Leighton Smith Podcast #245 - July 3rd 2024 - James Bovard - The Leighton Smith Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of this now the Leyton
Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to podcasts two hundred and forty five for July third,
twenty twenty four. Speaking of dates, nineteen ninety four saw
the publication of a book with the title Lost Rights,
The Destruction of American Liberty. It was the third book
by libertarian journalist James Bouvart, who is now, by the way,

(00:48):
written eleven books. Then in nineteen ninety nine came Freedom
in Chains, The Rise of the State and the Demise
of the Citizen. And I recall referencing this on properly
quoted a bit. In fact, here's an example of what
the book contained. Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying
politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.

(01:10):
The night watchmen state has been replaced by highway robber states,
governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is
safe from the fleeting whim of politicians. So much of
political philosophy throughout history has consisted of concocting reasons why
people have a duty to be tame animals in politicians' cages.

(01:33):
The surest effect of exalting government is to make it
easier for some people to drag others down. The growth
of government is like the spread of a dense jungle,
and the average citizen can hack through less of it
every year. And trusting governments nowadays means dividing humanity into
two classes, those who can be trusted with power to

(01:55):
run other people's lives and those who cannot even be
trusted to run their own lives. Now, I got feedback
from somebody who told me that I was wrong. The
book was wrong. There was no truth to it, and
I suspected at the time, and I think eventually time
has proven that James Bouvard was right on target, that

(02:17):
the loss of rights doesn't matter whether it's America, Australia,
New Zealand, Britain. The loss of rights, the invasion if
you like, of more and more of what is now
called the authoritarian state, has succeeded in doing what he
suggested it would. So let's get to the year of

(02:39):
twenty twenty four. His latest book, Last Writes, The Death
of American Liberty. The other books that I've got of
his are all hardcover, so therefore there are cover flaps
that I can refer to. The trouble with paperback is
that there are no cover flaps. So from the West
Coast Review of Books three hundred and thirty five well

(03:01):
packed but easily read pages of condemnations. Seldom, if ever,
I have so many egregious acts of government and officers
been presented so succinctly as in this book at a
Wall Street Journal. Remarkable, astonishingly, broad, excellent. Mister Bouvard's unrivaled
research has resulted in a virtual encyclopedia of modern government abuse.

(03:26):
And I think that we can relate to that in
this country, or any country, but particularly English speaking countries,
which seem to becoming more and more prolific in their failings.
So in the conversation to be had in a few moments,
I can promise that you'll be impressed with his ability
to cope with an unstructured interview, my favorite kind, his

(03:47):
retention of events and details, and his sometimes intentional humor,
sometimes not. We had a lot of fun, and I
hope you enjoy it now a little bit of domestic housekeeping.
Mister producer is enjoying herself in London. She'll be back
in two weeks time, but she's having a great time

(04:08):
with her girls and meeting up with old family and
friends and what have you. I get two reports today
and there's always a smile on her face. Well, the
reason I mentioned that is because she's not going to
be here for the mail room. But I've grabbed two
or three letters that I wanted to share, and I
will follow that with an opinion piece by a highly

(04:33):
esteemed law professor with regard to the Supreme Court's historic
presidential immunity decision. Everybody is talking about it. If they're
not talking about it, it's only because they're writing about it.
And I've never seen anything quite like it. So many frustrations,
so many opinions of varying kinds, and the unwillingness of

(04:54):
some people to understand exactly what the Supreme Court is
there for. And I'll quote you that after the letters,
there are essential fat nutrients that we need in our diets,
as the body cart manufacture them. These are Omega three

(05:16):
and Omega six fatty acids, Equisine is a combination of
fish oil and virgin evening primrose oil, a formula that
provides an excellent source of Omega three and Omega six
fatty acids in their naturally existing ratios. The Omega six
from evening primrose oil assists the Omega three fish oil
to be more effective. Equisine is a high quality fish

(05:38):
oil supplement enriched with evening primrose oil that works synergistically
for comprehensive health support. Source from the deep sea sardines
Anchovisa magrol provide essential Amiga three fatty acids in their
purest form without any internal organs or toxins. Every batch
is tested for its purity before it's allowed to be sold.
Equisine supports cells to be flexible, so important to support

(06:01):
healthy blood flow and overall cardiovascular health. Equisine can support mood,
balance and mental clarity and focus in children, all the
way to supporting stiff joints, mental focus, brain health, and
healthy eyes as we get older. It was in as
a premium, high grade fish and evening primrose oil to
be taken in addition to a healthy diet and is

(06:23):
only available from pharmacies and health stores. Always read the
label and users directed and if symptoms persist, seeing your
healthcare professional. Farmer broker Auckland James Bovard. James is the

(06:48):
author of eleven books, including the nineteen ninety four bestseller
Lust Writes The Destruction of American Liberty Now just so
happens when I made contact with Jim to do this podcast,
because we spoke first of all, back in twenty twenty one,
and we will make mentions of that, I'm sure in

(07:09):
a moment. But I got in touch with him as
the debate of last Friday Our Time was about to
get underway, and I invited him on to the podcast,
and after the debate was over, he sent me an acceptance,
and one of the first things he said to me
was I've got a new book out, and I thought, well,

(07:29):
that's great. The new book is called Last Rites, and
it's published thirty years after a book called Lost Rights
that we discussed with James the first time we spoke.
And I'm looking at it now and I've got green
ink all over it where I have marked it for
that particular interview. Thirty years between those two books, Lost

(07:54):
Rights and Last Rites. Jim Bovart, it's great to have
you back on the podcast. I'm thrilled that you were
able to do it, and thank you.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Hey, thanks so much for having me back on. I'm
just glad that since we talked loud fun, that you
were able to persuade your Prime minister to leave the country.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
I think that she got persuaded by all and sundry
to be honest.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yes, yeah, she's certainly left a void in the hearts
of people like you.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, there's no room in my heart. I'm afraid. But
she but she she claimed that she had run out
of gas and didn't have enough to carry on at
the time, something which I think proved itself to be incorrect.
That was the reason that she gave, and that's what
that's what they accepted, well, most people. But I think

(08:43):
I think we've seen otherwise. I would I would prefer
to suggest that because of the policies that she followed,
the price of petrol went so high that she couldn't
afford it to fill it up anymore.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
That's a good line. That's a good line.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Now, Lost Rights and Lost Rights, the second book, which
is new, was based as a follow one to the
first book, Lost Rights, Was it not.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
It's fairly obvious to me. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny.
Back when Last Rites came out in nineteen ninety four,
people thought I was cynical, But you know, here we
are thirty years down down the road, and the nineteen
nineties looks like practically a golden era for American liberty
compared to nowadays, because so many things have gotten so

(09:33):
much worse. It was like it was like the politicians,
both parties, presidents see so much power after the nine
to eleven attacks, starting wars, setting torture loose around the world,
and then then we had COVID, and it was a
sign that the politicians could destroy far more rights and

(09:53):
liberties than they ever thought possible. And there are so
many dangerous precedents from that. There are me biting Americans
in the backside for a long time.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
The other book that I have enjoyed of yours, not
that there aren't more, I was or is Freedom and Change,
The Rise of the States and the Demise of the Citizen.
So this was ninety nine from memory that you published
that twenty five years ago, and I look across to

(10:24):
my bookshelf and I see won by Victor Davis Henson,
The Dying Citizen. So we've got the rise of the
States and the demise of the citizen, the dying citizen.
Twenty five years later, how much of things changed in
that twenty five years.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, things have gotten a whole lot worse. And part
of what's frustrating to me is here I am top
thumping on this issue going back forty years now. But
what's striking to me is that there was at the
time I was coming of age in the seventies, maybe
the eighties as well, there was still it was like

(11:02):
a trade market of Americans. They were proud of their
love of freedom and independence and basically telling the government
to go screw itself. I mean that it was almost
an American trademark. Maybe it was already fading a lot
by that point, but nowadays folks have got a lot
more docile attitude. There was a survey, a recent survey

(11:24):
showed that over a recent survey that showed around thirty
percent of young adults support mandatory government surveillance cameras inside
the home to prevent domestic violence or other violations of
the law. Now, if someone is so boneheaded that they

(11:45):
want to have a government surveillance camera in their own home,
they are lost souls. I mean, I guess I try to.
I try to use intellectual triage in this sense. There
are some people who can recognize this, or some people
have got the instincts or the values. But when someone's
in favor of having government surveillance cameras in their own

(12:06):
home just to make sure that they don't don't misbehave,
it's like, I mean, this is this is like a
parody of a free society, of a free citizen. And
it's interesting to see how this came out. During the
COVID pandemic, I followed the government advisories closely, and I
got a lot of laughs. And thanks to Anthony Fauci,

(12:26):
I never had any rust build up in my cynicism.
It was always out there. But something which I would
do almost every weekend during the pandemic. I was out
leading hikes because hey, we're outside. People need to get
out and breathe and banter and joke and scoff at
the government. And so there was a there was an
old canal towpath from the eighteen twenties nearby here along

(12:49):
the Potomac River, the scene now canal towpath, and so
so I'd be leading hikes out there, and you know,
I'm outside, and so I wasn't wearing a mask. And
I literally had people screaming and cussing at me because
I wasn't wearing a mask. And this is a towpath.
There was wide enough for a team of mules, so

(13:11):
it was basically wind enough for an eighteen wheel truck.
And there was there was one guy. Actually it was
about three years ago. I was walking along with the
group and I was in front of the group and
guy points at me like he'd seen Dracula and he
holds his coat up above over his face and points
at me. He says, you're not wearing a mask. And

(13:31):
I felt like saying good one, sherlock, and I just
said yep, and then just kept walking. And then he
turns and shouts, you know, so you think your beard
is a mask? And I just kind of shrugged and
kept walking and then he shouts, your beard is ugly.
So here I am. I'm walking along, there's simping to

(13:51):
doing a hike, and I'm getting heckled for my beard
because I'm not wearing a not wearing a COVID mask.
But the mask didn't work. You're outside, your sunshine there's when.
But it was like it brought out the cravenness and
so many people, uh there was there were so many,

(14:11):
So many governments were encouraging people to become narcs, to
be phoning in reports of violators. A favorite example mine
came from Massachusetts. Somebody went to a strip tees bar
and filed a complaint that the stripper did not have
a face mask.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Did any of these people get put through i Q tests?
You know, you could have You could have come to
New Zealand. You could have spent you could have spent
a couple of weeks in a hotel, and then you
could have gone walking on some of our beautiful tracks.
They're world famous, and you could have caught the same abuse.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Really yeah, wow. I would have thought people in New
Zealand would have been more reasonable, But obviously I'm ignorant.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Well you've never been here, so you can be excused
for being underinformed. I want to go back now and
start with the because this was the reason, and then
we'll come back and we'll spend plenty of time on
last rite, the death of American liberty. But come back

(15:14):
to to what I said at the beginning, and this
was all about the debate. You watched it, I would imagine, Oh,
how I suffered, didn't we all? I had to get
up and walk around from time to time, which sort
of relieved the shortness of breath that I was experiencing.
But out of that And I don't want to spend

(15:37):
too much time on this because I had plenty of
discussion already. But what was your take once it was over,
or if you prefer soon after it began?

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Well, actually I enjoyed watching it, so it was cat
nep persnics. People have attacked me for the last couple
of years because I've written a bunch of articles for
New York Posts and other places pointing out that Biden
is losing it, pointing out that Bien can't walk across
the stage without falling over, sometimes pointing out that Bien

(16:08):
did us UH five hours of interviews with the Special
Council over his U five hours over the his crimes
with federal documents were classified, and the Biden administration is
fighting tooth and nail to prevent Americans from hearing the

(16:28):
audio tapes of those interviews because they show how incredibly
out of it is. But there were there were there
were a lot of comments in there, which which I found,
you know, fascinating. I mean, Biden was at one point
was was attacking Trump for his position on abortion, and
Biden talked about the huge problem with the young women

(16:51):
who were raped by their sisters and therefore would need
to have access to abortion. And this is not a
problem I'd heard of before. So there was it was interesting.
It was interesting Biden. Twelve years ago, Biden was a
vice president, he debated Senator Tim Congressman Paul Ryan, who

(17:15):
was the nominee for the Republicans. Biden was very quick.
Biden put on one of the best performances of any
president or vice president in debates, uh, since since the
turn of the century. Very good, but I mean, he
was Biden was. Biden in that debate was just kind
of pawing and he wasn't able to fall up. And

(17:38):
the worst news that he got from the host at
one point is you still have eighty seconds left, and
it's like he's this and he's just kind of struggling.
And it was, I mean, and it was he was
so badly couch a coach by the his White House
staffers campaign team. Uh, there was there was a line

(18:00):
he was doing his closing statement, he suddenly starts talking
about lead pipes, and I'm thinking, you know, not a
good idea to bring a lead pipe to a closing
after how you performed tonight.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
It was a surprise, so it appears, so they claim
to many many people Democrats specifically, I wasn't surprised in
the slightest, were you.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
I was expecting Biden to do a little bit better.
I was. I was thinking that they'd be able to
get him, you know, pumped up like they did for
the City of the the for the State of the
Union address. Uh, I guess four or five months ago,
when he actually performed much better than expected. I wasn't
surprised that Biden did badly. Uh. And but it was

(18:47):
clear from the first five minutes that he just wasn't
talking well.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
There was there was someone who was kind of saying,
well that Biden had actually Biden had Biden had won
the debate if you looked only at the transcript, Well,
it's hard to have a transcript when the guy's mumbling
and just simply not enunciating well at all. So it's
just it didn't make any sense. I mean, there was
there was an answer he gave it about roe versus

(19:12):
weight and the rules for the final trimester, final trimester
of abortions, that that he just pulled it out of
his backside. It was just there were so many things
that were just completely wrong. He was claiming that that
no US soldiers had died abroad during his term of office,
and tell that to the widows of the Afghanists, the

(19:34):
Americans killed in the Afghanist ce withdrawal. It was just,
it was so out of touch, and it's it's actually
kind of amusing to see the anguish of folks who
have been covering for him. But there are so many folks,
so many of these pundits and these big donors. They
aren't upset by how Biden did. They're upset that Americas

(19:54):
now saw it because it had been covered up.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
I want to I want to ask you about lies,
the lies that we've lived through. Actually it's a Victor
Davis Hanson Peace from from July, which is well for us.
It was yesterday after last Thursday's debate, Biden himself laid
to rest the Democratic lie that he was that he
was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth,

(20:20):
he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad,
failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America
other than apparently the easy task of presidents of the
United States and the commander in chief in charge of
our nuclear codes. Everybody is accusing everybody else, and this
has been a growing plague of lying. He's a liar,

(20:42):
He's a liar. Now you're a liar. How did it
get to this point where people fail to understand who's
lying and who's not.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, perhaps the real problem is that people ever expected
politicians not to be liars, because it's possible turn back
the clock twenty five hundred years to Aristophanes and ancient
Athens making jokes about paulicians just being the biggest liars
and scant scoundrels scoundrels around And that's certainly that's our

(21:15):
experience in this country. I think it's the experience in
most countries where they have fairly open elections. Contested elections
might be a better term. There was a There was
a piece I did in October twenty twenty one month
before the when Biden was first elected. He run against Bush,

(21:35):
and I said Americans had to choose your liar election.
Because both both Trump and Biden were just lying up
and down and back and forth. It's still the same thing.
Trump is not as dishonest as Biden, but I mean
a lot of his ideas, a lot of the things
he says are simply not accurate. But Trump can sound coherent,

(21:59):
and that's you know, that's a big advantage when you're
trying to con voters.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Want to give you my opinion. Trump actually doesn't lie.
You touched on it then and now and now I've
forgotten already what you what you said. But Trump exaggerates,
he embellishes, but I don't think he sets out to
tell a lie, whereas others, and Biden's one of them. Obviously,

(22:26):
go back to that first debate and that that question
was regard to the to the to the laptop. Lied
through his teeth and did it again and again, and
it's only one example of thousands of them. Would you
agree with you with with with my definition of each?

Speaker 3 (22:48):
I would I would agree with your definition. On Biden,
I mean, folks forget and the final debate in October
twenty twenty with Trump, Biden insisted that his family had
never gotten any money from China, and this is just
the biggest load of crap. I mean, at that point
it wasn't a question of bribe or kickbacks or anything

(23:09):
like that, but there was all kinds of money flowing
from Chinese companies to various members of the Biden family,
perhaps Joe himself. I'm not sure, but you know, Trump
is okay. Back in the nineteen nineties, Back in the
late eighties early nineties, I wrote a lot about agriculture

(23:30):
policy and trade policy, and that was where I first
learned that the things were special, and that in some
ways New Zealand was one of the world leaders as
far as moving to free market agriculture. I'm not sure
if it's still the case, but they were doing far
better than the US agriculture policy makers were Trump's comments

(23:50):
about tariffs. So Trump wants to have a ten percent
across the board tariff, which is just the dumbest damn
idea around, because if you put a tariff on products
which the US never produced and never will produce, it's
simply attacks which multiple would multiplies as it's passed through

(24:10):
the economy, and it cost it costs businesses and consumers
far more than a benefits government and if you look
at the impact of Trump's tariff policies in his first
term in office, they were a disaster. But it's it's
it's almost and it's sad because there's a big swath

(24:30):
of conservatives now in America who are who are basically
going back to you know, John Maynard Keynes as a
guide for the economic policy. And and it's the same
people who have no faith in politicians in general, somehow
think that the US Commerce Department should be able to

(24:51):
set prices for practically anything in this country by controlling
and penalizing imports. And most of these folks have never
even been to the Commerce Department. Uh, I was, you know,
I spent I did a book on early nineties, and
so I spent quite a bit of time there. There
we was just all these bureaucrats walking down the hallway,

(25:11):
and you could tell that it was possible to tell
how many years it had worked for the Commerce Department
by how low the seat of their parts hung.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Intriguing.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Maybe maybe not, Okay, maybe I'm telling too many jokes.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Go ahead, No, no, no, no, it was I was
listening intently. I was. I was un disavoided when you stopped.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
They said there, okay, waiting, where's the punchline? Okay, he's
leaning up. Is there going to be a punchline? I
hope there's a punchline.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Were you in fact making reference there to the administrative
state in part at least?

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah? So it's it's Trump has made some very good
comments condemning the deep state, and it was a deep
state that had a big role in his defeat in
twenty twenty. There was there were so many dirty tricks
by the FBI, by the CIA, by other agencies. A
lot of that stuff we have never yet learned. Part

(26:10):
of my frustration is that Trump did not pull back
the curtain behind hiding the Wizard of Oz. Trump. Trump
talked tough, but when it came down to it, Trump
put in. Trump put as the his chief of the
c I A. A. Gina Haspellhood had had been a
leader in the destruction of evidence of the US torture

(26:34):
during the Bush administration as and it was Trump who
appointed the FBI chief who utterly failed to curb the
FBI agents from trampling the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment,
which prohibits warrantless seizures. There were a lot of appointments
that Trump made John Bolton, that's that's okay. You're talking

(26:56):
about the need for peace and you bring in the
biggest warmonger in Washington, John Bolton, a liar as John
Bolton a liar. Uh, maybe he's just very, very badly
informed and has a very bad memory.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
It's interesting. So back to back to the debate, or
more specifically now the results of that debate. The world
was in meltdown, at least half of it was in
your country before the debate even even finished. For a start,
I spent quite a bit of time the following day
on CNN, and I'll i'll do a hard day. I'll

(27:40):
dip in and out of CNN occasionally when when there's
something that warrants it and there's an AD break on
my preferred channel. But I left it there because because
they were crying all over the screen, and I wanted
to know how long they could keep this this fraud
up for I can't I don't believe it's not I

(28:01):
can't believe. I don't believe that any of them did
not understand what they would do dealing with in the
first place, that they covered for as much as they
could and successfully for years, and all of a sudden
that curtain was rent asunder and the exposure was there

(28:21):
for everybody to see, and it was actually very entertaining
because they didn't know what to do. And then following that,
I suppose that the day after that, it was it
was a case of well, who who was going to
replace him? And so they were debating that and not one,
not one decent suggestion was put forward, of course, because

(28:43):
there is no decent suggestion. But the very latest when
I went to bed last night was Michelle Obama was
was was on the make, and she was being she
was being set up for the conference when it happens.
Do you think that's likely?

Speaker 3 (29:04):
I don't know, But I mean, folks are forgetting that
that the that the Democrat already have someone who could
be called in who is mentally sharper than Biden and
has experience dealing with international crises. That's former President Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Isn't he dead?

Speaker 3 (29:23):
No, No, he's not dead yet. I think he's in
a hospice. But you know, I bet he would have
done bear in the debate that Biden did. So I
don't know about Michelle Obama. I've heard I'm hearing that.
I'm hearing that more I wrote about her, I think
in twenty twenty and before, she was leading a leading

(29:45):
a crusade in childhood obesity. And as part of this crusade,
the Obama administration pushed through a new federal program to
give children free breakfasts in the classroom. And it was
important to sway the kids to eat the breakfast, so
they had a lot of doughnuts and chocolate milk and

(30:05):
sweetened cereal and it was a huge sugar bomb. It
was sort of like Homer Simpson was a patron saint
of this program. I don't know if you've watched the
Simpsons Simpsons, but Homer Simpson, the cartoon character, is always
eating a donut, so he's a patron saint of this
Michelle Obama program. And it was a disaster as far

(30:29):
as making kids healthier, but it gave her lots of,
you know, camera time, and she could be out there
getting praise to solve problems. But no, I mean, I
think that the Democrats are really desperate. The Michigan governor
Gretchen Gretchen Whitmer is another name that's often being mentioned
but written about her and folks. Folks forget that. People

(30:53):
in Michigan. Michigan referred to her as the seed Demon.
And she's called that because at the start of the
pandemic she prohibited stores from selling garden seeds.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Why did you do then?

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Because she said it was not essential, unlike the sale
of government lottery tickets.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
It's amazing, isn't it. I heard someone who I respect
yesterday saying that the mocking her and saying she was
she was a straight out liar.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Mean every where, every way, every way you listen these days,
specifically at the moment, the word liar is not infrequent.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, I mean, but this, this is actually a good thing.
And as I said, you know, I felt like the
seeing the seeing that debate, it was cat nip for centics.
Uh and Americans. You know, Americans need to be more
cynical about their elected leaders. Part of the trouble is
so many people still expect the government to save their butt.

(31:56):
And it's like, no, I mean, this is not what
Washington does. Washington extends its own power, it sets I mean,
it's always finding reasons to uh further intrude into private life,
to trample more of our constitutional rights they haven't learned,
and unfortunately, more and more Americans are completely unfamiliar, are

(32:18):
completely unfamiliar with living life outside of federal control.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Let me ask you a couple of questions regarding the
Supreme Court. You have I think mixed mixed approaches to
the Supreme Court? Am I right?

Speaker 3 (32:36):
What is the mixed approach? I'm dying to hear this.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Well, I'm sure that somewhere you've you've complimented them.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah, back in nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
It won't happened. No, No, I mean since eighty six,
what happened to change minds?

Speaker 3 (32:53):
They have made some good decisions. There are some justices
who have have made some very good calls. The first
page of the of the new book quote Supreme Court
Justice Neil Gorsa of saying that everything has been criminalized
now by the government. So that's a huge problem. But

(33:15):
you know, sometimes they get it right. But it's it's
frustrating that that they have this fairy tale notion of
government power. There was a big decision on the censorship
cases the the FBI, the White House Centers for Disease
Control croudbeat Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies to

(33:39):
censor critics of Bim's policies to censor people that were
raising alarms about election fraud, and it was a complete travesy.
It's heavily documented. But the Supreme Court said, well, we
don't think we're going to decide on this because the
victims did not bring signed confessions by the government agents

(34:03):
that censored them. And it's like the First Amendment. I mean,
it's it's frustrating to me that people don't recognize if
you let the government censor during an election, then there
is no chance you're going to have an honest reading
of Pollock preferences.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Let me just quote you from that first page of
Last Rites. We live in a world in which everything
has been criminalized. You mentioned that, warned Supreme Court Justice
Neil Gorsich, there are now more than This is what
I wanted to do, because this is frightening. There are
now more than five two hundred separate federal criminal offenses,

(34:48):
a thirty six percent increase since the nineteen nineties, along
with tens of thousands of state and local crimes. More
laws mean more violators who can be harshly punished on command,
resulting in arrests of more than ten million Americans each year.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, police can lock up anyone
accused of even quote, even a very minor criminal offense

(35:12):
such as an unbeckled seat belt. How did it happen
that those numbers skyrocketed like that? How did it happen
that Americans let it happen?

Speaker 3 (35:24):
Those are two very good questions.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
The first question, how did it happen? You had the
Supreme Court put the government power on a pedestal, both
on a political pedestal, a legal pedestal, and a moral pedestal.
The Supreme Court has bent so far over backwards that
even when there are cases of police wrongfully shooting people

(35:49):
or government officials lying, the Court has said, well, it's
important not to be too strict here. Because I was
writing about this case a day or two ago, and
there was a wonderful phrase, which course escapes my memory.
But the gist if it was that the that the
Supreme Court was so biased in favored government officials and

(36:09):
government intervention that they did not want to have any
rulings that would inhibit the government from doing what the
government thought needed to be done and what the government
thought was best. This ties into the line from the
Supreme Court decision last week. It was from the oil
arguments a few months ago, but you had one of

(36:29):
the Justice justices openly fretting about the openly fretting that
the First Amendment could hamstring the federal government when it
needed to intervene. And it's like, well, you know, this
is why we have the First Amendment to hamstring the government,
Because if you don't hamstring the government when they want

(36:50):
to censor, then you don't have You don't have any
kind of republic. You certainly don't have a democracy. You
simply have the people in power for outbeating critics and
misleading people. And that's what we had in this country
for a long time, and I got a heck of
a lot worse after nine to eleven. Unfortunately, most of

(37:12):
the American media and most of the politicians don't seem
to have learned anything about the failures of government in
the last couple of decades.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
It has become ingrained in me that the media has
as much to answer as anybody, if not more than everybody,
that question that I asked you about, how did the
American people let it happen? The media in the main,
and I'm talking about the core media, the usual the
New York Times, Washington Post and CNN and all the others,

(37:44):
and by extension, by the way, to much of the
rest of the world, because our media here take articles
from those particular journals. CNN is the one that they
refer to on television, in the papers, the New York Times,
there's Washington Post articles, and I read some of them,

(38:06):
and I come very close to throwing up in discuss
somebody raised was Mike Levin actually a day or two back,
raised the question of the owners of these institutions, because
they're all they're all businesses who have shareholders, and why
the people involved in the ownership don't start pulling their

(38:27):
administrations apart.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
That makes it the assumption that their owners are unhappy
with what the papers or their TV networks are doing.
And I think that the owners are probably felt like
they're being served very well by the kind of hogwash
that's being served up to readers and viewers.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Well, that question could link back to another one with
regard to the debate last week. The two protagonists who
were asking the questions were predicted to lean very heavily
in favor of the incumbent president, but they have been commended,
if not praised, in some quarters for being re to

(39:08):
be pretty well balanced.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
You'll come in, Yeah, I mean I was expecting there'd
be more biased and favorite Biden. But it's funny. There
was a front page New York Times story, I guess
on Saturday, and I just passed by it in the
grocery store, and it was talking about how the silent
microphone ended up being really bad for Joe Biden because

(39:34):
flashback four years ago, Trump kept interrupting, I mean during
Biden's speaking time, and so there was I think it
was Napoleon who said, never interrupt your opponent when he's
making a mistake, and that could be the guy for
how Trump played that played the most recent debate, but

(39:54):
it was the rules that were set ahead of time.
Another part was you probably heard this is people were
saying that the split screen that most Americans saw with
the debate, I just it was devastating from Bye because
he was there with his mouth hanging open and his
eyes kind of on focused and you're thinking, like, you know,

(40:17):
you know, it was probably a mistake for him to
go with decaf.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
A mistake to go decaf.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, it was a mistake for him to go a
mistake for him to go with decaf needed coffee. Okay,
the joke did not translate, well, doll, but decaff means
that you're having that you're getting no caffeine and you're
low energy.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Well I interpreted that correctly. I got it right, but
I don't think you went far enough. So, I mean,
we're jumping around all over the place. But you're very
good at this, so I'm enjoying it. The the the
opinion was, and it's certainly mine that in the State
of the Union address he was spiked. Wasn't just it

(41:00):
wasn't just non non decaf or caffeinated. He was spiked
to the to the gills. Now I know, no, so
the doctors would do that. I am shocked. I am shocked.
I think that you're one of the last people to
be shocked. And who said the doctors, who said the
doctors were involved.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Ah, that's true. Well, it's important to avoid an overdose
in public if you're going to be doing those kind
of supplements.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
And there and there was the other occasion earlier, and
that was the one where he did it outside outside
of building. I forget which, and it was stressed up was, well,
the whole area was staged to look like the devil
was speaking.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Oh yeah, are you talking about his speech in Philadelphia
in September twenty twenty two. Yes, yes, that was. You know,
it's always bad to take your inspiration on lighting from
the from the woman who did Triumph of the Will.
Is that what they did was a Nazi Yeah, well
it seemed that way. The Triumph of the Will was

(42:05):
a famous Nazi film of their rally at Nuremberg, I
believe in nineteen thirty four. So, but with the red,
with the red coloring and just some of the very
angry type of lighting. And that was just after Biden
had said that had said that Republicans were semi fascists,

(42:27):
and I think it was in January the speech near
Valley Forge. Fine came out and said Trump was, you know,
quoting Hitler or being guided by Hitler. Basically tried to
tie Hitler to Trump very tightly. There's there's certain standards
there that used to be in American politics that you

(42:48):
don't say that your opponent is Hitler. Okay, I mean,
this is this is just this is bad form.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Well that we've seen, We've seen a lot of that
in the last few years. But going back to that
decaffeinated appearance, to me, it was not fairly obvious. It
was very old that he was on something. The next day,
here is a guy that they tell us can only
work between ten and four in the day. Other than
that he falls apart. And he lived up to that

(43:19):
without any shall we say, input from elsewhere. But the
next morning after he was out of he was out
of the waffle bar at two am. And so how
much sleep did he get that night before going out
the next day and at least pretending that he was

(43:39):
full of vibrants and energy.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
No, I think you're right that there are that he
was on some type of pharmaceutical boost, some type of drug.
I mean, I think that's happened with other presidents in
the past. Folks don't realize how much of a scandal
the president's health has been in this country ever since
Woodrow Wilson, who was incapacitate with a stroke in nineteen nineteen,

(44:07):
but his I took over and basically ran the government
practically for the final year of his presidency. There's I
saw on Twitter today a photo of the cover of
the new issue of Vogue, and it's a big portrait
basically full size of Jill Biden, Jill Biden, and so
I had fun with Twitter. I said, Vogue has got

(44:30):
a great photo cover photo of President Biden. So there
have been a lot of lies about President's health of
President Reagan in his last year in office was pretty
much mentally shot, but they kind of cover that up.
He would babble in public, but not too much. You know.
It's but the fundamental problem is we have a structure

(44:53):
of government at this point that gives so much power
and arbitrary power and impunity to the president's I mean,
it's practically the mirror image of what the founding fathers wanted.
And this whole that we have to let the president
do what he thinks right, no matter what the law
of their constition is. It used to be a complete

(45:15):
travecy of American values and American ethics. But this is
where the country has been heading. And I've been barking
at the Moon on this issue, but I haven't had
much effect on the Moon or on American politics.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well, next time you're barking at the Moon or going
to let me know and I'll join you down here.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
All right, the.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
The Supreme Court decisions that have been handed down in
the last few days, today being or yesterday actually being
the last day of the year for them. Two cases
that I want to mention to you, the Chevron case
and of course the Trump case. Can you give us
your precise opinion of each one and the results? And

(46:03):
I'm asking this question now because you just made a
comment about giving the president too much power, and I'm
wondering whether or not the Supreme Court has realized that
things are out of kilt her and realized that.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Well, obviously said something stupid.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
No no, no, no, no, no, you didn't say anything stupid.
It's a Supreme Court that it's been. But no, So
you asked about the Chevron decision. The nineteen eighty four
case canonized the notion that federal agencies deserved deference, far
more difference than private citizens or even the Constitution in

(46:45):
judging the powers that they seized and the policies which
they proclaimed. And that was that's a license for administrative tyranny,
and that's how it's played out in this country. And
the Court pulled that back last week with the Chevron
with a new decision striking down the Chevron precedence. It's

(47:07):
a step in the right direction. There's a long ways
to go back towards what we used to have in
this country. As far as the Trump case, you know,
it's it's a it's a frustrating situation here because there
have been a lot of bullshit charges against Donald Trump
in the last couple of years. Trump's opponents, including Biden,

(47:27):
are using law fair. I mean, there were you know,
there were so many, uh so many cases where they've
simply waived a statue of limitation. And so you're going
back several decades and he said, she said, it's like, well,
if it was so bad, how come she didn't say
that in nineteen ninety six. And if you and if

(47:47):
you look at what they did in Georgia, I mean
completely rigged situation. The the the the prosecution by Alvin
Bragg which Jerry convicted Trump of thirty four felonies. I
think that was a complete crock of you know bs
what I.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Said about the judge judge, Yeah, yeah, well, well I
assume he'll get nominated to New York Supreme Court.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
So I mean it was a farce. It was a farce,
and it was a farce from the get go. Having
said that, I mean, it's certainly possible that Trump violated laws,
that Trump, uh, that Trump did commit crimes. But the
Supreme Court today basically said that a president is exempt

(48:39):
from legal liability for his official acts during his term
of office and afterwards. As I under said, I haven't
read that closely. I was chasing some other rabbits today.
But and so it's it's a very disturbing ruling. And
there's I think there were three justices that were kind
of uh, perhaps barking at the moon for their cause.

(49:04):
But if you look at look at some of the
rhetoric there, Yeah, there is reason to be concerned Nixon.
Nixon was driven out of office in nineteen seventy four.
Nineteen seventy seven, he sat down David Frost. It's great
interviews with him, and one of and the best known
line from that is the jest of it is, it's

(49:25):
not illegal if the president does it. This is, unfortunately,
this is the rule of thumb for the oval office
in this century, starting with George W. Bush.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Okay, so let's let me throw a couple of let
me throw a couple of examples at you. The court
ruled that as long as it was official duties, the
president could not be held accountable. So who's going to
decide and the court will obviously who's going to decide though,
whether or not something is official part of his official

(50:01):
job and what's not. For instance, when he made that
speech on the sixth of January, was he fulfilling official
function question one?

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, yes, yeah, it's it's so sad to see how
the Biden administration and a lot of the media have
endlessly demogogued. On January sixth, I actually had an article
that came out during that ruckus, and it was talking
about how even before then, the media and the Democrats

(50:34):
had greatly expanded the definition of treason, and so they
were talking about someone being guilty of treason practically if
they questioned the twenty twenty election result. And this is
before the ruckus at the Capitol. There were there were
quite a few people, mostly guys who did violence or
attack police that day, who deserve our sentences. But this

(50:56):
whole notion that anybody who was within a mile of
radius of the US Capitol wearing a MAGA hat deserves
time in prison, it was crazy. It never made any
sense to take a step back, going back to the
question of the president and the law, turned back the
clock twenty one years in this country. You've got George W.

(51:19):
Bush invading Iraq on false pretenses. George Bush misled the nation.
He knew or should have known that it was completely bogus.
Bush and his team were out there blaming Saddam Hussein
for the nine to eleven attacks. That was always bs.
The Saudis had a hell of a lot more to
do with it, but they were Bush's buddies, so we

(51:41):
didn't hear about that. But you had vast carnish resulting
from that. As I understand it, with the Supreme Court
decision on the presidential immunity, Bush would be immune from
indictment or prosecution on that. Granted it wasn't going to
happen anyhow, but as a moral principle, I'm totally opposed

(52:02):
to letting I'm totally opposed to letting presidents have this
un over the power over the entire globe.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
See, I'm struggling to agree with you. At that particular time,
I argued on radio in favor of what the Bush
regime was doing, and I anchored it specifically to the
fact that Todam Hussein claimed at one point that he
or at least hinted strongly at one point that he

(52:31):
had weapons of mass destruction, and on that basis where
the words came from his own lips, I thought that
validated what they were doing. Why was I wrong?

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Weapons of mass destruction is not a reason the slaughter
a foreign nation. I mean, many, if not most, of
the garments in the world, certainly the ones that are
not in the Third World, have a lot of weapons.
Somewhech would be classified as weapons of mass destruction. Simply
because he possessed weapons did not give the American garment

(53:04):
the right to kill tens of thousands of Iranqis if
they had had weapons of mass destruction, unless they were
using them against UH, using them to launch an attack
against the US, the US had no right to go
after him.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
His intention, though at the time was conveyed as being
one of doing exactly that, was it not?

Speaker 3 (53:27):
And who was it who was conveying his intention him?
I don't I don't think he was. I mean he
made a lot of mistakes. He was. He was a
ruthless dictator. H he killed a lot of innocent Iraqis,
but I don't think that he ever said things that

(53:47):
would have been justifiable pretext for US invasion.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
All right, let me let me stretch this just a
little longer. So the the Iranians are undoubtedly unquestionably working
on nuclear weapon weaponry.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
What's your source?

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Multiple sources? Are they credible? Well, it's a mean, I
take your question. I've thought about it. I have thought
about it constantly. Let me put it this way. We
know what the what the Iranians are doing in supporting
various groups like Hezballah over a period of time, and

(54:27):
that their intentions, the intentions of the present administration, and
it's been there for some time to wipe out Israel.
Would you accept that?

Speaker 3 (54:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I mean, then what's what's your what's your source?

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Uh, there's there's a lot of alternative sources on the news.
I mean, I think it's a bad government. Uh, it's
a very oppressive government. But it's a part of the
world where almost all the governments are bad and oppressive.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yes, but they're the biggest, they're the biggest, the biggest
supporters of of terror, certainly in that part of the world,
if not elsewhere.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
What is your definition of terror. Is it only private groups,
because if you include government, governments do a hell of
a lot more terrorizing than private groups.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Would you accept that there is a danger that the
Iranians might be behind a forthcoming attack on America and
a nine eleven Is that possible?

Speaker 3 (55:30):
It's possible that they and a lot of other nations
and other groups could attempt to launch another attack on
the US. But it doesn't build confidence that it took
US fifteen years to see the confidential Congress report linking
the Saudi government to the nine to eleven attacks. I mean,

(55:53):
you know, there were so many levels of so many
shovels of bs that the US government and a lot
of the American media did to avoid fingering the Saudis
on the nine to eleven attacks. And the US government
is still blocking lawsuits seeking to discover to discover the
full extent of Saudi's support for the hijackers. Fifteen of

(56:15):
the nineteen were Saudi's but that fact practically vanished once
George W. Bush and Cheney said, Hey, it was Saddan. So,
I mean, I don't trust folks who are trying to
drag us into another war.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Well, I have some sympathy with that. But my final
point is if we accept that, I do that Iran
has ambitions beyond its entitlementers. Okay, the different when they
develop nuclear capability, they are going to be much harder
to deal with. Would you approve then, if any administration

(56:52):
of the United States, or for that matter, the Israelis
with American backing, took out their nuclear capabilities before they
reached the goal.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
No, I would not do that because for over twenty
years we've been hearing that the Iranians are two or
three or four years away from having nuclear weapons. There
have been so many false claims on this, and I
think it would be folly to go into another Middle
Eastern war with the nation that was a whole lot
bigger than Iraq, and the US basically lost the Iraq war,

(57:29):
that lost the Afghanistan war. And I don't see, you
know what best out of three or best out of
five here or what I mean. I don't see any
reason for the US to intervene because things have worked
out very badly for the US and for the nations
where they intervened.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
So what would your advice be if you had Easia
to the next president with regard to dealing with the Iranians.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
With regard to dealing with the Iranians, I mean I
would I'd keep an eye on them. I would definitely
keep an eye on them and see what they're up to.
But it's not like we can afford to. You know,
the the basic basic problem that has plagued the US
foreign policy for decades is this notion that the US

(58:17):
has a right and a duty to scourge any foreign threats.
And uh, and it's been and it's it's a kind
of notion that bligns Americans to the failures and follies
of US foreign policy. And they're being a hell of
a lot more than Congress or the American media recognize.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Mm hmm. Let me ask you some quick questions. Having
mentioned Michelle Obama already, who would you who would you
choose or who would you rather see as the president
if it came down to Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Oh, this is a great choice. I mean, this is like,
you know, there's a good comic comparison here. It's like, uh,
and and second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia, right, yes,
uh yeah, I I you know, they're both bad choices.
So However, I think if either one of them is

(59:16):
nominated then they will not win.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
So no, no, no, But if there was, I'm asking
you which one you would prefer not to have.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Well, Harris has more of a record as far as
working for the government. The abuses that she committed as
a prosecutor in California shouldn't have disqualified her forever, But
they haven't.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Extraordinary, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yep? Biden, Well this is sorry, No, please go ahead.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
The Biden clan, I'm talking the whole family, you know,
Camp David and what have you. The Biden clan do
have issues that need to be dealt with? Do you
not think.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Like thievery and money laundering and collecting all kinds of bribes,
those kinds of issues. Yeah, that'll do for stuff. Yeah,
it'll do for a start. But here again, this is
this is something with that Supreme Court decision. Well, he
was in office, and so it'd be kind of rude
to prosecute, but it was kind of official because because
he was seeing the president of China, this, that and

(01:00:15):
the other. Yeah, I mean it used to be that
presidents were like people understood that the rule of law
means that no one is above the law. But with
the Supreme Court decision today, and with a trend in
this country for decades, not only do you have presidents
who are above the law, you've got a vast number

(01:00:36):
of top government officials who can commit crimes with impunity.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Is it impunity because nobody will pursue them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
That's how impunity normally works.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Yeah, I mean, not because they're protected by the law,
but because nobody wants to Well to this point, nobody
wants to take the head off the beast.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
You know, as some of both. I mean, but there's
another wrinkle here, and that is a secrecy. The US
government is creating trillions of phases of new secrets every year.
That's equivalent to twenty billion filing cabinets full of double
space pages. So government is committing more crimes than Americans

(01:01:18):
will ever know. And so that's one more way that
the deck is stacked against preserving our rights and liberties.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
What to quote you from your own work. Rather than
the rule of law, we have a government of threats, intimidation,
and browbeating. Government of the people defaulted into government for
the people, which degenerated into perennially punishing people for their
own good. Twenty five years ago, Supreme Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg warned against permitting federal agencies the extraordinary authority to

(01:01:53):
manufacture crimes? Has that got? That was twenty five years ago?
How much worse is it?

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Got? A whole lot worse, a whole lot worse. If
you look at a lot of gun violations, there's a
lot of entreatment and those things drug case have been
entrapment from the get go. It often happens when you're
trying to do nail people for non violent or crimes
of consent where people were selling something the government doesn't improve.

(01:02:21):
You set somebody up. But no, I mean, there's just
so many different sting operations. You've had the FBI setting
up people, setting up people to do Ku Klux Klan
protests with the FBI informants in charge. You've got the
FBI paying for neo Nazi propaganda in some cases. You've

(01:02:44):
got the FBI covering for all kinds of horrendous folks
that help the FBI generate more cases.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
How much was the FBI involved in January sixth?

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
You know, I wish I knew, I wish I knew.
I think that they were involved a hell of a
lot more than media's admitted. There were so many warning
signs that were disregarded, they were involved in it. It
would be great if we knew. Here we are three
and a half years later and the governments has succeeded
in covering up most of its role, and that ruckus.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Well, by the way, you've just triggered something I hadn't
even thought of. Trump has said that rather rapidly after
gaining office he would release the files on the Kennedy murder.
What do you think those What do you think is
in those files?

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Lots of dirt? But Trump said, you do that last
time too. Trump was making a big shortly before he
left office. Trump made a big deal about all these
federal documents he was going to release, but he got rolled.
He didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Do you not think that this time around he's in
a much different position to what he was for the
first term, that he can capitalize on the knowledge that
that he garnered during that period and the lessons that
he learned.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
That rush and brings to mind my favorite line from
Samuel Johnson about the triumph of hope over experience.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Mmm. I felt there was something personal in that comment.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
No, it's just, uh, I would I would like to
see you know, I'd be happy if Trump gets if
if Trump does get elected, if he opens up these
files and opens up these secrets. And I guess I'm
I'm I'm skeptical because because a lot of the people
that Trump has put around him and has has endorsed.

(01:04:42):
There's a guy, a Congressman Mike Rogers, running from Michigan.
He's going up against the guy who's really good, former
Congressman Justin Mamash, who was great on civil liberties. But
Mike Rogers was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
I think when Edward Snowden did his leagues and this
is a paraphrase, I think I'm doing it injustice. But

(01:05:05):
Rogers said something to the fact, well, if people don't
know that they're privacy has been violated, then their privacy
really hasn't been violated. And it sounded kind of like
the slogan that you hear from some guy that used
date rape drugs, because.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
I wouldn't have thought of that. Thank goodness, you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Have a much loftier mind than I do. That's the
difference in this entire interview. You know, that's where the
disconnet comes from You're you're way up there amount olympus
and I'm just just a muck raker.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
I was trying to make a joke. It didn't work
very well. Feel free to edit it out if you want.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Maybe I'm just too busy trying to think of where
we're going because I want to get a couple more
things in before we conclude. Trump has yet to announce
who his running mate will be. It's a pretty wide
open field, and there's all sorts of arguments for all
sorts of different people. Is there anybody that stands out

(01:06:04):
for you?

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Well, I think it'd be great if he would choose
Rand Paul is his running mate. That would be a
real boost of confidence. Mike Lee would also be very good. Uh, basically,
as far as someone who would give would have a
very good compass on foreign policy, Center Vance would be good.
A wild card would be Tulci Gavn, former Democratic congresswoman,

(01:06:28):
but that's probably not gonna happen. There's lots of people
whose names I'm seeing Benny about are utterly chilling, But
give me a.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Couple of those. Nikki Haley interesting why she's a warmonger.
Do you think she would influence him that much?

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump is interesting. He's
very intelligent, but in his you know, his in his
initial term, perhaps his only term, but his first term. Anyhow,
he didn't seem to pay that much attention to the
details of government policy. He was busy tweeting and you know,
watching Fox News, and it's like, you know, dude, you know,

(01:07:10):
how about you put some control. It seemed like he
just handed the keys to his administration to a son
in law and his daughter, and it's like, you know, well,
you know, good luck with this. That's an overstatement, but
you know, he didn't do that well. But it was
always a man issues in which he was pretty good.
What's that?

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
I think it was a bad look, the dreadful look. Dredful.
So I want to throw a name at you and
get your immediate reaction. John Radcliffe, Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
You know on the it's ringing a small bell. Where's
the bell?

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
National Security advisor? Okay, he was involved in national security?

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Okay? And what him is VP or what?

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
I don't know enough to react.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Okay, and that's fair enough. So probably finally I'm intrigued
in your view of the developments in the Julian Massange case.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Okay, Biden is you know there was a line and
I wrote about this last week and I said, this
is one of the areas where the Biden administration has
been slightly less odious than the Trump administration, because it
was a Trump administration that indicted him and hounded him.
There was a USA Today article I did I guess

(01:08:34):
six years ago that set of it that that said,
instead of an indictment, Julian Nissan should get a Presidential
Medal of Freedom for all the things that he exposed,
helping Americans understand their government and the failures of US
interventions in many countries.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
I have members of my family who are ex military,
and just then for a start, I think otherwise, but
I am I used them as an example of the
fact that I've actually got had a bit of conversation
with regard to this. But it's mostly military people or
military connections who think otherwise and think that he should

(01:09:15):
have been locked up for life or whatever. The fact
that he the fact that he ended up not being
Do you really think it was Biden's decision, because I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
I think that the Biden people recognize that they could
be embarrassed hugely by defeat in British court on whether
he would be extradited. There was there was some impact
from the media campaign, some of the top papers and
outlets here pushing for assigns for the charges to be dropped.

(01:09:50):
I don't know what other strings were being pulled. I mean,
you know, this is a good example. Okay, so it was.
It was a good decision, But how many years is
it going to be until we find out what really happened?
Five years, ten years, maybe after both of us are dead.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Well, the same thing applies, I suppose to the to
the Kennedy records.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Yeah, I mean, and that's the perfect example, because what
the Chief Justice, Earl Warren, head of the Warrant Commission
and others did. They had this big investigation and then
sealed the records for seventy five years. I mean, this
is complete bs. I mean that standard policy. I guess
in Britain with the Official Secrets Act, maybe not the

(01:10:32):
same number of years, but it makes a travesy of democracy.
If folks don't know what the government is doing in
their name, then they might as well be serfs in
the Middle Ages.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Again, I want to quote from last rites. School children
are being sacrificed on an altar of social justice, from
no child left behind to common core. Federal dictats have
subverted academic standards and squanted billions of ours of our kids' lives.
Teacher unions have worked to destroy local control of education,

(01:11:07):
prevent teacher account ability, deny parents any voice, any voice
in their children's education, and pointlessly shut down schools during
the pandemic in lieu of literacy. Government schools are redefining
gender and indoctrinating kids with values that many parents detest.
When mothers and fathers raised hell at school board meetings,

(01:11:27):
the Biden administration and the FBI labeled them as terrorst
suspects and treated some of them, I will add, and
treated some of them accordingly.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
I mean I knew that was going on, but I
read that paragraph and I was It seriously got to me,
how on earth.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
How on earth had this happened? Government schools. Teacher unions
are some of the strongest unions in this country. They
have really rolled a lot of the opposition. They've turned
the schools, and especially in big cities where the schools
are worse, where kids are at least likely to learn

(01:12:06):
how to read to teacher unions have got the almost
unlimited sway and it's it was fascinating to see how
they shut down. There were all these protests by teachers
they would have Teachers were outraged that they would have
any risk when they went back to school during the pandemic.
I mean, other workers had to accept the risk, but

(01:12:27):
the teachers wanted to have their full salary and have
these zoom classes where that were a complete failure and
it did the greatest harm to low income kids that
might not have good internet connections. So and then there's
the other thing that the that the schools have gone
on a crusade they are ignoring, like the phonics method

(01:12:50):
for teaching reading, part of the reason that reading skills
have gone so bad here, and instead they're just encouraging
kids in kindergarten to question their own gender. I mean,
this is this is I mean, it's a full employment
program for therapists and it's an absolute travesy and there's
so many loud is being messed up by this, and it's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
An insanity yep. So the latest book, which came out
a few months ago, is called Last Rights based on
the book Thirty years Ago, Lost Rights, Last Rights, the
Death of American Liberty. Why would why would people in

(01:13:31):
this part of the world, New Zealand, Australia. I got
a reasonable audience in America too, by the way, But
in this part of the world, why would they know?

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):
Not?

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Why what would they get from reading that book?

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
I think it'd be of interest to anyone in English
speaking nations or other nations where you've got democratic or
semi democratic nations where the government is seizing so much power,
it's making a travacy of the constitution and people's rights
are being lost every passing year. There are a lot

(01:14:08):
of parallels. Uh, for instance, the the the chapter in
the book Last Rice on COVID policy, a lot of
parallels to what happened in Australia and New Zealand. Same
type of hissoria we had Fauci here. I'm sure there
were other demagogues in Australians in some of these states.
Is it called states, provinces.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
States states in Australia.

Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there were a couple of states
I was reading about and it was just it was
bizarre how far the power stretched, and.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
That would have been Victoria just for a stop.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Okay. Well, and there's the the chapter and gun control
in there. I've got a discussion on the Second Amendment
that talks about how firearms are a are an insurance
policy against tyranny, because if the government takes away all
your means means to resist, then your your cannon fodder

(01:15:02):
for them. They can do whatever they want. And it's
something the Founding Father is recognized. There's some one wonderful
quotes from early American history because this is how the
Americans beat the British in the seventeen seventies and seventeen eighties.
But it's almost as if we're supposed to hate guns
because people might resist the garment. But you know, if

(01:15:23):
you look at history, there's a lot of garments that
deserve resisting.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Absolutely true, Jim. It's been well over now and it's
been most enjoyable. I feel like I want to go
on for longer, but I shan't stress you, but we'll
do it again, hopefully in another three years. It's been
a privilege.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
Oh well, it's a privilege for me to talk to
such a great host who's famous, famous in multiple countries
for your long record of top quality stuff. So and
thanks for your thoughtful questions that pushed me to think
a little bit and almost push me to the edge

(01:16:04):
of my cynicism. That would be a victory or perhaps
so Thank you and you take care, thanks so much
having me on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Thank you Jack.

Speaker 4 (01:16:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
The name of the company is Wet and Forget, and
we all know why because the original product that Wet
and Forget began to produce was Wet and Forget Moss
and mold remover. But there's two kinds of Wet and
Forget that you can purchase. There is the Wet and Forget,
the original moss and mold remover, and there is the
rapid application Wet and Forget. Now they have exactly the
same active ingredient and they'll cover a similar area. It

(01:16:54):
is only the actual application using the revolutionary reach nozzle
that is so different. Rapid Application is non caustic and
non acidic, and it contains absolutely no bleach none. Rapid
Application is your concentrate and garden sprayer all in one.
The most outstanding feature of Rapid Application is its reach nozzle,

(01:17:15):
with its unparalleled reach of eight meters or if you like,
two stories without using a ladder for a large concrete driveways, paths,
et cetera. A quick change on the revolutionary reach novel
gives you an incredibly fast application, more than fifty times
that of a garden sprayer. So where do you get
Wet and Forget? From Wet and Forgets over twenty standalone

(01:17:36):
company stores nationwide. You can order online at wetinfiget dot
co dot NZ ring them eight hundred and three zero
three thousand, and don't forget. You can buy Wet and
Forget in America, Britain, Australia and of course the Homeland,
New Zealand. Now it's no fun doing the mail room

(01:18:00):
on your own. It's not what it was intended for.
But here are a couple maybe three letters that I
shall dispatch my missus producer will be back in a
couple of weeks. I watched the first twenty twenty four
American presidential debate twice because I couldn't believe what I
saw the first time round. I couldn't believe how unbiased

(01:18:22):
the CNN moderators were. They gave reasonably fair treatment to
both Trump and Biden. Secondly, I couldn't believe how bad
Biden was. He was like a man with stage four
Alzheimer's stuttering repeatedly and forgetting what he was saying mid sentence. Thirdly,
I couldn't believe how witty Trump was. He was smashing
back funny zingers and memorable one liners at a sitting

(01:18:44):
possum that was Biden. Biden was the possum to Trump's headlights.
In a post debate analysis, Daily Wire's CEO said something
utterly profound. He said something along the following lines. Donald
Trump initially ran for president in twenty sixteen, expecting he'd lose,
and he won. Trump then ran for president in twenty twenty,

(01:19:05):
expecting he'd win, and he lost. Trump now runs for
president in twenty twenty four knowing he has to win. Indeed,
if Biden or Kamada Harris wins the twenty twenty four election,
America will lose her very soul. And then, on a
completely different note, did you hear Tucker Carlson's brutal one

(01:19:26):
liner on Jacinda Adern at his recent speech in Australia? Wow?
Talk about zingers? I think I did, actually, but a
couple of comments. Couldn't believe how unbiased the CNN moderators were.
They gave fairly. They gave reasonably fair treatment to both
Trump and Biden. True, that was my feeling too. Then

(01:19:49):
somebody drew attention to the fact that there were and
I can't remember the numbers now, how many questions twenty
two questions, I think, And there were percentages of questions
that were directed favorably for Biden, and the number that
were favorable towards towards Trump were far fewer. I can't

(01:20:09):
remember the numbers, but you get my drift. The other
point was that he was like a man was a
stage for Alzheimer's. No, he's more advanced than that. Apparently,
what I gather he is in stage five. The estimation
is that he's in stage five of seven stages of Alzheimer's.
So not a good look now from Eileen. The father

(01:20:33):
of communism, Karl Marx defined communism as the abolition of
private property. So do we really want to enact animal
farm here in New Zealand? Good luck for the future
of our food production under that hammer. Climate change Marxists
are essentially social activists, posing as guardians of the environment
while they live up large as Champagne socialists, big carbon

(01:20:57):
footprints in their designer footwear as well dedicated followers of
fast Fashion with a special twist lurid green hypocrisy. Well,
I don't know that the Champagne socialists Chardonnay, maybe not Champagne.
I don't think they could afford Champagne, and I suppose
if they did have it, it was probably shoplisted, if

(01:21:21):
you get my drift. And then, finally, in this very
short mail room, thank you both for the podcast, but
please don't bring mister Trump into the conversations. Sorry to
say it makes me wonder if you're getting contributions to
include him and shore up support while we've got an
audience in the US, I don't think the numbers are

(01:21:41):
big enough to make a difference. I'm desperately wanting New
Zealanders to take on board a lot of what is
talked about in your podcasts, and I occasionally forward them
in the hope that they make a difference or at
least in form because we can't rely on our media.
Having Trump as an opening topic would put a lot
of people off, and rightly so. Yes, most of us

(01:22:03):
don't know much about American politics, but what we do
know is in the past your subject has proven over
and over his arrogance, and in my book, humility is
a far greater trait. Thank you again and hoping you'll
stick to the huge concerns that we have here in
our own country. Look forward to your next podcast. Very

(01:22:23):
grateful for Oliver Hart, which is perspective and experience. Sincerely
hope he stays put and doesn't add to the brain drain.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
I concur with you on that point, and I can
only suggest that you're going to have to be selective
in what you forward on because Trump is going to
feature ever more so in the next few months. It
is unavoidable, and there is good reason for it too.
And I hope that you enjoyed the interview today. You

(01:22:52):
say that most New Zealanders or many New Zealanders don't Yes,
most of us don't know much about American politics. I've
worked over the years to try and assist in that regard.
Maybe I'm failing, And that would appear to be the
right place and time to introduce the article that I
may mention of the introduction with regard to the decision

(01:23:14):
by the Supreme Court as it's called this historic Presidential
Immunity decision, and the author is Jonathan Turley, who is
a very successful professor of law. He is a Democrat,
has been a democrat, is still a Democrat. But he
has to be about the most intelligent Democrat that exists anyway.

(01:23:35):
He is more concerned, I think, than anything else with
the Constitution and its retention in its original form at
appropriate interpretations thereof. He writes columns for various organizations, including
The New York Post, and this is where this particular
article finished. He has a prelude on his website to this,

(01:23:55):
but I think I should cut straight to the column itself.
Within minutes of the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity,
liberal politicians and pundits seem to move from hyperpose to
hyperventilation when not breathing into paperbags. Critics predicted again the
end of the republic. CNN's Van Jones declared that it

(01:24:19):
was quote almost a license to thug in a way.
Senator Richard Blumenthal declared, my stomach turns with fear and
anger that our democracy can be so endangered by an
out of controled court close quote, and denounced six justices
as extreme and nakedly partisan hacks politicians in robes. Limenthal

(01:24:43):
has previously shown greater intestinal fortitude as when he threatened
the justices that they would either rule as Democrats demanded
or face seismic changes to their court. Jones warned the
justices that politically it's bad for them to rule this way.
The comment captures the misguided analysis of many media outlets.

(01:25:06):
The Supreme Court was designed to be unpopular to take
stands that are politically unpopular but constitutionally correct. Indeed, Democrats
have become the very threat that the Court was meant
to resist. Recently, senators demanded the Chief Justice, John Roberts
peer to answer to them for his decisions. Roberts wisely declined.

(01:25:28):
Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer previously declared in front of
the Supreme Court, this is out the front of the building.
I want to tell you Gossich. I want to tell
you Kavanagh, you have released the whirlwind and you will
pay the price. Leveling threats at the justices of the
Supreme Court. Now, Representative Alexandria Acasia Cortez announced that she

(01:25:50):
will seek the impeachment of all six of the Conservative judges.
She was immediately joined by other Democrat members. Notably, scholars
have long disregarded where to draw the line on presidential immunity.
The Court adopted a middle approach that rejected rejected extreme
arguments on both sides. Yet, because Ecazio Cortez disagrees with

(01:26:12):
their decision, she's declared that this is an assault on
American democracy. It's up to Congress to defend our nation
from this authoritarian gamchare. Previously, Acazio Cortez admitted that she
doesn't understand why we even have a Supreme Court. She asked,
how much does the current structure benefit us? I don't
think it does. Other members, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren,

(01:26:36):
have called for the packing of the court with additional
members to immediately secure a liberal majority to rule as
she desires. For these pundits and politicians, justice is merely
an extension of politics and subject to the whims of
the majority. These are the same voices who chastised to
Judge Eileen Cannon for slow walking her decisions by holding

(01:27:00):
hearings on constitutional questions. They pointed to Judge Tanya Chutkam,
who supported the efforts of Special Counsel Jacksmith to try
Trump before the election, turning her court into a rockets docket. Indeed,
at the oral argument. Chief Justice Roberts marveled at the
conclusory analysis by Patricia Ann Millet in upholding Chutkin. He

(01:27:24):
reverred to the opinion celebrated by the left as little
more than declaring a former president can be prosecuted because
he's being prosecuted. Chutkin and the d C Circuit were fast,
but ultimately wrong. Indeed, the Supreme Court noted that the
judge created little record for the basis of her decisions.
In a perverted sense, democrats are giving the public a

(01:27:48):
powerful lesson in constitutional law. As Alexander Hamilton stated in
The Federalists Number seventy eight, judicial independence is the best
expedient which can be devised in any government to secure
a steady, upright, and impartial administration of laws. This is
the moment that the Framers envisaged in creating the Court

(01:28:11):
under Article three of the Constitution. It would be our
bulwark even when politicians lose faith in our constitution and
seek to dictate justice for those who they dislike. In
my new book, The Indispensable Right Free Speech in an
Age of Rage, I discuss other such moments in our history.
This is not our first age of rage, During periods

(01:28:34):
of intense fear or anger, people often turn on free
speech and other rights as inconvenient and outdated. We've heard
the same voices of the faithless today. MSNBC commentator Eli
Mistel has called the Constitution trash, and I argued that
we should simply dump it. Law professors Ryan Doffler of

(01:28:56):
Harvard and Samuel Moyne of Yale called for the Constitution
to be radically altered to reclaim America from constitutionalism. None
of these threats or bloviating will work. The Court is
designed to stand against everyone and everything except the Constitution.

(01:29:16):
It was forged for this moment, and Jonathan Turley is
the JB. And Borris C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest
Law at the George Washington University School of Law. I
think that column lays it out as well as anybody
can on what the situation is, why it's happening, and

(01:29:37):
why the Constitution is what term what matters more than
anything else. It's been a very, very busy week on
the news front, and I can only imagine it's going
to be maintained for a period of time. So we
shall see what happens in the next few days. And
as much that could, and take our leave from two
forty five. So if you'd like to correspond with us

(01:30:00):
Layton at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot NZ, Latin at newstalks
AB dot co dot NZ, or Carolyn at NEWSTALKSZNB dot
co dot com in Z. We shall return for podcast
two hundred and forty six very shortly. Until then, as always,
thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
Thank you for more from News Talks ed B. Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio

All Episodes

Leighton Smith Podcast #245 - July 3rd 2024 - James Bovard

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #245 - July 3rd 2024 - James Bovard