January 21, 2025 • 15 mins
LET'S TALK ABOUT REVENGE VS. REFORM there was a lot of talk during Pam Bondi's Senate hearings asking whether or not she would weaponize the Department of Justice against political foes. This was especially rich because it required a lot of Democrats to pretend that the DoJ wasn't hopelessly corrupted against Republicans until now. I'm talking with Hillsdale College professor Dr. Matthew Mehan about it today at 1pm.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm very excited right now to have my next guest
with me. He is the Associate dean and professor of
Government at Haillsdale College's DC campus. They have a campus
in Washington, DC, and doctor Matthew Mehan.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
So let's talk about something that is a big, big,
big fear of those on the left and for some
on the right, a big big hope. What are we
looking at when it comes to the Department of Justice.
Pam Bondy just got grilled pretty hard by Democrats who
wanted to ensure that she would not weaponize the Department
(00:38):
of Justice. And I got to say, they have cajones
the size of cantalopes, because we all know what's happened
over the last four years with the Department of Justice.
But I want a functioning, fair minded Department of Justice.
How do we reform the DOJ without retribution from the DOJ?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, I mean the short answer is very carefully.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I think it's a real trick to be able to
both go after some of these law fair antics while
also keeping the proper understanding and the appearance so that
people understand that justice isn't about going after one's political enemies.
I think the problem is the left, the Dems in
a certain sense, have actually decided to hide within a
(01:23):
kind of thicket of thorns where they do bad things,
but they do them very overtly politically, so that when
you go after them, they say, oh, you're being political,
so tempting the good guys to destroy justice while trying
to do it. And so I think we have to
do it very carefully, and I think there's a kind
of order or procedure that we need to go about
(01:45):
in order to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, let's start with personnel, because I think that in
my view, and I'm not, you know, intimately involved with
the upper echelons of the Department of Justice, but there
seems to be some people at the top that fill
us sophocally may need to go.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
How do you do that without.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Those accusations of he's purging, he's purging political enemies. How
do you change or make any personnel changes without to
your point, them saying, oh, you're stacking it with loyalists
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, I think that in one sense, there's easy ways
to do to do that. With regard to the civil service,
looking at people who've done what they ought to have
done or not done, what they have to be done.
And I think that one of the major kind of
well lea back up.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You don't want show me the man and.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I'll show you the crime, stalinists, purges, right. What you
do want is show me the crime, and oh, look,
here are the here's the man. Here are these people
that violated a really important law and therefore need to go.
And I think that's the way to go forward. And
so I think Trump should with Pam BONDI say, you
know what we're going to do. We're going to go
(02:57):
after anyone who perjured themselves or suborned perjury, or lied
to the courts, to the Congress, to their superiors. And
where you can find someone who broke good faith with
others in a egregious way. I mean, not every little
thing needs to be enforced. Obviously, there's prosecutorial discretion. I
think that's going to just happen. Perforce Pampondi's an experienced person,
(03:21):
so as Trump. But what is the thing you go after?
I think you go after they're breaking faith. And why
that is, I think is because that protects you from
any kind of understanding of oh, you're just doing this
against your political enemies, because when you attack, rather persecute
(03:41):
and try to purge that crime, the reason you try
to purge it is we have to be friends. We
have to be a nation again. We have to know
that the thing you say is the truth, so that
we can know what each other thinks, know what the
other is doing, and then we can agree to disagree.
Sometimes we can win in those elections, but we can
(04:04):
trust one another that our word is our bond.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Pam Bondi said that in her testimony before Congress, and it's.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Actually in the words of the oath of office that
the Donald Trump and Jade Vance just took that they're
going to do this in good faith without mental reservation.
Meaning if I speak under oath, or if I speak
before Congress or before a phi as a judge, or
if I speak to the press about someone's reputation, I'm
(04:32):
telling the truth. And if they're not, if they're a
liar and worse, and I think these is where you start.
If they're a perjurer, that's where you have to go,
because I think that will actually get rid of a
lot of the worst malefactors. Because it's one thing to
say I have a bad ideology. It's another thing to
say I have a bad ideology that defends and upholds
(04:54):
lying to my fellow Americans and to Congress and to
courts and to the press. That's I don't care what
your ideology is. We can't have a democratic republic if
you're doing that.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So let me ask you about the Biden pardons on
the last day in office, because the notion of accountability
and I'm gonna use the j six pardons that just
came out yesterday. Donald Trump partons everybody from the January
sixth situation. Doesn't matter what they did, doesn't matter who
they hurt, they were all pardoned. I said earlier on
the show. I don't necessarily know if everybody gets pardoned,
(05:30):
had Biden not used his pardons to preemptively pardon all
these people, something that Democrats have railed against in the
past when they thought.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Trump was going to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Which is kind of funny, But how does all this
this is kind of new. We're in uncharted territory a
little bit, this pardon versus pardon thing, what is this?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, So I do think that if we're talking about
the sort of going after one's political enemies. That's almost
a different thing pardoning someone you think is a political ally,
and in one sense the j six pardons, I mean,
the punishment has been the process for a lot of them.
I mean, anyone who's being released now has been in
(06:13):
prison for a long while, I think commensurate with the riot. Actually,
ideally you'd want them to be sorry for the things
they did wrong, and I think that's true of many
of the Jay sixers who did something wrong. I've heard
a lot of apologies about the parts that they shouldn't
have done. But the ones who are welcomed in by
a cop and said, you know, I don't like, I
(06:33):
don't respect what you're doing, but I understand it, or
something like that, or I don't like what you're doing,
but I respect it like that, that's a person who
thinks they're being let in by.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The authorities, right into the people's house, right.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That's so it's very complicated, and so the blank cot pardon,
I understand it.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I don't. I would rather be parsed out more easily.
But I get the symbolism.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
With regard to what Biden's doing, that's a masterclass and
how to abuse the plenary power of clemency, right, those
blanket pardons for eleven years, those pregnant eleven years and
protecting Fauci and others like that, stuff's gross and wrong
because which you're supposed to do is actually someone should
(07:14):
either have been punished, right and then you show mercy,
or if they're about to be punished, the only way
you can let them off is if they are contrite,
they're actually sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And say, look, I screwed up.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And the reason why that's the point is back to
that perjury question of how do you actually have friendship
and politics again as opposed to this creepy sort of
cold civil war where the long knives are out and
it's law fair and lying and destruction of person, property
and reputation.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Right. The way to go.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Back to that is that you actually are honest. Hey,
I want clemency, I want to be pardoned.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
But I screwed up. I lied, I did ax, I
did why it was not right.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I am sorry, and I would like to come back
in to a relationship with the political community.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think you have to do that. And so.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
A real clemency is there's some strictness or there's already
prior punishment. I think with Jay six, you have prior punishment,
but with Biden you have neither. Nobody's been punished. It's
all preemptive, a lot of it right or mealy mouthed,
and nobody's sorry because there's no strictness. So you've got
to put justice first, then mercy can follow. And I
think that's the way Trump should and Pam BONDI should
(08:28):
be looking at this too. Is be very strict on
some of these high level lawfare perjurers and deceivers. And
then once the punishments have been assembled, the prosecution has
been successfully demonstrated beyond this jedile with doubt, then you
can open the door to clemency and say are you
sorry for what you've done?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then maybe you can get your jail get out of
jail free card.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
But first you have to be honest and you have
this much good faith which is a lie because you've
been a liar. Right, we're going to take you down
a negative four and if you want to come back
to zero and just be a citizen again, and you
gotta say sorry, and then we let you out.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And so we don't want it. We don't want our
enemies to.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Be locked up and bloodthirsty revenge right and and sort
of snakes in the bed Roman Empire style like killing
emperors and things. We want justice and friendship again and
equality under the law, and I think you have to
go after these sort of high level things that threaten
honesty and integrity even between people who disagree. And that's
why I think perjury is the top of the list.
(09:25):
Subordination of perjury, meddling with documents, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
You know, I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I mean, there's a there's very shades of like post
Civil War reconstruction in what you're saying. It's it's that
if we if we handle this the wrong way, we
just create more animosity. But I think every American wants
to know that if the FBI comes knocking on our door,
we're going to be treated fairly and that there isn't
this two tiered system of justice that we've seen. So
(09:54):
what are the chances that that, you know, some high
level people will be held accountable, do you think in
some way before they ask for clemency or I don't know,
because I think that for me as a citizen, I
want to know that that two tiered system of justice
has been dismantled because that concerns me greatly, It truly does.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
My friend Matt Kittle made the point the other day
in a similar conversation we were having, saying, there's no
two tiered system. Really, it's just justice or injustice, right,
Like some people are just being treated very badly.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Right. So yeah, I agree, it's an intolerable thing to
have that two tiers. The I do. I do think
that that part of.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
What needs to happen is is that you have to
lay out strictness first and mercy will come as a
kind of vision for people.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
But with there's two temptations.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
One is the bloodthirsty, go too hard right, and then
you get the Trump administration looks like they're just continuing
the cycle, the sort of carousel of death that destroys
the republic, reprisals, law fair, go after your enemies. The
other temptation is the sort of false honor of nope,
forgive and forget, just move on, right, Because that's actually
(11:09):
they've been too bad. It is too systemically corruptly grotesque.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There have to be repercussions.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So I think Trump is in a probably a good
place to actually take some high.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Level people to task, right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
But I think that he's also hopefully and he's made
gestures and noise to this to this effect. So I'm
very hopeful that he can and will sort of thread
this needle very carefully, but also open up the door
to you might be my political enemy right now, and
you're also a violator of the law, and so you're
(11:44):
going to be punished. But if you can make friends
with the American people, with me and with the law again,
clemency is yours and we can go back to zero
and have a handshake.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
And I think that you have to give people that
whole arc because if.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
You're just after them to punish them and they don't
see that you have strictness here, because they have to
stop doing this to everybody, right, And you punish people
at the time so that they stop meddling with people
at the bottom.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So you're gonna go after some big fish, I think, right,
so that the littler fish know that they won't.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Be protected by big fish, right.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And I think that will solve the citizens being mistreated
by the FBI or anybody else by doing that. But
then there has to be this vision of no, no, no,
we actually want restoration of peace, amity, concord, citizens, friendship,
good faith. It's not just justice and punishment that's gonna
come right, but that can be ameliorated if you are contrite,
(12:43):
forthright about what you did wrong and show a firm
purpose of amendment that you won't do this anymore. And
then the door of mercy is open. But people too
often flip it. They're too merciful at the beginning, so
there's no justice. It's just fake forgiveness, and everyone just
goes about doing bad things in the next administration.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think that I love that. I would love it
if that was the way things went down, but I
think that would ultimately be really unsatisfying to at least
a section of Trump supporters who are tired of seeing
Republicans roll over on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
To your point earlier, and I don't think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I do think Republicans have jumped to forgiveness too quickly
without holding people accountable. But that being said, I would
love it if we could do this, And then at
that point, you know, I was raised in the South,
and whenever I would get start acting like an idiot
right and just act the fool, my grandmother would look
at me and say you were raised better than that, right,
(13:39):
And I kind of feel like I want to say
that to the party, like we were raised better than that.
We can't control what if somebody else does, but if
we can just hold someone accountable and then if they
deserve it, give them grace. To me, that would be
the best possible outcome from your lips to God's ears.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, I agree, I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I also think, though, don't forget, some of these people
are recalcitrate liars, and they will not ask for clemency
on the proper grounds.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And if they don't, it shouldn't be granted them.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So I think there will be some satisfaction because some
of these people will try to pretend to be martyrs
and congratulations, you're a fake prisoned, imprisoned martyr under your
own lying garbage, you know, gaslighting, like good for you.
Like they'll I think they'll they'll be a pound of
flesh regardless, because some people really do need to go
(14:33):
to prison if they're so vicious that they cannot break
out of you know, the shell or the mode they're
in of lined everyone.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So I think it'll be a little of everything.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
But I also think I think the American people, and
I think MAGA, and I think the Republican Party, and
I think a lot of people who've even been abused,
they do have the common sense of the American way,
which is right, you can't get everything you want in
the life, right, and so you better get what you should.
And I think this path forward is something like what
(15:06):
we should do, even if it's not everything that we
might want, because it's not until heaven when God will
wipe away every tier right and every justice will be
done and every wrong will be righted. And I think
you know, it's the Marxist to try to make a
heaven on earth, and that's not what we do.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Amen to that. Associate Dean and professor of Government at
Hillsdale College in Washington, d C. They have two campuses,
one in Michigan, one in Washington, d C. I really
appreciate your time at Thank you for coming on the show,
and hopefully we can revisit in a year or maybe
a little bit shorter and see how we've done with
(15:43):
our prognostication about this. We can regroup and see what's
actually happened. I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, No, happy to report from our forward Operating base
in d C
I'm very excited right now to have my next guest
with me. He is the Associate dean and professor of
Government at Haillsdale College's DC campus. They have a campus
in Washington, DC, and doctor Matthew Mehan.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
So let's talk about something that is a big, big,
big fear of those on the left and for some
on the right, a big big hope. What are we
looking at when it comes to the Department of Justice.
Pam Bondy just got grilled pretty hard by Democrats who
wanted to ensure that she would not weaponize the Department
(00:38):
of Justice. And I got to say, they have cajones
the size of cantalopes, because we all know what's happened
over the last four years with the Department of Justice.
But I want a functioning, fair minded Department of Justice.
How do we reform the DOJ without retribution from the DOJ?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, I mean the short answer is very carefully.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I think it's a real trick to be able to
both go after some of these law fair antics while
also keeping the proper understanding and the appearance so that
people understand that justice isn't about going after one's political enemies.
I think the problem is the left, the Dems in
a certain sense, have actually decided to hide within a
(01:23):
kind of thicket of thorns where they do bad things,
but they do them very overtly politically, so that when
you go after them, they say, oh, you're being political,
so tempting the good guys to destroy justice while trying
to do it. And so I think we have to
do it very carefully, and I think there's a kind
of order or procedure that we need to go about
(01:45):
in order to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, let's start with personnel, because I think that in
my view, and I'm not, you know, intimately involved with
the upper echelons of the Department of Justice, but there
seems to be some people at the top that fill
us sophocally may need to go.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
How do you do that without.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Those accusations of he's purging, he's purging political enemies. How
do you change or make any personnel changes without to
your point, them saying, oh, you're stacking it with loyalists
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, I think that in one sense, there's easy ways
to do to do that. With regard to the civil service,
looking at people who've done what they ought to have
done or not done, what they have to be done.
And I think that one of the major kind of
well lea back up.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
You don't want show me the man and.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I'll show you the crime, stalinists, purges, right. What you
do want is show me the crime, and oh, look,
here are the here's the man. Here are these people
that violated a really important law and therefore need to go.
And I think that's the way to go forward. And
so I think Trump should with Pam BONDI say, you
know what we're going to do. We're going to go
(02:57):
after anyone who perjured themselves or suborned perjury, or lied
to the courts, to the Congress, to their superiors. And
where you can find someone who broke good faith with
others in a egregious way. I mean, not every little
thing needs to be enforced. Obviously, there's prosecutorial discretion. I
think that's going to just happen. Perforce Pampondi's an experienced person,
(03:21):
so as Trump. But what is the thing you go after?
I think you go after they're breaking faith. And why
that is, I think is because that protects you from
any kind of understanding of oh, you're just doing this
against your political enemies, because when you attack, rather persecute
(03:41):
and try to purge that crime, the reason you try
to purge it is we have to be friends. We
have to be a nation again. We have to know
that the thing you say is the truth, so that
we can know what each other thinks, know what the
other is doing, and then we can agree to disagree.
Sometimes we can win in those elections, but we can
(04:04):
trust one another that our word is our bond.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Pam Bondi said that in her testimony before Congress, and it's.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Actually in the words of the oath of office that
the Donald Trump and Jade Vance just took that they're
going to do this in good faith without mental reservation.
Meaning if I speak under oath, or if I speak
before Congress or before a phi as a judge, or
if I speak to the press about someone's reputation, I'm
(04:32):
telling the truth. And if they're not, if they're a
liar and worse, and I think these is where you start.
If they're a perjurer, that's where you have to go,
because I think that will actually get rid of a
lot of the worst malefactors. Because it's one thing to
say I have a bad ideology. It's another thing to
say I have a bad ideology that defends and upholds
(04:54):
lying to my fellow Americans and to Congress and to
courts and to the press. That's I don't care what
your ideology is. We can't have a democratic republic if
you're doing that.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So let me ask you about the Biden pardons on
the last day in office, because the notion of accountability
and I'm gonna use the j six pardons that just
came out yesterday. Donald Trump partons everybody from the January
sixth situation. Doesn't matter what they did, doesn't matter who
they hurt, they were all pardoned. I said earlier on
the show. I don't necessarily know if everybody gets pardoned,
(05:30):
had Biden not used his pardons to preemptively pardon all
these people, something that Democrats have railed against in the
past when they thought.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Trump was going to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Which is kind of funny, But how does all this
this is kind of new. We're in uncharted territory a
little bit, this pardon versus pardon thing, what is this?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, So I do think that if we're talking about
the sort of going after one's political enemies. That's almost
a different thing pardoning someone you think is a political ally,
and in one sense the j six pardons, I mean,
the punishment has been the process for a lot of them.
I mean, anyone who's being released now has been in
(06:13):
prison for a long while, I think commensurate with the riot. Actually,
ideally you'd want them to be sorry for the things
they did wrong, and I think that's true of many
of the Jay sixers who did something wrong. I've heard
a lot of apologies about the parts that they shouldn't
have done. But the ones who are welcomed in by
a cop and said, you know, I don't like, I
(06:33):
don't respect what you're doing, but I understand it, or
something like that, or I don't like what you're doing,
but I respect it like that, that's a person who
thinks they're being let in by.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The authorities, right into the people's house, right.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That's so it's very complicated, and so the blank cot pardon,
I understand it.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I don't. I would rather be parsed out more easily.
But I get the symbolism.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
With regard to what Biden's doing, that's a masterclass and
how to abuse the plenary power of clemency, right, those
blanket pardons for eleven years, those pregnant eleven years and
protecting Fauci and others like that, stuff's gross and wrong
because which you're supposed to do is actually someone should
(07:14):
either have been punished, right and then you show mercy,
or if they're about to be punished, the only way
you can let them off is if they are contrite,
they're actually sorry.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And say, look, I screwed up.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And the reason why that's the point is back to
that perjury question of how do you actually have friendship
and politics again as opposed to this creepy sort of
cold civil war where the long knives are out and
it's law fair and lying and destruction of person, property
and reputation.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Right. The way to go.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Back to that is that you actually are honest. Hey,
I want clemency, I want to be pardoned.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
But I screwed up. I lied, I did ax, I
did why it was not right.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I am sorry, and I would like to come back
in to a relationship with the political community.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I think you have to do that. And so.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
A real clemency is there's some strictness or there's already
prior punishment. I think with Jay six, you have prior punishment,
but with Biden you have neither. Nobody's been punished. It's
all preemptive, a lot of it right or mealy mouthed,
and nobody's sorry because there's no strictness. So you've got
to put justice first, then mercy can follow. And I
think that's the way Trump should and Pam BONDI should
(08:28):
be looking at this too. Is be very strict on
some of these high level lawfare perjurers and deceivers. And
then once the punishments have been assembled, the prosecution has
been successfully demonstrated beyond this jedile with doubt, then you
can open the door to clemency and say are you
sorry for what you've done?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Then maybe you can get your jail get out of
jail free card.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
But first you have to be honest and you have
this much good faith which is a lie because you've
been a liar. Right, we're going to take you down
a negative four and if you want to come back
to zero and just be a citizen again, and you
gotta say sorry, and then we let you out.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And so we don't want it. We don't want our
enemies to.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Be locked up and bloodthirsty revenge right and and sort
of snakes in the bed Roman Empire style like killing
emperors and things. We want justice and friendship again and
equality under the law, and I think you have to
go after these sort of high level things that threaten
honesty and integrity even between people who disagree. And that's
why I think perjury is the top of the list.
(09:25):
Subordination of perjury, meddling with documents, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
You know, I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I mean, there's a there's very shades of like post
Civil War reconstruction in what you're saying. It's it's that
if we if we handle this the wrong way, we
just create more animosity. But I think every American wants
to know that if the FBI comes knocking on our door,
we're going to be treated fairly and that there isn't
this two tiered system of justice that we've seen. So
(09:54):
what are the chances that that, you know, some high
level people will be held accountable, do you think in
some way before they ask for clemency or I don't know,
because I think that for me as a citizen, I
want to know that that two tiered system of justice
has been dismantled because that concerns me greatly, It truly does.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
My friend Matt Kittle made the point the other day
in a similar conversation we were having, saying, there's no
two tiered system. Really, it's just justice or injustice, right,
Like some people are just being treated very badly.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Right. So yeah, I agree, it's an intolerable thing to
have that two tiers. The I do. I do think
that that part of.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
What needs to happen is is that you have to
lay out strictness first and mercy will come as a
kind of vision for people.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
But with there's two temptations.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
One is the bloodthirsty, go too hard right, and then
you get the Trump administration looks like they're just continuing
the cycle, the sort of carousel of death that destroys
the republic, reprisals, law fair, go after your enemies. The
other temptation is the sort of false honor of nope,
forgive and forget, just move on, right, Because that's actually
(11:09):
they've been too bad. It is too systemically corruptly grotesque.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
There have to be repercussions.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So I think Trump is in a probably a good
place to actually take some high.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Level people to task, right.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
But I think that he's also hopefully and he's made
gestures and noise to this to this effect. So I'm
very hopeful that he can and will sort of thread
this needle very carefully, but also open up the door
to you might be my political enemy right now, and
you're also a violator of the law, and so you're
(11:44):
going to be punished. But if you can make friends
with the American people, with me and with the law again,
clemency is yours and we can go back to zero
and have a handshake.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
And I think that you have to give people that
whole arc because if.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
You're just after them to punish them and they don't
see that you have strictness here, because they have to
stop doing this to everybody, right, And you punish people
at the time so that they stop meddling with people
at the bottom.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
So you're gonna go after some big fish, I think, right,
so that the littler fish know that they won't.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Be protected by big fish, right.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And I think that will solve the citizens being mistreated
by the FBI or anybody else by doing that. But
then there has to be this vision of no, no, no,
we actually want restoration of peace, amity, concord, citizens, friendship,
good faith. It's not just justice and punishment that's gonna
come right, but that can be ameliorated if you are contrite,
(12:43):
forthright about what you did wrong and show a firm
purpose of amendment that you won't do this anymore. And
then the door of mercy is open. But people too
often flip it. They're too merciful at the beginning, so
there's no justice. It's just fake forgiveness, and everyone just
goes about doing bad things in the next administration.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think that I love that. I would love it
if that was the way things went down, but I
think that would ultimately be really unsatisfying to at least
a section of Trump supporters who are tired of seeing
Republicans roll over on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
To your point earlier, and I don't think they're wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I do think Republicans have jumped to forgiveness too quickly
without holding people accountable. But that being said, I would
love it if we could do this, And then at
that point, you know, I was raised in the South,
and whenever I would get start acting like an idiot
right and just act the fool, my grandmother would look
at me and say you were raised better than that, right,
(13:39):
And I kind of feel like I want to say
that to the party, like we were raised better than that.
We can't control what if somebody else does, but if
we can just hold someone accountable and then if they
deserve it, give them grace. To me, that would be
the best possible outcome from your lips to God's ears.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, I agree, I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I also think, though, don't forget, some of these people
are recalcitrate liars, and they will not ask for clemency
on the proper grounds.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And if they don't, it shouldn't be granted them.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So I think there will be some satisfaction because some
of these people will try to pretend to be martyrs
and congratulations, you're a fake prisoned, imprisoned martyr under your
own lying garbage, you know, gaslighting, like good for you.
Like they'll I think they'll they'll be a pound of
flesh regardless, because some people really do need to go
(14:33):
to prison if they're so vicious that they cannot break
out of you know, the shell or the mode they're
in of lined everyone.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So I think it'll be a little of everything.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
But I also think I think the American people, and
I think MAGA, and I think the Republican Party, and
I think a lot of people who've even been abused,
they do have the common sense of the American way,
which is right, you can't get everything you want in
the life, right, and so you better get what you should.
And I think this path forward is something like what
(15:06):
we should do, even if it's not everything that we
might want, because it's not until heaven when God will
wipe away every tier right and every justice will be
done and every wrong will be righted. And I think
you know, it's the Marxist to try to make a
heaven on earth, and that's not what we do.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Amen to that. Associate Dean and professor of Government at
Hillsdale College in Washington, d C. They have two campuses,
one in Michigan, one in Washington, d C. I really
appreciate your time at Thank you for coming on the show,
and hopefully we can revisit in a year or maybe
a little bit shorter and see how we've done with
(15:43):
our prognostication about this. We can regroup and see what's
actually happened. I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, No, happy to report from our forward Operating base
in d C
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