How Far Does the First Amendment Go?

A Congresswoman has been removed from her committee assignments, Former President Trump’s lawyers have decided to use the First Amendment as a defense, and an old tradition is coming back to the White House.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
Congresswoman has been removed from her committee
assignments. Former PresidentTrump's lawyers have decided to
use the First Amendment as adefense in his impeachment
trial. And an old tradition iscoming back to the White House.
I'm Joe Maronski. And you'relistening to the political
informant. Your place for factfirst politics.

(00:31):
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylorgreen, a Republican from Georgia
has been removed from hercommittee assignments in the
House of Representatives. Nowthis comes after recently
resurfaced comments from beforeshe was elected mainly in 2018.
These claims include that schoolshootings were false flag

(00:51):
operations with paid actors theLas Vegas shooting was staged in
regards to the Las Vegasshooting she said quote, how do
you get avid gun owners andpeople that support the second
amendment to give up their gunsand go along with anti gun
legislation? You make themscared you make them victims and
you change their mindset andthen possibly you can pass anti

(01:12):
gun legislation. Is that whathappened in Las Vegas? I don't
believe paddock pulled this offall by himself. And I know most
of you don't either, and quote,she also claimed that the 911
tax did not happen saying quote,it's odd. There's never any
evidence shown for a plane inthe Pentagon and quote, she
claimed that two Muslim membersof Congress were not real

(01:32):
members because they didn't getsworn in on a Bible. In regards
to this, it is important to notethat the United States does have
a separation of church and statemeaning that any member of
Congress can get sworn in onwhatever they feel most
appropriate. She claimed thatJewish people shoot lasers from
the sky to start forest fires.
She called for the execution ofHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi and

(01:55):
she touted the queueing onconspiracy theories. So she has
a track record to say the least.
But like I said, these were allcomments from before she was in
office. So it has definitelysparked a little bit of
controversy. Now she served onthe education and budget
committees but aftera 232 199 vote, she has been
removed of 11 republicans votedto remove her which was

(02:19):
definitely something interestedin a little unexpected. Now the
day of the vote, she gave aneight minute speech on the House
floor. I'm going to go throughsome quotes because there are
some interesting ones. She said,quote, school shootings are
absolutely real, and every childthat has lost those families
mourn it, and quote, she alsosaid, quote, I also want to tell

(02:41):
you that 911 absolutelyhappened. I remember that day
crying all day long watching iton the news, and it's a tragedy
for anyone to say it didn'thappen. And so that I definitely
want to tell you, I do notbelieve it is fake, and quote.
Now, in this eight minutespeech, she didn't say the words
I'm sorry. She just said thewords, I regret my decision, or

(03:03):
I was given false information.
But this is a political tacticused by politicians on both
sides of the aisle to avoidlooking weak. They just don't
want to say the words I'm sorry.
She did later apologize in apress conference. Outside the
Capitol. It was a 20 minutepress conference, where she
claimed she was fried and thatshe could now work to push

(03:26):
republicans even further right.
And cement former PresidentTrump's legacy in the GOP. When
asked if she was truly sorry,she said, quote, I'm sorry for
saying all those things that arewrong and offensive. And I
sincerely mean that and quote.
So there are definitely a lot ofimplications with this happening
it this is a huge thing,especially for how things may

(03:47):
move going forward. congressmenand women could now be removed
for things they said before theywere in office, first and
foremost. But it also opens thedoor for Republicans to remove
Democrats should they regaincontrol. You know, this is
uncharted territory in a sense,where we're now punishing people
for things that they said,regardless of how wrong before

(04:08):
they were in office.
And a lot of Democrats who wereunsure about the vote, and
namely the 11 Republicans whovoted to remove her, noted that
they didn't remove her becauseshe said these things. They
removed her more than anythingbecause she didn't acknowledge
that they were wrong after thefact, when she was called out

(04:29):
for it earlier this week. Shedidn't come out and say I'm
sorry, I shouldn't have saidthose things. I was wrong. She
showed no remorse. That's whatone republican congressman said.
And he was one of the 11 peoplewho voted to remove her from
those committees. But at the endof the day, this is removing the
focus from the actual work thatthese officials were elected to
do. We elected them to go andcreate change and pass

(04:53):
legislation that helped theAmerican people not to fight
over claims that have no proofto back them up.
Things that we really shouldn'teven be giving the time of day
to address.
President Biden's proposed $1.9trillion stimulus plan is on its

(05:14):
way to being passed. The Senatecleared the way for the house to
start drafting the finallegislation with a party line
vote that vice president Harrishad to cast the tie breaking
vote for now. She cast that voteat 5:30am on Friday, and then
later on Friday, the houseapproved it in a 219 to 209 vote

(05:35):
again on party lines. PresidentBiden said quote, are we going
to say to millions of Americanswho are out of work many out of
work for six months or longer,who have been scared by the
economy and public healthcrisis? Don't worry, hang on,
things are gonna get better.
That's the republican answerright now, I can't in good
conscience do that. Too manypeople in the nation have

(05:56):
already suffered for too longand quote. Now let's also
remember that this is the samePresident Biden, whose entire
inauguration address was aboutrestoring unity and
bipartisanship. But he didinvite Republicans to the White
House to discuss the bill andnegotiate. The problem solvers
caucus is a bipartisan andcentrist group of lawmakers and

(06:16):
they called for legislationboosting vaccine distribution
before a new stimulus package.
To date, the CDC says thatthey've distributed 58,380,300
vaccines administered 36,819,212of those vaccines. There are

(06:38):
over 300 million people in theUnited States. So obviously,
vaccine distribution needs to beramped up. If we want to
vaccinate as many people aswe're saying we are, we need to
be focusing on that not fightingover a stimulus package.
However, with a democraticcontrolled Congress, it's
looking more and more like thisbill will be passed with pretty

(07:00):
much nothing no republicans wantin it. So let's go through the
key points of this plan. 14 $100checks to Americans who meet a
specific income threshold willbe distributed. Unemployment
supplements of $400 a week willbe put into effect, the minimum
wage will gradually rise from725 an hour to $15 an hour $440

(07:23):
billion will be going tocommunities, that's grants and
loans to small businesses $350billion in funding for state,
local and territorialgovernments, and then $160
billion in funding for anational vaccination program.
He's also going to be allowingfor 14 weeks of paid sick and
family medical leave forcaregivers dealing with close

(07:45):
schools or care centers, and inincreased child credit to
families ranging up to $8,000.
So this is a huge package. Andit would be nice to see
bipartisanship on something likethis. It would be nice if we
could reach across the aisle andwork together. But it looks like
this is going to be the firstpiece of legislation that will
literally be partisan, not a oneperson voting, not a one

(08:09):
republican looks like they'regoing to be voting for this
package. And that is somethingwe haven't seen since the Biden
administration took office.
Everything that they have passedhas seen at least one republican
vote for it. But we havedemocrats who are questioning if
they're going to vote for this.
Some of the more conservativeDemocrats have said that this is

(08:30):
insane. You know, you're noteven talking to the republicans
anymore. You're barely askingthem for any input. Because you
have the majority, you shouldstill be working together with
them. And they're completelyright. President Biden called
for bipartisanship in hisinauguration address. The
American public needs to call onHim to act on that

(08:55):
DMP impeachment trial of formerPresident Donald Trump is coming
up and his lawyers are beginningto form their arguments. The
trial is set to begin onFebruary 9, but President Trump
parted ways with his old lawyersand he now has a new team,
including a former prosecutorfrom Pennsylvania and an Atlanta
based attorney. They claim thatthe Senate can't convict him

(09:17):
because of the First Amendment.
But there are a whole bunch ofproblems with this claim.
First of all, the FirstAmendment doesn't apply in an
impeachment hearing, becausethey're not discussing what he
said. They're more discussingthe results of what he said 144
bipartisan constitutional lawscholars wrote a letter in which

(09:37):
they said the following. Firstof all, his speech was not
expressive action. Now, underthe First Amendment, there's a
few different things that areweird, but a lot of people don't
know about. The Supreme Courtruled that there's two different
types of speech. There's speechitself, and there's expressive
action. You know, if youGo and burn something down and

(10:00):
say you were trying to send amessage, that's not gonna work.
But if you burn an American flagand say you were sending a
message that's expressive actionprotected by the First
Amendment. Additionally, inBrandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme
Court said essentially that youcan't yell fire when there isn't
a fire. In this case, the theconstitutional law scholars

(10:22):
claim, if there's no evidence ofvoter fraud, you can't say there
is and that account must bestopped. The lawyers of
President Trump have also saidthat they probably won't bring
up the fraud claims or presentevidence of it, they're gonna
try to stray away from that asmuch as possible. So if you
don't present that as evidence,you can't say that it happened.

(10:44):
So he was telling the truth.
It's like yelling fire whenthere's no fire. The first
amendment also doesn't prohibitconviction. Congress says he
violated his oath of officethrough quote, extraordinary,
unprecedented repudiation of thePresident's duties to protect

(11:04):
the government. The governmentincludes Congress by watching
the mob on TV and not takingimmediate action to protect
Congress. That's a violation.
claims that a former presidentcan't be impeached have also
been pretty much dismissed.
Officials have been impeachedafter leaving office before so

(11:25):
there. There's definitelyprecedent in this section in
1797. In 1798, Senator WilliamBlount was impeached by the
house removed from the Senateand then tried by the Senate. In
that order, he was impeached bythe house removed and then
tried. So he was out of officewhen he was tried in the Senate.

(11:47):
And that's actually exactly whatin essence happened. In the case
of President Trump, you know, hewas impeached left office and
then was tried, but blunt wasremoved from the Senate.
President Trump wasn't removedfrom office. However, there is a
precedent for that. Secretary ofWar William Belk Knapp was

(12:08):
impeached and tried afterleaving office in 1876. Both
impeached and tried, heresigned, and then they
impeached and tried Yes, this isthe first time somebody is being
tried after their term ended perse, but it's happened before
people were not in office andhave been impeached and tried.

(12:30):
House Democrats asked formerPresident Trump to testify but
one of his spokesman said quote,he will not testify in an
unconstitutional proceeding.
In 1982, former President RonaldReagan began a new tradition.
Each Saturday he delivered anaddress to the American people

(12:52):
over the radio, these becamemore commonly known as the
fireside chats. The fullofficial name of this address
would be the weekly address ofthe President of the United
States, but they're alsoreferred to as fireside chats in
history books across thecountry. During the Obama
administration, these began totake a new shape being shared on

(13:12):
YouTube and other platforms. Andthese were hard to find on the
radio. The Trump administrationcontinued this tradition, but it
did eventually stop. The Bidenadministration has said there'll
be restarting these and yetanother new form. Now they'll be
posted to the White HouseYouTube page. Some will be
traditional style talkingdirectly to Americans, but

(13:34):
others will be podcast stylewith guests interviewing or
having conversations withPresident Biden about the issues
that are affecting them. Thefirst episode will be released
this weekend featuring MichelleVolkert, who was a California
woman laid off from her job inthe early months of the
pandemic. Of course, I would beremiss to note that this is not

(13:54):
the only old tradition comingback to the White House. The
other one would be the fact thatwe now have first dogs again.
But this is definitely somethingthat should be good and
hopefully, will create moretransparency in our government
and hopefully having americanpeople interviewing or having
conversations with the Presidentwill cause an increased sense of

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accountability that is muchneeded in this nation.
With the political landscapefilled with tension, blame and
little work, Americans must holdtheir elected officials
accountable. We can no longersit back will officials fight.

(14:37):
We must speak up and letofficials know that it is not
only time to stop fighting, buttime to work together and get
things done for the people whoput them in office because those
same people can take them out ofoffice just as fast. Um, Joe
Maronski and you have beenlistening to the political
informant your place for fact,first politics