The Good & the Bad of Old Guard Republicans

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to talk about the Republican Party, It's historic position,
posture attitudes towards abortion, its current position, pasture attitudes on abortion,
and the intellectuals. And this is occasioned by this piece

(00:22):
that was published in The Bulwark. Now. The Bulwark is
one of these sort of online opinion websites that got
started sort of in reaction to Trump, and it sort
of build itself as being founded by run by Trump

(00:44):
disaffected Republicans, anti Trumpers, and it shares the weakness of
so many anti Trump Republican entities is that it's hard
to fathom how these people were ever Republicans to begin with. Uh,
they all of a sudden It labels itself as being

(01:08):
like a Republican resistance to Trump type thing, or an
anti Trump Republicans, or you know, Trump is ruining the
Republican Party or Trump has ruined the conservative authentic conservatism
blah blah blah blah blah. But the problem with the Bulwark,
especially and they're they're various kinds of groups and entities
and opinion sites like this, is that they're not really

(01:33):
just anti Trump. They they have morphed into being anti
everything the Republican Party stood for their pro abortion. They're
opposed to this mainstream conservative thing. Donald Trump did this,
that mainstream conservative thing Donald Trump did for all of

(01:54):
the STM and drawing about how Donald Trump has radically
transformed the Republican Party, Yeah, there are certain things that
Trump has definitely changed. We definitely have a different attitude
within the party, or at least new currents of ideas
within the party about trade and tariffs protectionism. But there's

(02:20):
not too much that Trump really like fundamentally changed to
the party's platform. And especially you look at Trump one
point in the first Trump administration and its accomplishments, it
was pretty mainstream Republican stuff. There was a tax cut,
there was you know this, Then the other you look
at the one big Beautiful Bill Act. You know what
was it doing. It was maintaining the old Trump tax cuts.

(02:43):
It was, you know, doing this, doing that. It really
he's changed many things. I think he's changed a lot
more sort of attitudinally than he has substantively. Then there
have been some substance of changes. He has a different
approach to foreign policy than most hard to argue that

(03:07):
it's a worse foreign policy. If anything, it seems to
be remarkably more successful than basically anybody else. And one
of the frustrating things with The Bulwark and some of
these other entities is that all of a sudden that
they just hate Trump so much that they've all of
a sudden, if Trump said, you know that the grass

(03:29):
is green and the sky is blue, they would say, no, no, no, no, no,
actually the sky is green and the grass is blue.
They're so anti Trump that they furiously reject anything he
possibly says or thinks or does. And the problem is
that a lot of what he thinks are does is
just kind of normal Republican stuff. And some of the

(03:54):
leading lights of well, some of the main people of
like The Bulwark and some of these other entities. Jonah
Goldberg started his new entity called The Remnant, similarly situated.
They have basically they are so anti Trump that they've
sort of abandoned all these positions that they used to hold.

(04:18):
Bill Crystal is kind of like one of the leading
lights of this. Bill Crystal, who used to be one
of the main guys for The Weekly Standard, which was
this opinion conservative opinion journal that was published for many,
many many years. Bill Crystal was super pro life and

(04:40):
this and that and had all these sort of mainstream
Republican positions. All of a sudden Trump comes along, he
puts himself into this super anti Trumpian posture, and Bill Crystal,
who had been on the board of directors for like
national pro life organizations, I think he was on the
board of direct for like Students for Life of America

(05:02):
or something like that, changes his completely changes his views
on abortion with a column that was so poorly reasoned
he might as well have just said it is I
am changing my views on abortion because they are now inconvenient,
and that's basically it. And the speed with which this

(05:22):
crowd of people change their views, including on these kind
of like core conservative ethical positions or like, you know,
social positions, was really just further evidence for Trump supportive
Republicans that these people were Charlatan's and quacks who shouldn't

(05:42):
have been listened to in the who should not be
listened to because they're not even really conservative they were.
They're either they were either total phonies before or they're
being total phony opportunists right now. There's no other option
other than they're being phonies. Other I mean, just very

(06:05):
few adults have sincere genuine conversions on major political beliefs, ideas,
social views on a question like abortion in ways that
you know here they are all having these huge changes

(06:27):
in ways that are obviously very financially advantageous to them.
Because there was all this new money coming in for
these new kind of media ventures and things like that,
mainstream press was desperate to get as many anti Trump
Republican talking heads into their stables as they could, as

(06:47):
you know, contributors and talking heads and columnists, you know,
all of a sudden, David French, for example, goes from
being a writer for National Review to all of a sudden,
now he's a columnist for the New York Times, a
much more stites. You went from National Review to The
Atlantic to the New York Times. Now he's like, you know,
in the elite strata of opinion calumnists in the country.

(07:09):
Why because he took this not just an anti Trump view,
but like a hard basically running contra to everything conservatives did. Okay,
so that crowd has abandoned ship on abortion. And a
piece got published in The Bulwark by this guy who
was like a Republican staffer for years and years and

(07:30):
years and years, and he talks about how you know
I needed to work why I finally I drew my
red line and I said, I cannot continue in good
conscience working for the Republican Party because it's so dominated
by Trump. And there have been plenty of pieces like
this over the years. This one is sort of remarkable
because of how late in the game he all of

(07:50):
a sudden dexcided he just couldn't do this anymore. I mean, like,
come on, Trump's been a fairly known quantity for Republicans
for I don't know a decade at this point, and
the thing that he was like the thing I just
couldn't stand. The thing that just the line in the

(08:13):
sand for me was the aggressive conservative shift of the
Supreme Court and the limit restrictions on abortion that it prompted.
Because my wife had a miscarriage and the thought that
someone wouldn't be able to receive care was just a
bridge too far. Now, I feel very bad for this
guy that he and his wife went through that that's

(08:34):
a horrible thing to go through, and I have, you know,
nothing but respect and concern for that. However, he just
seems to be repeating all these Democrat untruths about how
Republican leaning states like this deliberate obfuscation between what is

(08:56):
an abortion versus what is miscarriage care and and when
those things are legal. It's this deliberate obfiscation that Democrats
seem to engage in because they want Republican pro life
abortion restricting laws to be as unreasonable as they want

(09:17):
the laws to be as unreasonable as possible, even though
they are not. And the idea that the conservative shift
of the Supreme Court is what drove him away, which
leads me to this. Donald Trump's three Supreme Court picks

(09:38):
are not like if you were allegedly a Republican for
years and years and years, the three people Trump picked,
they might have been the exact same three people that
would have been picked if Marco Rubio had become president

(09:59):
in the twenty six election, If Ted Cruz had become
president in the twenty sixteen election, if you know any
of the mainstream if if Jeb Bush had been nominated
to be president, like they were picked by the Federalist Society.
The Federalist Society was the group that was going to

(10:20):
run presidential nominations regardless of who was president, and it's
the entity that conservatives have wanted running that forever. Trump
let the Federalist Society help him pick his judges and
his Supreme Court picks. If you were allegedly a Republican

(10:44):
for ten years, for twenty whatever, there's no way humanly
possible you could look at Amy Cony, Barrett Neil Gorsich,
and Brett Kavanaugh, who, none of whom are the most
conservative justice on the Court. Okay that none of them
are more conservative than Alito, none of them are more

(11:06):
as far as like how what outcomes have come about
or whatever. None of them are as conservative as Thomas
or Alito. If you're looking at them and thinking that
they represent a radical, aggressive and dangerous right word shift,
well then what are you doing being conservative? If you
don't think they're they embody what conservatism is supposed to

(11:27):
be about, or what the Republican Party is supposed to
stand for, you're out to lunch. They're not even like
that conservative. I mean, you know, they're the thing that
makes them different from Alito and Thomas is they're not
Alito and Thomas. They're not quite that way. So, and

(11:51):
I've heard some of these people in the orbit of
like the Bulwark, and again, some of these entities and
these are. Some of these people were like high ranking
people working like one of the lead people for John
McCain's presidential campaign, one of the lead people for working
in the White House and vetting judicial nominations like this.

(12:14):
One guy said, something changed about Justice Alito when I
worked on his nomination to the Supreme Court. No, there's
no way any of us thought that he would be
overturning Roe v. Wade. Well, why why didn't you think
that you were nominating people thinking that they would be
reasonable that we thought he would be a reasonable conservative,
Not the kind of person who would overturn rov Waite

(12:36):
reasonable concern The only reasonable conservative is a conservative. It
would overturn rov Wade. Rob Wade was terrible. It was
one of the most egregious decisions of all time. Plant
Parati versus Casey, its successor case from nineteen ninety two,
was barely any better. It was about as bad about
as poorly reasoned. Now, these were the people running the

(13:03):
Republican Party. We had a party for years until Trump
kicked them out of it. Was think of the Republican
Party as a hen house, and we had wolves helping
be essential guides to the operation of the hen house.
That's what we had. Now. The problem is, though, so

(13:34):
what was the effect of electing Trump. The effect of
electing Trump was basically some of those people still had
a bit of a home during the first Trump administration.
What Because Trump was a total outsider, he had to
rely on the Institutional Republican Party to get his first
administration staffed. He had a few people he could bring

(13:57):
over from himself, but he didn't have enough to stay
the whole government, so he was relying on other people
for all these different positions, cabinet officials, et cetera. Well,
Trump two point zero is not so unexperienced. Trump one
point zero knew who all the morons and charlatan's and

(14:22):
fakers were, and they excommunicated them from their orbit, and
as a result, Trump two point zero is a very
different character. It doesn't mean that everything in Trump two
point zero is perfect. I still kind of think Pam
Bondi is a moron and a bit in over her head.

(14:43):
I'm not saying every and I think that the desire
to have nominated Matt Gates is looking stupid or as
stupider as Gates continues with his bizarre media career, where
now he's just aping every like anti Jewish conspiracy theory
that Candice Owens trots out first. So I'm not saying
Trump two point zero is better in every respect, but

(15:05):
in one respect it's certainly better. They have purged out
all the fake Republican hacks who you know, destroyed John
McCain's campaign and then talked crap about Sarah Palin afterwards.
Sarah Palin was the only thing that gave that campaign
a bare jolt of life, and they hated Sarah Palin

(15:30):
as a result, even though she was very unfailingly loyal
to McCain, even you know, the after the campaign was
over for years and years and years. So there is
a casting out of the old guard, and that is good,
But when it comes to social issues, there was a

(15:52):
bit of a casting out of the old guard that
is unfortunate, which is casting out of the kind of
old guard of pro life in intellectuals on whom prior
Republican administrations did rely and it's leading to I think
the Trump administration getting weaker and weaker on the pro

(16:12):
life position. And I'll explain who those kinds of people are,
how they think next on The John Girardi Show. The
Trump administration did a good thing by purging the Republican
Party at its kind of elite level strategic levels of
the fake old Guard, the old Guard of people who were,

(16:36):
it turns out, just totally phony Republicans willing to completely
turn on the Republican Party at the drop of a hat,
especially for money guys like Tim Miller and Bill Crystal
and all these people who have made their little mini
careers becoming anti Trump and not just becoming anti Trump
like it's one. This is the thing my hierarchy of

(16:58):
people I respect. If you don't like Donald Trump and
you think that he's betrayed conservatism, and your response to
that is not to vote for president, I at least
respect your intellectual honesty enough to think that, well, I'm

(17:19):
rejecting Donald Trump because I don't think he's pro life enough.
I think his policy on this is bad. I think
his personal okay, if you want to think that, that's fine.
The thing I cannot respect is people who say I
was a conservative and Trump betrayed the conservative movement. So
I'm voting for Kamala Harris. I'm voting for Kamala Harris,

(17:45):
and I think Trump appointing, you know, moving the Supreme
Court far to the right. That's too much and that's wrong.
And I think that, you know, this mainstream conservative policy
Trump and act was bad, and that mainstream conservative policy
Trump enacted was bad. That's where I'm like, Okay, you

(18:05):
were never conservative to begin with. You were a country
club wino Republican who was just sort of didn't like
high taxes. Maybe like that that was all you ever were.
And even this piece from the Bulwark that sort of

(18:27):
kicked me off on this whole trend. It was this
guy who this middle aged guy who was like a
Republican staffer for forever, and he writes this piece in
the Bulwark because of course he's gonna write it in
the Bulwark. The Bulwark is one of these sort of
anti Trump Republican entities that somehow got all this money
to get started right after Trump took office. And he

(18:49):
writes about how, oh, you know, I should have left
at this point, but you know, I had this job
and I needed it. And the thing that his red line, though,
the line in the sand, was how it was so
horrible how Trump shifted the Republican the Supreme Court to
the right to overturn Roe v. Wade. That was the
thing I couldn't bear. But it's like, overturning Roe V.

(19:09):
Wade has been a Republican platform priority, like since it
was enacted, like like since the seventies at least, Like,
what are you talking about? That's the thing Trump did
that you were like so horrified by that. Republicans have
been wanting rov Wade to be overturned for years. So

(19:35):
this guy publishes this thing, and you know, I makes
me crazy to think that we had a Republican Party
that was staffed with people who are just genuinely liberal,
who like did not want our Republican presidents to accomplish
the kinds of really conservative policy goals that we wanted.
That these like why did you know did they view

(20:00):
the nomination of John Roberts and then John Roberts all
of a sudden becoming much more liberal. They don't view
that as a failure. They view that, I think as
perfectly what they would have wanted. Now, when we return,
I'm going to actually get to this. I want to
talk about the intellectuals, the pro life, social conservative intellectuals

(20:23):
who were really important parts of the Republican Party during
the Bush years and before, who are now just out
and how that is weakening. Actually, I think the Trump
administration how some of that old guard needs to come back.
That's next on the John Girardi Show. Trump excommunicated a
lot of fake Republicans from the party and brought in

(20:45):
all of his own people, especially for the second Trump administration.
One group of people who I think, unfortunately have been
on the outs and aren't being brought back in are
some of the old guards, the social conservative intellectuals on
whom prior Republican administrations relied for council. Now, social conservatism

(21:13):
has historically been one of the for you know, sort
of latter half of the twentieth century onward Republican politics.
So there was sort of a three legged stool, as
it was called, a Republican politics, sort of libertarian leaning economics,
which was really promoted as a kind of counter to
the Soviet Union, the idea that rather than central a

(21:40):
centrally planned economic system where prices are set by commissars, no,
you have a free market, and the free market is
able to do this better, which at a basic level
is totally sensible. Though I'm not a full blown libertarian
economic conservativetism foreign policy, an aggressive anti Soviet posture, anti communism,

(22:08):
and then social conservatism being pro life, marriage, et cetera,
recognizing that family was sort of the cornerstone of society. Now,
the problem is, we have seen two of those three
legs kind of are in different situations. Now We're not
in an anti Soviet posture, and so is there some

(22:31):
willingness to question some of the libertarian dogmas that we
have had before. Trump has certainly questioned that. Is there
a willingness to question you aggressive foreign policy stances? Trump
has certainly questioned that. But we're still in a fundamentally

(22:51):
fighting the same kinds of battles against abortion in favor
of the family that we had with that third leg
of the stool conservatism. And a body of intellectuals was
developed sort of not of the Republican Party necessarily, but
called upon by the Republican Party to help them to

(23:14):
help guide what they would think, to help guide the platform,
to help guide policy. Now, some of these a lot
of these individuals became part of President George W. Bush's
Presidential Council on Bioethics, which served throughout the course of

(23:37):
the George W. Bush administration, helped guide the George W.
Bush administration from two thousand and one until basically Obama
shut it down as soon as he took office. And
I have great kind of personal fondness for this entity.
One of my old professors was its general counsel. Carter
Sneed is a professor, a law professor at the University

(23:59):
of Notre Dame, and the Presidential Bioethics Council. It was
sort of this thing where the general public, or the
conservative audience more generally, had various kinds of views one
way or another on abortion or on in virtual fertilization,
all these different bioethics issues. But the Republican Party recognized

(24:23):
at its highest levels there is that there needs to
be a certain kind of grounding from this group. These
are the smart These are the smart people who actually
thought this through. And these were people who were almost
universally guided by a Judeo Christian ethic. A lot of

(24:45):
them were Catholics, but not exclusively. Some were Evangelical, some
were Orthodox Jews. Leon cass was the head of President
Bush's Bioethics Council. I believe he was Jewish. My professor
Carter's Need was their general counsel. He was caut is Catholic,
and other persons on the Presidential Bioethics Council. Ben Carson

(25:06):
was on that Bioethics Council back in the day. Robert
George Is the great Princeton professor, the student of John Finnis,
and the sort of new natural law folks. He was
on it, and the Presidential Bioethics Council gave George W.
Bush really important guidance on really important bioethics questions. George W.

(25:29):
Bush wound up adopting maybe I don't know that he
adopted it entirely, but was guided in large part by
their recommendations regarding embryo destructive stem cell research and the
bio And by the way, George W. Bush's decision not
to provide federal funding for embryo destructive bioethics for embryo
destructive stem cell research was proven right because stem cell research.

(25:53):
Embryonic stem cell research turned out to be a complete
freaking dead end disaster and pit it yielded like no cures.
The cells from embryonic stem cells were totally useless. All
of the lies that people like Nancy Pelosi were trying

(26:14):
to pedal back in two thousand and all these Democrats
who were like trying to blast George W. Bush for
not funding it. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another loser, who insisted on
funding embryo destructive stem cell research in California with billions
of dollars that we might as well have dumped into
the Pacific Ocean. All these entities were saying, Oh, if
we have embryonic stem cell research, Christopher Reeves will get

(26:36):
to walk again, and blah blah, and it was it
was bull It was a total disaster. Now, the Presidential
Bioethics Council did this amazing job, and they worked over
the course of the George W. Bush administration providing all

(26:59):
kinds of policy and bioethics and papers looking at different
kinds of ethical issues. Now it's not to say that
the George W. Bush administration took every single one of
their recommendations completely, but it was a kind of buttress
against the George W. Bush administration doing looney stuff. Unlike

(27:22):
now with the Trump administration, there was no move in
the George W. Bush administration to try to facilitate IVF. Instead,
the Presidential Bioethics Council was raising there are a lot
of really serious bioethics difficulties and problems with IVF. You're
creating far more embryos than you can ever expect will
come to term and destroying those embryos. What is the

(27:43):
moral status of those embryos? Is there any meaningful difference
in the moral status of embryos contained in a petri
dish as opposed to the embryo in the body of
a woman who's walking into planned parenthood. If we think
abortion is wrong, what is the moral difference here between
intentional creating knowing you're going to destroy embryos for IVF,

(28:04):
versus having sex when you're not ready and creating potentially
creating an embryo you know you're going to destroy via abortion.
It's you know, if we think a human organism is
a human organism is a human organism, and all of
them are deserving of the basic degree of care and respect,
why not why treat them differently? And other sorts of

(28:30):
bioethical concerns that were raised at the time by the presidents,
by the George W. Bush era Presidential Bioethics Council, stuff
like what about the eugenic tendency that is used when
you're talking about IVF babies IVF embryos where you are
selecting for the best and optimized characteristics. I saw some

(28:54):
like a YouTube show, this couple who talks with other
couples about couple things, and they were talking to some
couple who had fertility things and they used IVF and
like I said, well, we have ten embryos and the
most the best, the optimal, the optimal embryo is a girl,
and the second optimal embryo is also a girl. But

(29:17):
the third optimal embryo as far as health care, likely
health outcomes, blah blah blah, is a boy. And this
couple was like, well, we just really wanted a boy,
so we selected the boy. And then what do you
do with the others. You either freeze them indefinitely or
you destroy them. That's eugenics. You're selecting certain human beings

(29:42):
to continue because they have favored traits, and you're leaving
other human beings to be destroyed because they lack those
favored traits. Whatever the favored trait is, there is this
eugenic tendency with IVF. It's kind of inherent in the process.

(30:02):
So this is one of the difficulties I see in
the Trump administration. It was so rightly aggrieved at old
guard Republican ways of thinking about everything, because the Republican
Party was full of losers, full of the losers who

(30:24):
lost the Mitt Romney election, full of losers who lost
the John McCain election, full of losers who lost, destroyed
the legacy George W. Bush could have had, prompting him
into forever wars in the ridiculous like we're gonna make
the Democray, make the Middle East safe for democracy, crusades

(30:44):
that were never gonna work. The Republican Party was full
of losers, and Donald Trump and his guys basically were like, well,
forget it, tired of these old ways of Republican thinking.
And I think unfortunately they looked at some of some

(31:08):
of the old guard Republican ways of thinking with regards
to the social conservatives, with the pro lifers as first
of all, these are Trump people coming from a perspective
of they don't really care that much about the abortion
issue to begin with, all right, and they view the
pro lifers a bunch of annoying holy roller Christians, annoying

(31:33):
holy roller Christians peddling a position they themselves don't care about.
That much and that they know is unpopular. Look, the
pro life position's unpopular right now, it is, and they think, look,
we did all this to get Roe v. Wade overturned.
And they're still complaining about, you know, the abortion pill.
They're still complaining about. Forget them. They want you to

(31:57):
pass a build limit abortion after ten weeks. That's never
gonna happen. It's super unpopular, it'll never pass the Senate.
Why would we take this out? And I think the
Trump administration is starting to just tune out pro lifers.
I really do. I think the Trump administration is starting
to completely tune out pro lifers. And it's sort of

(32:18):
this attitude that all of the old guard of Conservatism
who had power before, we don't care about them because
they were all fakes and phonies, and Trump's the only
one who's done anything right now. I don't disagree with

(32:39):
them on most of that. I think a lot of
the old guard of Republicanism are fakes and phonies and losers.
You know what was the one crowd though, that wasn't fake,
that wasn't phony, that was sincere, that actually wanted the
things they believed in. That didn't that wasn't doing this

(33:02):
for power money. It was the pro lifers. Nobody's getting
rich off of pro life advocacy. I can tell you
that from deep firsthand experience. Okay, it was the pro lifers.
Robert George and Carter Sneaed and Leon cass and all

(33:22):
the guys on the Presidential Bioethics Council. None of them
took a Bill Crystal shift. None of them took a
Mona Sharon shift, none of them took a Jennifer Ruben shift,
where all of a sudden, these people who were known
for their conservative beliefs on this, that, and the other
abandoned all those conservative beliefs because they hated Donald Trump
so much. That was not the crowd that did that.

(33:47):
The pro lifers have believed all the same things they
used to believe. And so I get the Trumpian instinct
to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I get it.
I mean, I get the I get the Trumpian instinct

(34:07):
that this bathwater needs to get out. The problem is
the pro lifers were the baby in the bathwater. The
pro lifers would and frankly, after Trump got his three
Supreme Court justices, no one was back in Trump more

(34:27):
fiercely than the pro lifers. And I guess my fear
is if Trump, you know, and I think the problem
is sort of settled Trump has done this action on IVF,
if that's going to lead to more embryos destroyed, and
if Trump's not going to really act on them. For pristone,
I think this is a thing that can alienate like

(34:50):
it's it's alienating this group of people who have bled
for Trump, who are his some of his most die
hard supporters are pro lifers. And that's why I keep
banging this drum. I want Trump to succeed. I want
Trump to be able to have this title of most

(35:11):
pro life president ever. But if he's promoting IVF and
not doing anything to regulate the abortion pill, and I
guess it remains to be seen, but it's clear he's
not doing anything quick on the abortion pill. And meanwhile,
hundreds of one hundred thousand more babies are killed every
year because the abortion pill is so accessible courtesy of

(35:32):
Joe Biden. I just feel like it's tarnishing Trump's legacy
to not be as committed to the pro life cause
as he should be. When we return, I'll quickly summarize
why Trump got onto this IVF kick in the first place.

(35:55):
That's next on the John Girardi Show. I want you
all to remember why Trump got on this IVF kick
in the first place, and it's it's incredibly stupid, all right.
In February of twenty twenty four, the Alabama State Supreme
Court issued a decision about the state of Alabama and

(36:15):
its statute for wrongful death lawsuits right and whether it
applies to the destruction of an IVF embryo. So, there
was an IVF clinic in Alabama. It didn't have very
good security or protocols. Some random guy walked into the
back of the IVF clinic. He grabbed of some container

(36:38):
that had embryos, some glass, I don't know, some petrie
dish or whatever. It was being frozen at super super
sub zero temperatures. So the glass burned his hand basically
so cold it was like burning his hand. He drops it,
destroys a bunch of embryos. Parents of the embryos want
to sue the clinic. Obviously they got deeper pockets than

(36:58):
this one random idiot for negligence. And the difference is, well,
if we sue for like normal negligence, like destruction of
This is the creepy thing with IVF because you want
to say destruction of property, but they're human beings. Do
you really want to call them property? But they can
sue for more if they can claim this is a

(37:18):
wrongful death lawsuit. And the question was, well, does the
Alabama state law for wrongful death? Does that apply to embryos?
And the Alabama State Supreme Court said, yes, it does.
And this has nothing to do with abortion laws or
Roe v. Wade or anything like that. Alabama's wrongful death
statue would have applied to embryos even if Roe v.

(37:40):
Wade were still in the books. That was viewed by
the IVF industry as a real threat to their operations
because that means they have much more liability. And so
this was blown up as oh, no, Republicans are trying
to destroy the entire IVF industry. No, this was an

(38:02):
Alabama statutory interpretation case, and Democrats made it a huge
thing like Republicans were attacking all of IVF, and Trump,
instead of ignoring it and letting the news cycle pass,
decides to make it this whole thing. And that's what
frustrates me is that this is also unnecessary, that'll do it.
John grolready show see you next time on power Talk