want to tell you
Speaker 1: what I see at a at a strategic level, what
Speaker 1: I observe in terms of assessing the fight ahead, and
Speaker 1: it's it's this that.
Speaker 2: Survivor episodes. They are television reality.
Speaker 1: Show episodes, maliced and toxic, but they are all laid
Speaker 1: out on a foundation of that the impossible could be.
Speaker 1: So we saw a glimpse of that yesterday during the
Speaker 1: Canadian insanity. Never say never, and the answer is never right.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump may sell the Oval office, but the Canadian
Speaker 1: people aren't never going to sell out their country to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, so right off the table, never never, ever,
Speaker 1: fucking ever right, So it's not going to happen. Just
Speaker 1: like the first Amendment is not debatable, just like the
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the fourteenth Amendment. None of
Speaker 1: these things are debatable. The eighth Amendment is not debatable, right,
Speaker 1: It is not at the whim.
Speaker 2: Of Donald Trump. Right.
Speaker 1: The exists in perpetuity, and it exists in a form
Speaker 1: that though it can be amended, it cannot be trifled
Speaker 1: with by whim. And so that proposition is being tested
Speaker 1: by really two forces combining.
Speaker 2: And it is the profit.
Speaker 1: The money changers, however you wish to see it in
Speaker 1: the temple of democracy, that are complicit in the production
Speaker 1: of the sixth show that imagines he has the actual power.
Speaker 2: That he does not have.
Speaker 1: And this is fundamental right that any reporting right that
Speaker 1: disseminates right, some of the biggest newsrooms in the country
Speaker 1: that posit hey, can he do this when he can't
Speaker 1: on something that doesn't need interpretation constitutionally, they become complicit
Speaker 1: in the gaslighting of the country for profit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so we see then that plus the capitulations right
Speaker 1: to get in line instinct right, cowardice in the in
Speaker 1: the Senate, and so in the totality of what Judge
Speaker 1: Ludic is observing, right, he's pushing forward into a very
Speaker 1: complex society where we have a lot of elasticity, more
Speaker 1: than most people imagine. Right before he sinks into the
Speaker 1: sand and into the quagmire on this because the American
Speaker 1: people are slow to anger and slower to get involved
Speaker 1: in fights. But when we do, and the American people
Speaker 1: are judging by the size of the protests and the
Speaker 1: building consequences, Like, what I don't get, right, is there's
Speaker 1: something that's happened over the last fifteen years in the society. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm fifty four, that's been a change, right that I
Speaker 1: very successful guy.
Speaker 2: Brilliant guy. We're talking about the.
Speaker 3: See I lost you when you said, right before a
Speaker 3: brilliant guy. Was it some who were you talking about?
Speaker 1: I was talking about a friend of mine that I
Speaker 1: was talking kid, right, brilliant brilliant guy today, right, and
Speaker 1: and it and this kind of trait in the society, right,
Speaker 1: and this is the part that I don't get. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about what's coming with the with the loss
Speaker 1: of shipping, right as these right ships that are coming
Speaker 1: right with not with anything on them. When it's and
Speaker 1: he's like and he and his response to it was, well,
Speaker 1: we'll see and I said, well, it's not we'll see
Speaker 1: we we know, right, it takes a month for the
Speaker 1: ship to get here. You can you can look at
Speaker 1: data people follow this, right, it's all transparent what's flowing
Speaker 1: around the world, and it's all in a state of collapse.
Speaker 1: I said, what I don't know understand. I said, if
Speaker 1: you if you and I were like, it's standing at
Speaker 1: the ocean's edge, right, and the hurricane was coming right,
Speaker 1: and we're standing there with a beer, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like time to go inside. And I'd be like,
Speaker 1: the hurricane is coming, And would you say, we'll see
Speaker 1: right or do you know the hurricane is coming?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And I don't understand the interpretive aspect that is dominated
Speaker 1: in the media narrative, where there's an inability to assert right,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the moment with the clarity that Ludig
Speaker 1: did it. But the fact that Ludig did it, there
Speaker 1: is clarity now around what is happening that there should
Speaker 1: be points of agreement on. That is why those type
Speaker 1: of interviews, in these type of long form formats are
Speaker 1: so important in this In this moment.
Speaker 3: I love that phrase. This interpretive well is interpretive instinct
Speaker 3: interpreted with the whatever it was that the gist of
Speaker 3: this like endlessly, Uh, this is a this is a media,
Speaker 3: you know, Achilles Heel, you know, so many of you know,
Speaker 3: and I've been there. You know, I'm guilty of this myself.
Speaker 3: There's so much you know, there's so much weight placed
Speaker 3: on clever analysis and clever interpretations and counterintuitive takes. And
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 3: I love I love a good contrarian, counterintuitive take, but
Speaker 3: it gets it gets pushed to the extremes where there's
Speaker 3: this sort of unwillingness to just state clearly the sort
Speaker 3: of not that there aren't complications in these things, not
Speaker 3: that there aren't uh you know, uh other views to
Speaker 3: platform and to privilege, but there's just this unwillingness to
Speaker 3: be really plain about what's going on, you know, just
Speaker 3: to be like the fourteenth Amendment says what it says,
Speaker 3: you know, and the you know, a lot of journalists
Speaker 3: don't like to play lawyers because you know, they think
Speaker 3: everything's up for interpretation when it comes to the law.
Speaker 3: But you could read a lot of statutes and just
Speaker 3: get the plain meaning. And there's just this like in
Speaker 3: the corporate media. There's just this obsession with everything has
Speaker 3: to have two sides, and if Trump does something, then
Speaker 3: there's got to be an equally good and smart argument
Speaker 3: for it, and you know, just report out the debate.
Speaker 3: And it's just like blinding to a lot of media
Speaker 3: institutions these days who don't realize that these traditional conventions
Speaker 3: of journalism are being used against the media and the
Speaker 3: media's obsession with uh, with with overinterpreting, over interpreting everything,
Speaker 3: and you know, giving the benefit of the doubt to
Speaker 3: the loudest political actor when when they when they do something,
Speaker 3: it's all being weaponized against them. They are these media
Speaker 3: conventions that serve really important purposes, but they're failing us
Speaker 3: now because there they should be at the service of
Speaker 3: our principles.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I always think of this as like we have two
Speaker 3: things in my business. We have our conventions and we
Speaker 3: have our principles. The conventions flow from the principles. If
Speaker 3: the conventions aren't any longer uh privileging the principles, then
Speaker 3: what the fuck is the point of the conventions? And
Speaker 3: so that that's where a lot of journalists who came
Speaker 3: up in the traditional system are going wrong. There they
Speaker 3: have this like anachronistic attachment to both sides ism and
Speaker 3: these old school journalists conventions and anything that states clearly
Speaker 3: that one side is doing something more wrong than the
Speaker 3: other side. They just it seems uncomfortable to them. That
Speaker 3: can't be the case. That means they're they're biased or
Speaker 3: or somehow partisan. And so it's a huge, huge problem, Steve,
Speaker 3: and it's it's preventing the public from seeing a lot
Speaker 3: of this clearly. And that's why when you, as you
Speaker 3: point out, when you when you see someone like an
Speaker 3: expert like Looting put this all together in one place,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, why why can't other people just make
Speaker 3: that case? Why can't they just say that clearly? And
Speaker 3: you know, look, that's one of the one of the
Speaker 3: things I love about leaving that world being on sub stack.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's a reason this platform and the journalists,
Speaker 3: a lot of them come through your show here. It's
Speaker 3: the reason why it's booming, and it's reason why people
Speaker 3: who are hungry for to get out of the corporate
Speaker 3: media bullshit are coming here and looking for independent journalists.
Speaker 3: And so I appreciate you pushing at a lot of
Speaker 3: those voices. It means a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I'm happy to do it. We have a
Speaker 1: budding economic calamity. We have a rule of law calamity.
Speaker 1: We have a growing international crisis. We have theater of
Speaker 1: the absurd in the Oval Office, the hoodies are surrendering
Speaker 1: and a couple hours later they're firing missiles. We've had
Speaker 1: four incidents on the Harry Truman in the last month.
Speaker 1: We've lost another seventy million dollar F eighteen that rolled
Speaker 1: off the deck of the Truman yesterday. But we now
Speaker 1: see this crisis between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers,
Speaker 1: that is that is escalating. You know, Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: incoherent talking about that. We have a moral crisis in
Speaker 1: that we have a real issue with an out of
Speaker 1: control jack boot federal agency that is acting like American Gestapo,
Speaker 1: not American law enforcement. It's unacceptable, it's outrageous, and that
Speaker 1: Tom Homan for sure will be packed up on the
Speaker 1: American whole of villainy someday of that, I have no doubt,
Speaker 1: like all of these people, but in this in this moment,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of stories, and you have thirty
Speaker 1: nine Democrats Senator sign a letter demanding insight and oversight
Speaker 1: over these detention facilities, including foreign black sites, where people
Speaker 1: are being shipped, attained and apparently, according to reports, profoundly mistreated.
Speaker 2: And this.
Speaker 1: Is a fundamental issue, and this is the core issue
Speaker 1: that John McCain cared about, right. This was John McCain
Speaker 1: was the foremost champion of our age in many many ways,
Speaker 1: for human rights, for prisoners of conscience, prisoners of war,
Speaker 1: detainees in American custody, that they be treated with humanity.
Speaker 1: And the McCain argument was that what makes us exception
Speaker 1: was though that we could do it to them, we
Speaker 1: will not because we are Americans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the place between the Bush administration and detainee
Speaker 4: abuses in John McCain when.
Speaker 1: The years this is what I'm writing about tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: wrote about this extensively and with his writing partner, really
Speaker 1: his brother Mark Salter, talked about this not as a
Speaker 1: political issue but a fundamental moral issue. It defines who
Speaker 1: we are. Right, the idea that the American flag would
Speaker 1: be viewed as a symbol of fear by a twenty
Speaker 1: six year old Canadian actress trying to cross the American
Speaker 1: frontier doing nothing wrong at all, and the sinister nature
Speaker 1: of the threats by the Vice President with Christy Nome,
Speaker 1: the sadism, the cruelty, where there's an embrace of a policy,
Speaker 1: we're the most powerful amongst us have taken the license
Speaker 1: to persecute the least amongst us with the cruelties of
Speaker 1: the meanest amongst us. And it is a abomination that
Speaker 1: John McCain would have thunderously dissented from from the floor
Speaker 1: of the United States Senate and would have argued with
Speaker 1: the deepest passion about the affront to the fundamental values
Speaker 1: of the country. And so as we're moving ahead right
Speaker 1: into this political season, one of the things is we
Speaker 1: begin to wrap up the hour. Ryan and I are
Speaker 1: going to get together once a week in the evening,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna We're.
Speaker 2: Gonna talk a lot of politics.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I want to do is
Speaker 1: take everybody inside, right the type of conversations that take
Speaker 1: place behind the scenes between like say, presidential level political
Speaker 1: strategists and UH and a top level journalist about how
Speaker 1: do you see the field ahead? What is the pathway
Speaker 1: of these candidates in the Democratic primary? And I just
Speaker 1: want to close it out and say one thing before
Speaker 1: I turn it over to Ryan and I just want
Speaker 1: to give everybody a point of view to think about
Speaker 1: with regard with regard to opposition, I think that one
Speaker 1: of the dumbest things that I've ever heard is the
Speaker 1: dismissal of the energy and the necessity of the protests
Speaker 1: that are being led by Bernie Sanders and by AOC.
Speaker 1: And it is important to listen to the merit of
Speaker 1: what they are saying and to meet them not through
Speaker 1: the prism of the label, because none of these labels
Speaker 1: mean anything to me anymore. There are people who appreciate
Speaker 1: this dangerous moment, as Judge Ludig does right, and they're
Speaker 1: or in defense of something that is sublime that belongs
Speaker 1: to all of us. So what I would say is,
Speaker 1: for example, I don't know that I would ever vote
Speaker 1: for AOC, but I forevermore will be in AOC and
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders' supporter, And I'm a supporter of theirs because
Speaker 1: I admire their leadership, and I admire their courage, and
Speaker 1: I admire their vision of being able to see that
Speaker 1: what has developed, what has manifested, is something deeply sinister
Speaker 1: and insidious, and that the fundamental choice is grounded in liberty,
Speaker 1: and so the people that are on the front line
Speaker 1: of this right, that are enunciating a moral prism that
Speaker 1: explains what's happened, and whether it's Bishop Barber, I will
Speaker 1: have my friend Ryan Bucy on. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about coalitions, right, Ryan Busey was the Democratic candidate
Speaker 1: from the state of Montana. And we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about public lands, I want you to think about my
Speaker 1: friend Grove, who are going on every Monday into the
Speaker 1: Capitol to do moral Mondays and pray. And each Monday,
Speaker 1: Capitol police have arrested different ministers for praying in there.
Speaker 1: Cowboys in the West and black ministers together are powerful combination, right,
Speaker 1: because what they share in common as brothers and sisters,
Speaker 1: right is a recognition of what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker 1: And so when you look at the detainees in American custody,
Speaker 1: the mistreat that has been documented, the Senate investigation, the
Speaker 1: economic calamity, the international crises that are building, the rule
Speaker 1: of law crisis, we're in one of the great crises
Speaker 1: in the history of the United States. Everybody, and it's
Speaker 1: going to require acts of citizenship. It's gonna require you
Speaker 1: to be involved. It's going to require you to demand,
Speaker 1: demand compliance with the cornerstones of our civilization, all of
Speaker 1: them invested deeply in the Constitution of the United States.
Speaker 2: So we.
Speaker 1: Spare anything else you want to talk about with regard
Speaker 1: to tell us how you see it in DC and
Speaker 1: talk about the next couple of weeks while you tell
Speaker 1: us thank you so much trying for joining all of
Speaker 1: us tonight.
Speaker 3: Hey, thank you. I'm very excited to do this with
Speaker 3: you every week. You're just judging from the comments, your
Speaker 3: audience is terrific. I think our two audiences are gonna
Speaker 3: get along well. Please subscribe at tell us dot news.
Speaker 2: That's T. E.
Speaker 3: L O S. Dot News. I think your point about
Speaker 3: AOC and Bernie is really really good. And Steve, I've
Speaker 3: known you. I don't know if you remember this or not,
Speaker 3: but we first met during the two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: McCain campaign. You were on the bus. I was a
Speaker 3: younger reporter back then. I remember your fans will get
Speaker 3: a kick out of this, Steve. You know, back in
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, the technology
Speaker 3: was a little clunky and you used to wear like
Speaker 3: a big bluetooth thing on your in your ear. You know,
Speaker 3: you had about the same amount of hair as you
Speaker 3: have now. And I think I said this to your face.
Speaker 3: I hope I didn't just say this like a like
Speaker 3: a jer to other reporters, but I used to say, uh, God,
Speaker 3: I hope I'm remembering this correctly. That that Steve reminded
Speaker 3: me of that the Star Wars character Labbots, which is
Speaker 3: a kind of uh, that's a very he had a
Speaker 3: very small role in uh. And I think the secondar
Speaker 3: I can't remember it now, but some of the Star
Speaker 3: Wars nerds will will remember who lab it is. But
Speaker 3: he was a ball guy with a big headset on it.
Speaker 3: And anyway, Uh, someone in the comments said that Steve
Speaker 3: Schmidt is someone you want in a fox hole with you,
Speaker 3: and I can tell you from personal experience that that
Speaker 3: is true. And so I'm excited that we're going to
Speaker 3: do this every every week.
Speaker 2: Steve.
Speaker 3: On your point about aoc and and Bernie and you know,
Speaker 3: UH kind of went sideways here, But I met you
Speaker 3: in a Republican primary and it's fascinating to hear you
Speaker 3: say that. And I think it goes for a lot
Speaker 3: of journalists too. There's UH, journalists have to get used
Speaker 3: to being comfortable with the act that when the rule
Speaker 3: of law is under attack in this country, it's not
Speaker 3: a both sides issue, and you're not partisan just because
Speaker 3: you happen to line up with the folks who are
Speaker 3: pointing out that we shouldn't have people trying to tear
Speaker 3: down democracy and that the rule of law is pretty
Speaker 3: fucking important. And maybe just one last thing I'll throw
Speaker 3: out here is a great quote from Lootig. I remember
Speaker 3: his testimony in June twenty twenty two, and I remember
Speaker 3: reading it, and this quote always stuck with me. He
Speaker 3: said America can withstand attacks on her democracy from without,
Speaker 3: he is helpless to withstand them from within. And I
Speaker 3: think the project of the pro democracy.
Speaker 2: Movement.
Speaker 3: I'm not very comfortable talking about movements. I'm a journalist,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not partisan or it doesn't violate any
Speaker 3: of the conventions of my business to be proudly pro
Speaker 3: democracy and to realize when there are actors in this
Speaker 3: country that are trying to attack democracy from within, that's
Speaker 3: when we need the press at its fiercest, it's most
Speaker 3: fearless and honest and calling that ship out. And you know, so,
Speaker 3: I thank you for for for everything that you said
Speaker 3: to support the project that I've embarked on, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking forward to doing this every week with you.
Speaker 2: Man. I want to thank you for that. Rod. I
Speaker 2: do want to say one one last thing I lied.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna take back the last word, because
Speaker 1: you inspired me to observe something which is which is this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you what I saw when I say
Speaker 1: Stevean Miller peering over the couch, when I see a
Speaker 1: Christy gnome doing her sycophanic dance, when I see her
Speaker 1: little Iikemans and the man who interrogated Adolph Iikeman was
Speaker 1: named Avner Less. He was a German Jew, lost his
Speaker 1: family in the camps and he emigrated to Israel.
Speaker 2: He was a police captain.
Speaker 1: He hid that fact, but he spent about two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five hours in the room of Iikeman. Never
Speaker 1: talked about it to nineteen eighty one. Nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: he's asked a question about whether his time with Adolph
Speaker 1: Iikeman had left an impression on him, and his answer
Speaker 1: to that question was it did that. It gave him
Speaker 1: his faith in democracy because there are Adolph Hikmans everywhere
Speaker 1: all around us. Surrounded by them, he said, But they're
Speaker 1: perfectly harmless in a democracy, but in his dictatorship of
Speaker 1: the left or the right, they turn deadly in an instant.
Speaker 1: And that's what these people are. Howard Lutnik is a
Speaker 1: little likeman. Christy Nolman is a Littleikman. Karen Levitt is
Speaker 1: a Littleikman. This is a gaggle of little Aikman's. And
Speaker 1: we are watching their snarling menace, their teeth, bearing down,
Speaker 1: growing arrogant, more confident. As the destruction they're doing is building,
Speaker 1: their approvals are declining, and so we're on a collision
Speaker 1: course between principle and mayhem, between chaos and democracy, and
Speaker 1: the American citizen will have to defend the republic. And
Speaker 1: it's not for the first time. And the reality is
Speaker 1: there is no end of history there. And the great
Speaker 1: lesson that will pass down to our children their grandchildren
Speaker 1: is there may come a day of peace and prosperity
Speaker 1: when everyone looks the technology and the events in the
Speaker 1: world and all seems good and well, like it did
Speaker 1: at the year two thousand and people will say it's
Speaker 1: the end of something, in the beginning of a paradise,
Speaker 1: But that's an illusion. And that people mistake quiet for peace,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. But now we are in the crisis.
Speaker 1: We're in one of the great American crises in the
Speaker 1: history of the country. As Ulysses Grant observed, there are
Speaker 1: people that are faithful to the project, to the cause
Speaker 1: of the American Revolution. There are people who have turned
Speaker 1: treacherous towards it. Those are the two sides in American politics.
Speaker 1: And within those two sides, there are appeasers and there
Speaker 1: are fighters. And this is a moment where you have
Speaker 1: to be a fighter. So it'll be for Mickey Charroll
Speaker 1: in New Jersey running for governor, for Joscelyn Benson in Michigan,
Speaker 1: Abigail Spamberger in Virginia. These important people who are rising
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party of fighting spirit and there remort.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about them. I want to thank everybody for
Speaker 1: joining us tonight. Thank you all. Stay in the fight,
Speaker 1: be engaged.
Speaker 2: We will win.
Speaker 1: There will be no civil war, but there's gonna be
Speaker 1: an epic period of contestation and peaceful protest, a moral fight.
Speaker 2: Good night to you all, came night everyone.
Speaker 3: Thanks Steve.
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning.
Speaker 1: I invite you to join this community where I promise
Speaker 1: to be honest, blunt, and direct about what is happening
Speaker 1: in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe
Speaker 1: to this channel and on substack. Thank you,