Voting Rights and Dangerous Lies

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A moment on the mall, along with Abraham Lincoln, George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, all of them with tears in their eyes
for the departure from our democracy that is happening right
now unless the truth is acknowledged and this legislation is passed. Wow.

(00:31):
Federalizing elections and or returning to the usual rules got
Thomas Jefferson, Well, is like moldering corpse crying. So there
are a whole bunch of um laws that have been

(00:51):
put in place all across the country around voting, and
and here's where some people make their argument, there are
some that have restricted voting from the way it was before.
But a study of all of the laws that have
been pastor proposed around the country, and I'll have to
look at the numbers, because I haven't in front of
me somewhere in my notes, something like forty of them

(01:13):
restrict voting, and something like seventy of them expand voting,
and most places are just the same as they've always been,
which we considered fine. Not too long ago, as you
pointed out, when Barack Obama was elected and the Democrats
could had the seventy senators and and the dominant House,
the same voting was in place, and everybody thought, you know,

(01:34):
everything's fine. Now all of a sudden, we're a white
supremacist nation that needs a radical reforming of the way
we do voting. It's just ridiculous. It's just a power grab,
and it's a very cynical power graph when people like
Nancy Pelosi, you're saying the founding fathers are crying, but
I appreciate the humor, honestly. Uh So, Yeah, it's they

(01:57):
are not only just pouring cancer gasoline the fires of
racial whatever going out in the United States, but I
mean they're standing there at a gas station with the
hose scored in gasoline all over the place. It's dangerous
and it's so disingenuous. There's always been a tension between
voting security and voting ease. You've got to have the
ballots be secure because there is a long tradition everywhere

(02:18):
votes have been cast from the beginning of time to
Putin's Russia today, that people screw with the ballots. It
happens a lot, And so there's that balance and decent
people that aren't white supremacists can disagree over should we
have a week of early voting or two weeks or
three weeks or a month? What should the polls open?

(02:41):
Be open for fifteen hours or they should be open
for twelve hours. You're not a white supremacist if you
pick the lower number. Right, right, So let's get back
to hyperbolefest. It's really embarrassing, but unintentionally hilarious, or it
would be hilarious if it weren't dangerous. One more from
Nancy Pelosi. Give us thirty eight, please, Michael, you really
truly want to honor dcor King, don't dishonor him by

(03:06):
using a congressional custom as an excuse for protecting our democracy.
Here's the other really cynical part of it is this
stuff around the filibuster. There's no way Nancy Pelosi actually
believes it would be good for her party to do
away with the filibuster because they're gonna get swamped here
in November. They know it. Republicans are gonna control the
House and maybe the Senate, and if they do, you

(03:28):
don't want to give the Republicans the power to do
whatever the hell they want with fifty votes. There's no
way she and Chuck Schumer believe that. Do you? I
think it's all performative. It's gotta be just putting on
a show for the Betta be Yeah. Meanwhile, leading light
of American intellectualism, Maxine Waters has weighed in and clip
forty two. They have sent this signal. They have been

(03:49):
very clear about it. They don't care about minorities, they
don't care about blacks, they don't care about people in
their own districts. Who are They're going to deny their
voting right and undermine their voting right, deny they're voting rights. Absolutely.
You know, I've called for the outlawing of the term
gas lighting. But as Molly Hemingway is about to explain

(04:09):
to us, that's exactly what's happening. They are trying to
convince us that reality is very different from what it
is and it's wildly responsible. Blah blah blah. One more
then we'll go with a good sense quickly on the
cinema mansion things. So you've got two Democratic senators that
are not in favor of changing the rules. Good for them.
Actually there are more than those two. They probably just

(04:32):
I would like to keep their heads low with they
possibly can, because they see the heat that there. Uh,
they're two colleagues are taking for standing up for what
is good and right, but often it has to do
with who's up for re election most the nearest in
the future and or whose state is going to be
most admiring of a good moderate position like Cinema and
Mansion are taking, and it's known that they'll do fine

(04:54):
taking this position. Yeah, Trump won Mansion state by what
seventy points or something like that, So mention is a no. Uh,
you know, he's he's um. He's a very moderate Democrat
in a state that is going to reward him for this,
so he he can be out there in front of it,
whereas other senators might not be able to. But uh,
somebody made this comparison the other day, and I thought

(05:15):
it was pretty funny. When John McCain would break with
the Republicans, he was seen as just the maverick hero.
Now there's a man with guts. There's a profile encourage
with somebody breaking with his party and going his own
way and doing what he thinks is right. When he
went against the Obamacare reform when all the other Republicans were,
when Joe Manchon and Kirsten Sinama do it, there's some

(05:36):
sort of traitors that need to be challenged and booted
out of the party. And that's a good point. Beautiful
one more, speaking of intellectual leading lights, clip thirty five
for us, Michael, No, no, no, no, no, no, how
about thirty six? As Dr King said, the only normalcy
he would accept is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity

(06:00):
and worth of all God's children. Today, we must not
be complacent or complicit. Oh, you know that reminds me
I'd meant to share some personal news of my New
Year's resolution is that it's time for me to be
doing what I have been doing, and that time is
every day I've made that decision about my life. Anyway. Okay,

(06:27):
so you've heard a lot of talk about how they're
trying to bring back Jim Crow, which again is an
obscene thing to say. Um and Jim Crow on steroids.
Are trying to suppress the vote, They're denying voting rights,
even though that it's voting is getting more and more
liberal in most of the country. How about a little
bit of truth. Uh, this is Molly Hemingway. Who is

(06:48):
she with these days? The federalists? Federalist I think? Yeah?
Clip thirty three. Yeah, that original speech. A lot of
people in the media loved it, but it went over
like a lead balloon on Capitol Hill, calling people Ray
Assist for opposing his fairly radical voting changes legislation. The
thing is, this whole issue, whether he's software in the
rhetoric or not, has been an extreme gas lighting of America.

(07:11):
Nobody thinks that we have a voting rights problem like
we had in nineteen sixty four in this country. Nobody
thinks that in an election where you had tens of
millions of people voting with no problem, that you have
a voting rights problem. Go ahead with we do have
an issue where election integrity is in question, where we
had hundreds of changes to our laws and processes, sometimes

(07:34):
done in an unconstitutional manner, where we flooded the zone
with tens of millions of mail in ballots where we
had insecure drop boxes. And so this idea that if
you care about election integrity or you want to make
it slightly more difficult to cheat, that you were therefore
engaging in voter suppression is a lie, and it's really
a dangerous lie that should not be said, because, of course,

(07:54):
if both winners and losers can't trust election results, and
that changes depending on the election. Who's frustra in by this?
Then you can't have a republic going forward. And so
this rhetoric, while software is still dangerous if we want
to have a country going forward. Yeah, that's the that's
the part that bothers me. Politicians lying just flat out,
you know, exaggerating or lying things as you know, part

(08:15):
for the course or the rules of the game or
whatever you want to call it. But this has long
lasting damage if if if both sides get to the
point where in a close election they can just easily
assume it was stolen illegally. We're doomed. We're doomed. Yeah,
that is that's the really dangerous part of it's sewing
widespread left right and center doubt about election security. I

(08:38):
thought brit Hume was absolutely on on point last night
as well on Special Report with Brett Bear hit us
with clip number thirty. Michael, this is an interesting case
and it's something we've seen many times before. This really
isn't a voting rights bill. This is a voting rules bill.
But this is how you do it. Sometimes you pick
a topic where you want to legislate something or get
something done, and you propose a measure that would would

(09:02):
do something you would like to see done, but which
also might have the additional attraction of helping your party politically,
and then you attach a name to it of some
sanctified cause. So this bill is called a voting rights bill.
It really isn't that. It's voting rules, but nevertheless the
name has stuck and everybody's using it. Then you seek
to advance the bill. I remember Brett back in the eighties,
the Ragan administration was trying to get funding for the

(09:24):
m X missile, which is controversial weapon, and you're trying
to change this finding. He talks about the peacemaker as
opposed to the m X missile. It's mildly interesting at best. Um,
it's the point being what you uh talked about last
week is everybody has joined in and calling this a
voting rights bill. I think you got to Fox. I

(09:45):
think Brett Bear was responding to your tweet yesterday on
Fox Wonder on that very topic of why are we
all called the voting rights bill? It's a federal takeover
of the elections which have been run by the states.
So let's debate it on that front, not just talk
about it. Voting rights, because everybody's for voting rights, well, right,
And what's really frustrating, Well, number one, that's frustrating. Why

(10:08):
do we accept the completely hilariously prejudicial wording of the
left in conservative leaving leading media. Stop it anyway, What's
really frustrating is that you could easily, easily, easily easily
get together, you know, any reasonable moderates, conservatives, liberals, moderate liberals, whatever,

(10:29):
and talk about, all right, we need to balance availability
of voting and making sure everybody wants the cast to vote. Uh,
can we need to balance that with making sure the
ballots are secure. And you could form a commission and
you could, you could come up with solutions. In fact,
they've done this in virtually every state in the Union
quite successfully. It's not that difficult an idea, an idea
at all, it's not that difficult to uh subject at all.

(10:52):
And yet they've been able to demagogue this into a
wildly emotional, utterly dishonest gas a lean spraying uh disbelief
and election integrity spreading just nightmare of a discussion to
gain momentary political advantage and online donations. I mean, that's

(11:14):
the state of the politics these days. It's uh I
don't know, it's it's just it's it's two stupid guys
screaming at each other drunk at a football game. It's
just dumb. Well, they're actually gonna vote on it today
and we'll see what kind of historyonic speeches are given
over the top craziness, and that they're going to be good.
You're right,