April 30, 2024 • 44 mins
This week, the More Perfect Union hosts look at Gov. Kristi Noam's comments about shooting her dog, the effect of anti-Israel protests on the upcoming election, RFK Jr's potential impact on the November election, and how public opinion is shaped and moved.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:14):
Welcome to the More Perfect Union,the podcast that offers real debate without the
hate. Kevin Calton and it's alwaysI'm pleased to share the mic with Greg
Matussek, your common sense liberal fromCincinnati. I it's I am just overwhelmed
by this week. So I havenothing, no jokes, nothing. It
(00:35):
is just straight into it. Whenyou often tell jokes, no no,
I like to think they're witty observationsthat the common man can get behind whips
if you will. I'm the JerrySeinfeld of the more Perfect, of the
more perfect. What's what's the dealwith social unrest? I say stuff like
(00:58):
that? And Rebecca cushmeiders here.Hi, I am here, and you
can pride my organs from my colddead hands, Supreme Court. I'm going
to be hanging on to those untilthe last possible second. I am here
in Kensington, Maryland, with allof my organs still attached. And DJ
Maguire a cat person from Hampton Roads, Virginia who has never been to South
(01:22):
Dakota. So don't blame me.Well, I wouldn't blame you even if
you had been. But let's talkabout our new friend, Christy Nome and
her strong stance on pet that newsbroke yesterday, and I mean, obviously
everybody thinks it's abhorrent, but anyinteresting observations on her decision to down her
(01:45):
dog and a goat on the sameday. It's not just that, but
she has now doubled down on it, and she's she has told people these
were these were that's what life onthe farm is. You shoot animals.
But the more on the farm,that's what life on the farm is.
But the more she talks about thestory, the more horrific it is.
(02:07):
Because I know lots of I livein Ohio. Trust me, I grew
up. I did not grow upon a farm, but I grew up
farm adjacent and I knew lots ofpeople they did not shoot their pets.
And I know she called this ahunting dog. But when her daughter said,
hey, where's the puppy, Imean, and this thing, you
know, and she had to explainto well, you know, it just
(02:29):
wasn't working out. It chased somechickens. You know, we had to
shoot it, which I guess wasa lesson for her daughter not to chase
chickens, you know. And thegoat was smelly and was annoying. So
I mean by that metric, that'sdefinitely gonna lose her the vice presidential slot
because if she shoots things that aresmelly and annoying, I don't know it
(02:52):
worked well for Cheney. The topguy might not want her on his team.
Oh okay, see, yeah,well that remains to be seen.
But what I find interesting is,you know, I don't think they just
write these books in a vacuum.I think that they you know, group
test and focus test things like this, and on some level, she thought
this was going to make her moreattractive politically to their base without a doubt.
(03:15):
That's psychotic. Yes, yes,So speaking of psychotic, the anti
Israel protests are spreading across campuses andgetting more heated, and I think it's
likely to continue through the two partyconventions this summer and into the fall when
(03:35):
universities are set to reopen. Andlet me tell you a gang. If
you think it's easy for them toshut down commencements, wait till universities have
to look at the logistics of reopeningcolleges while protests are going on. So
you go into the fall and collegesare not reopening, it's going to be
really bad for Joe Biden. It'sa really bad look, especially if things
(03:59):
get being violent, and especially ifthe police or the National Guard have to
get sent into clear them out,which did not work so well for Richard
Nixon. So with that in mind, what are Joe's political options? I
would remind everyone here that after twoyears, two and a half years after
(04:19):
Kent State, Richard Nixon carried fortynine out of fifty states and one over
sixty percent of the vote. Thisis true. So now I have to
make some students, well, well, let's not let's not do that though,
let's not be radical. I wouldn'tsay that. Kevin. I'm gonna
ask you a question, how manyhow many protesters do you think will be
(04:44):
at the Democratic Convention this summer?I don't know, maybe one thousand,
fifty thousand, okay, okay,let me let me take that back high
hundreds. Oh no, I'm withyou. I think thousands. Hang on
a second. So you're saying you'resaying less than fifty thousand, yeah,
(05:04):
oh yes, yeah, yeah,less than fifty but more than ye,
more than five okay, because intwo thousand and four, we'll say between
five hundred and five thousand. That'sjust I mean, I'm just picking those
numbers up. That's fine. Outof the air. In two thousand and
four, in New York City forthe Republican National Convention, two hundred thousand
anti Iraq war protesters showed up.The Republican Convention went on without hitching Georgie
(05:27):
O. B. Bush one reelection. And in fact, when it comes
to conventions, they're now unlike innineteen sixty in Chicago, they are now
under federal enforcement control. The SecretService is basically in charge of them in
terms of who gets deployed in thatand all that other kind of stuff.
And also they're perimeters around all thevenues, Like there's different levels of security
(05:47):
that you have to go through.It's my husband's been to a couple of
conventions. It's not easy to getclose to the venues, and it kind
of depends on who's speaking how closeyou can get. But like cab drivers
complain, they're like, I candropt you off here, but it's too
much of a pain in the assto go through the roadblock. You're going
to have to walk the next sixblocks to your hotel. So what's what
I think I must still I thinkis hapen is You'll you'll see you'll see
(06:12):
a floor fight on the platform,say Monday or Tuesday, because conventions have
floor fights about stuff like this.This is the kind of thing. Yeah,
but that'll be broadcast on c SPAN. So I'm the only one who
will see it. Well, yeah, hardly anyone's got hardly anyone is going
to pay attention Biden. In fact, Biden usually does does a very good
job with being off the cuff withpeople who interrupt his stuff. He has
(06:35):
done it on the campaign trail fairlywell. They will probably by summer.
I would suspect we may be undera ceasefire because they're talking about that again.
There may be a RAFA operation wherethe administration may actually openly be in
conflict with net Yahoo, which wouldsort of spin things, spin things differently.
(06:58):
And as much as as much asthere are people riling up on campus
and such. If you ask voters, even young voters, what their big
important issues are, Israel Gaza doesn'treally bump into the top of the list.
It stays near the bottom. JoeBiden has a lot of problems that
he needs to work on, andI think he will work on them.
This is one of them. ButI don't think this is I don't see
(07:20):
in nineteen sixty eight situation for awhole bunch of reasons. One of them
chiefly is Hubert Humphreys still won justpiteChicago nineteen sixty eight. We tend to
forget what he nearly won the election. He lost by about five hundred thousand
folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he nearly won the election. It
was not nineteen seventy two. Andin fact, if we knew now,
(07:44):
if we knew then what we knewnow, Humphrey's probably would have won the
election. Johnson knew that Nixon wasscrewing up the Vietnam peace negotiations, but
he couldn't tell anybody because then hewould have to admit that the National Security
Agency was spying on Richard Nixon,which would have been a bigger controversy.
So he had to sit on itand nix. Nixon was able to squeak
(08:05):
through. But it was a veryvery close election. And outside of the
complete wackos and communists, and therewere too many of them in nineteen sixty
eight, most of the folks whowere angry at Lyndon Johnson in the summer
still voted for Hubert Humphrey in thefall, because he went Dubvish in October
and called for a bombing haunt.You know, I had mentioned this earlier.
(08:26):
I honestly think once school is outand this and the campuses are cleared,
even some of the bigger campuses,we're not going to see the encampments.
Kids go home for the summer eveneven like you know, and the
only people who are going to beleft are going to be either professional is
going to be truly Antifa or youknow, I mean they get jobs,
(08:50):
they go do other things, andmaybe they'll protest and in camp in the
suburbs or you know, at theirhome, but it's not going to be
the same. So I think we'regoing to see that also as as a
thing that will clear out the summer. So maybe in the fall again,
but we're going to have three monthsof relative quietness. Okay. I want
(09:11):
to move on and ask what whatabout Trump and Israel? And why doesn't
the media explore what the Trump doctrinewould be on Israel if he wins re
election? Uh denial. I thinkthey're just you know, pretending like they
might not ever have to deal withit. But let's like Trump's prior doctrine
(09:33):
on in Israel, like he wasgiving away intel on the Israelis to putin,
you know, to the detriment ofIsraeli agents. We believe Kushner's in
bed with the Saudis. The onlything he ever did as president was,
you know, recognize Jerusalem as thesite for our embassy instead of Tel Aviv,
which is actually not convenient as wellas being out of step with politics.
(09:56):
So he doesn't have a history,he doesn't have an articulated plan,
and the media is just kind ofwilling to let him slide on this,
which drives me bananas because they alwayslet him slide. They give him the
benefit of the doubt that he actuallyknows something when all evidence is to the
contrary, and they need to stopit. We've seen this again and again
(10:16):
with Trump, whether it's I havethis healthcare plan and I'm going to show
it to you, but not now. I have this infrastructure bill and it's
going to be awesome, but I'mnot going to show it now. And
I've got this Middle East plan waitfor it. I'm gonna have Jared write
it for me, and I'm goingHe read twenty five books on it.
He read twenty five books and theJared Kushner piece a Middle East peace plan,
(10:39):
literally was, Hey, it's justnot economically feasible. This whole war.
It doesn't really make sense. Soif we just wait another ten years,
we're going to throw some McDonald's inand everyone will come around. And
real estate over there, that's athing. Yeah, No, he said
that. He said that the beachfront property and gaza could be very,
(11:00):
very profitable. We've said it beforeon this podcast. Trump Plaza Gaza.
It has a ring. I alsothink most of the I mean I haven't
I haven't really seen a lot ofthe coverage. I read my news,
I don't watch it, but alot of the coverage has been sort of
just the to extent the straight news, the straight news coverage. What is
(11:24):
happening? How is the Biden administrationreacting in terms of what might happen in
November. There's talk about, oh, well, these things could hurt Biden.
But in terms of this is whatBiden says and this is what Trump
says, You're right, nobody isactually doing that because nobody is sort of
in that campaign mode. For somereason. The story among the Republicans is
(11:46):
not what is Donald Trump's view onIsrael. The story among the Republicans is
how ridiculous did Bill Barr look endorsingTrump? And why are so many other
Republicans looking at and going I'm notdoing that, thank you very much much.
DJ, If I may commit somenews, Ron DeSantis is endorse Trump.
(12:07):
He did that, He did that, He did that before the New
Hampshire primary. It's just that nobodynoticed, Well, Trump was true thing
about it today. So of course, well, of course, because he's
Donald Trump and he does this kindof thing. But well, you know,
he's on a gag order. Hedoesn't want to get found in contempt
of courts. So you can justtalk about Ron DeSantis given the nature of
this race that the political coverage oftwenty twenty four is all about the major
(12:30):
party nominees foibles. Joe Biden haspolicy foibles and concern about his age.
Donald Trump has foibles, and getin that a large chunk of his party
clearly doesn't like him anymore, andhe can't string a sentence together, which
is actually getting more plain now thanit used to. They're not they're not
thinking about this kind of thing.Trump's Israel policy is not a horse race
(12:54):
matter, and that's the problem.Everything in the campaign is about the horse
race, and they're not talking aboutthey're not talking about how they differ on
this or that issue, because theassumption is it's all going to be a
character election. Maybe it will,and Trump isn't talking about it. Trump
isn't talking about it. He can'tturn it into personal agreements, so he's
not talking about it. He's justsaying Joe Biden is wrong, and that
(13:18):
doesn't make good news. And he'dhe doesn't like BB either, because BB
was the first leader to congratulate JoeBiden as victory in twenty twenty. The
other thing I wanted to ask you, guys, is about r FK Junior
on this issue. You know,we talk about Biden, we talk about
Trump. We haven't really talked aboutpolicy issues concerning our FK Junior. And
(13:43):
I don't know whether you know thisor not, but his campaign is on
the ground at the universities where theseprotests are, gathering signatures to get on
ballots in those states, which impliesthat he is pro Hamas, although we
would say anti Israel, but hewould say pro Hamas. What do you
(14:03):
think his actual stance would be andhow do you think this might affect his
campaign. I know his stance,He's talked about it, it's in the
news. He's as rapidly pro bbas Trump is, so maybe they should
like read some of his statements thosedamns. Wait. Also, if he's
gathering signatures to get on state ballotson college campuses, is he verifying residency
(14:28):
or is he just like collecting signaturesand hoping it will all come out in
the wash. Well, wherever youare, wherever you're gathering signatures, I
don't care what they try to tellyou. You gather as many as you
can, and then afterwards you worryabout which ones are going to be authenticated
or not. Yeah, he's right. I'm just saying that he's making his
job harder by not going to placeswhere everyone who is there as a resident
(14:54):
of the state. Well, again, I want to come back to there's
two issues too. That one isgetting on state ballots. But the greater
point I was trying to make isthat sends a message to all of these
protesters that Bobby Kennedy is your guy. Now, DJ's point is taken that
his actual stance may be pro bbnet Yahoo pro Israel, but having people
(15:18):
on the ground collecting signatures for himis going to start a ripple effect that,
oh, maybe he's with us,Maybe he's with us. That was
my point. It probably will createthat ripple effect. But you know,
if you look at it even alittle critically, you can see that he's
on the grift. If they lookedat it a little a little critically,
(15:39):
he wouldn't even be in this campaign. But did anybody see him on Bill
Mart's show? No, I can'twatch that. Guys. You've got to
start watching this coverage. You know, we're going to go through this campaign
and if we just go, well, I don't watch this. I don't
like him. I don't think hehas a chance. And you don't see
the man speak, you are notgoing to see what the voters are seeing.
(16:03):
No, I will watch, Iwill watch. I will watch Kennedy.
Sorry, I will watch Kennedy ona lot of things. I'll watch
him on Fox, I watch himon MSNBC. But I won't watch him
on Bill Maher because I think BillMaher's opinions and views are horrible. And
yes, he does get he doesget something right once in a while,
but so does a blind squirrel.He also reaches a lot of young liberals.
(16:25):
I think that's awesome, but doesn'tmean he's right or good. No,
you're missing the point. But he'sgiving this guy a positive platform I
expect to those people. That's notwhat I've seen in the reports on it,
the reports where he hit him prettyhard on on the vaccine stuff.
Yeah, it wasn't that hard,DJ I saw it. It wasn't that
hard. Yeah. And Bobby Kennedycan just go on to Joe Rogan and
(16:47):
erase all of it. Well,yeah, there's that too. Speaking of
people who give him a giant platform, Let's face it, Rogan has a
bigger platform than mar absolutely absolutely,and neither of them are as funny as
they think they are. That's true. But this is why, this is
why the Biden campaign is sitting onone hundred and fifty plus million dollars.
This is the kinds of things youuse that money for to get voters more
(17:14):
engaged and to get the more informed. The polling has shown it over and
over and over again. The moreengaged and informed voters are, the better
Biden does. So the solution isyou get voters more informed and more engaged,
and you use all of the moneythat is coming in to do that.
I mean, when I talk aboutthe optimism, I thinking that Joe
Biden can win this election. Idon't mean he can just sit on his
(17:37):
hands and do nothing and just coasta victory. There are things you do
besides roll your helmet on the footballfield when you take the field. He
has to do those things. ButI think once he does those things,
the only voters who will be leftlooking to vote for Robert Kennedy are folks
who would have voted for Trump ina two way race anyhow. While Biden
can cobble the pro democracy pro NATOcoalition behind him and win the election,
(18:03):
That's what I think will happen.That doesn't mean it's happening right now,
because we're still six and a halfmonths out. Good point, and I
just want to before we move on, I just want to point out to
our listeners that DJ and I wentinto this issue the RFK effect in detail
on our substack page, the morePerfect Union on substack. So if you
(18:26):
want to see his take on itand then my take on it, which
was a little real debate without thehate on paper, go to substack and
take a look for that. Okay, it was a very good colloquy.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn'tmean to colloquy all over you. Okay.
(18:48):
Moving on to the Supreme Court,where they heard two major cases this
week. The state of Idaho arguedthat there are no exemptions of BOSH law
should take precedence over a federal lawensuring stabilizing care for all emergency room patients.
And of course, in the otherbig case this week, Donald Trump
was in the courtroom of the SupremeCourt seeking presidential immunity. He wants unlimited
(19:12):
presidential immunity. Nobody thinks that that'sgoing to happen, but there did look
to be maybe five votes for limitedpresidential immunity. So let's start with the
m TALA case. I have alittle trouble pronouncing that one and the MTALA
case, And I'm going to throwto Rebecca because you probably are more informed
on this, certainly than I amand maybe my other partners here. Yeah.
(19:36):
M TALA stands for the Emergency EmergencyMedical Transfer and Labor Act, and
it's a Reagan era law that wasbasically a federal mandate to any state or
any hospital that takes Medicare has tostabilize any patient who comes into the emergency
room. And the rationale behind thelaw is you can deny care due to
(20:02):
inability to pay, or dump patientson other hospitals because they're Medicare patients and
you only want to take private insurancepatients. It was it was a completely
fiscal rationale. And this has beenon the books again, it's Reagan era,
so we're talking decades and it's beenamended a few times to clarify how
(20:23):
that applies in practice. And whatit is not a law to do is
to govern medical best practices. There'snothing in m TALA that says you must
offer ABC or D treatment. Thelaw says you must offer treatment that will
stabilize the patient and doesn't put limitson that. You know. The other
(20:47):
thing that these states and these lawsare having that I don't think we talked
about is that right now, Idahohas lost fifty five percent of its high
risk obstetricians, right and it's notthe only state. Obg y ns are
fleeing, right states for fear oflawsuits, for fear of not being able
to do their job, for fearof restrictions, and you know, for
(21:12):
fear of all sorts of things.And the ones who can leave do they
go to where they can help peoplethe most well. And it's where they
can afford the malpractice insurance. Becauseif you are in a state where you
are potentially going to be facing statelegal action, criminal legal action for providing
(21:33):
standard of what is standard of careeverywhere except your state, that's got to
be extremely expensive. And I haven'tseen studies to demonstrate this, but my
guess is malpractice insurance despite in stateslike Idaho, well it's not just providing
but not providing. If this state, if the hospital says you can't provide
this, there could be a lawsuitlater on also that they would have to.
(21:56):
So you know, these doctors thereare tied. They should move.
I mean, yeah, you knowthey should move. And I mean and
to be clear, the situations thatwe're talking about, and this has happened
in Idaho and they've like airlifted womenout of the state to go get care,
and states where the laws are notas ambiguous, We're not talking about
(22:17):
situations where somebody strolled into an emergencyroom and said, hey, do you
guys do abortions? It's not thatit is, you know, people coming
in in grave medical distress, andthese are situations that unfold rapidly. They
progress quickly, and it's life ordeath decisions or where there are like four
stages of it. We can saveyou and the baby great, perfect,
(22:41):
we can save you. We cannotsave the baby, but we can save
your uterus. Not great, butnot the worst. We can save you,
your baby and your unius are donefor, or we can't save any
of you, and you can.That arc goes very quickly in some cases.
And I'm trying to write something onthis and it's really it's hard.
(23:04):
It's not coming together well. Butall of us here, I'm guessing,
could tell at least one story ofa friend whose life was saved due to
fast medical action when a pregnancy wentsideways. And I'm talking about myself in
(23:25):
this case. No, it's it'sit's well, it's it's easy to laugh
because when I tell it, it'sa funny anecdote. Like I am my
son was face up. I pushedfor two hours. He wasn't coming out.
It was like he was lying ona raft, just hanging out,
didn't want to come out. Butthe fact is I was actually at a
point where I was in distress.He was in distress, and if I
hadn't had a c section, ifthat hadn't been available to me, then
(23:48):
the outcome could have been quite tragic. Situations like that where there is not
adequate mental medical intervention can result inboth maternal and fetal death. And I
I talk again. I tell thisis a funny story because the kid I
gave birth to is sitting upstairs.He's six foot two, He's going to
be in jazz band next year.But I think we've all been a little
(24:12):
cavalier about how close to the thresholdof death most of us walk during pregnancy,
and to not allow the medical professionalstasked with ushering us through that process,
to not allow them to do whatis best for us, is a
(24:32):
grave injustice to anyone who wants tobe a parent in this country, which
is why fewer Americans want to beparents. This is one of the reasons
why abortions have, why abortions havegun ups and stops. It's why I
keep saying that the pro life movementis literally scaring the life out of women
transmitting on binaries. This is what'shappening. This is also the kind of
(24:53):
thing that shifts voter perception, shift'sperception about what is important to them now.
Dobbs made this an important issue tovoters in twenty twenty two, in
twenty twenty three, and in twentyfour twenty four. But something like the
Arizona law which they still can't getoff the books because the State Senate went
(25:14):
for a holiday or something, orthis Idaho. I heard the House voter
to repeal it. I haven't heardanything from the state Senate. Maybe I'm
wrong, but the or the Idaholaw, you know, these are all
things that affect voters individually as well. Where this moves this thing up hire
as an issue. Hald McMillan oncewas once asked the thing he feared the
(25:40):
most is British Prime Minister in termsof politics and his rounds with events.
Dear boy, events events like thisare the kind of thing. This is
the kind of thing that can knotGaza off the front page for a few
hours or a few days, orsomething that just completely reshuffle the deck or
scramble it for swing voters like,oh wait, this kind of thing happens
(26:02):
if I sit on my hands,yeah, and I mean and the question
becomes do the conservative justices want toprevent emergency terminations of pregnancies more than they
want to uphold the Constitution, andI have concerns that they do, particularly
the ment Amy Cony Barrett. Shestruck a fairly realistic tone about saying,
(26:26):
I can't believe you didn't think ofall the contingency plans that you need to
think of when it comes to pregnancycare, probably because she's been through it
and she knows that this is notactually a joke. But some of the
guys are like, you know,I don't know what kind of complication could
cause the loss of an organ butnot cause the loss of a life.
(26:48):
I'm like a hysterectomy. You'd numpty, Where have you been? Justice Barrett
basically typifies a large section of whatwas the pro life community, folks who
were blissfully unaware of just how rudimentarypolitician's knowledge of anatomy was and just how
unconcerned they really were about real lifeevents. For years, the movement told
(27:12):
us about they've got this covered,They've got all these contingencies figured out.
Guess what they didn't because they didnot care. The other case that came
up this week, famously was theTrump immunity case, and it looked to
me, and it looked to alot of experts on television like there were
at least five, maybe more justiceswho seemed to think that there should be
(27:36):
some kind of limited presidential immunity andmaybe poised to send this back to the
courts to decide that issue. Ithrow this open. I'll start with DJ.
What's your take on this and whatyou see coming down the pike.
The optimist in me says that theirall says that Justice Roberts, Chief Justice,
(28:00):
with Justice Barrett and the three Democraticappointees will come together with a decision
that says, if a president commitsan official act in furtherance of a crime,
he can still be prosecuted. Butan official act by itself that becomes
a crime esque post facto or getscaught in the honest services fraud, malaise
(28:22):
and molasses, that is not somethingthat can be prosecuted. That's the optimist
in me. The pessimist in mesays, the Waco four are going to
want to go with or the Wacofive are going to go with full bonkers.
There are certain things that a presidentjust has to do and blah blah,
(28:44):
blah blah blah, and it willbe up to Roberts to sort of
join them, to keep them intosomething that is a bit more reasonable.
I think it's going to be acomplete mess. I think you we can
end up seeing every single justice writein opinion themselves. And I think this
is going to be something that lowercourts will have to work themselves out forever
(29:06):
until a Trump actually wins an electionand just ends this whole thing. I
think. I think the like likeall conservatives, they are going to go
back to their old standby, whichis pornography. Are you trying to tell
me Clarence Thomas is Mike Johnson's newaccountability partner, and the phone and the
(29:32):
porn and okay, they're they're they'regoing to say, like, uh,
like I don't know when it's acrime, but when it is a crime,
I know it when I see it, just I do. That's where
you're going to go. And Ithink that that's right. Yeah. I
think they're going to say, likepolitical assassination, well, that's a crime.
Blockading a a a naval base,that's not a crime. So war
(29:56):
crimes immunity, political assassination, sure, sexual harassing a hairdresser from twenty years
ago. If that's not a crime, stuff like that. Okay, So
my take on it is this,I do think that they're going to come
down with a finding of limited immunity. So technically Trump will have lost the
(30:17):
case, and that may be theheadline, but they're going to remand this
I think back to the courts todecide some form of limited presidential immunity.
And here's my question, how dothey do that? How can any one
court decide such a nuanced, sprawlingset of issues that cover domestic policy,
(30:38):
foreign affairs, wars and national defensebudgeting, federal prosecutions, national intelligence matters,
emoluments, and a whole other hostof thorny issues that aren't even before
them. So you've got two lowercourts who've already said two of the lower
courts who ruled on this before forthe Supreme Court already said they found no
(31:03):
presidential immunity. So what does SupremeCourt do? Now? Send the case
back to them and say go findsome I believe what the court does is
sends back the charges in this caseand says you need to delineate which of
these charges could conceivably be an officialact and which could be a private act.
Unfortunately, Amy Cony Barrett got Trump'slawyer to clarify that for us a
(31:26):
little bit. That was helpful actually, And they are only going to rule
on the questions in this case,which is not going to help anybody in
the long term. And it's themain purpose of it is to slow down
the DC case. Are we kiddingourselves? Am I the only one to
(31:48):
here who believes ain't who believes EileenCannon already has the brief written about how
everything is an official act and thereforeimmunity is completely unlimited. Juck can Judge
chuck this is going back to Judgechucka not going back to Judge Kennon.
Well, there's going back to both, but yes, and Judge Chuckkin's competent,
(32:09):
yes, but Judge Cannon is not. And Judge Cannon can get it
out there first because she probably hasn'twritten already. Well, I don't see
how she can rule that something thathappened after the presidency was an official act.
Now she can rule that on somecrazy, you know, hair brained
theory that he declassified this stuff beforehe left office. But that's a different
(32:32):
issue. But you can't find thatthe stuff he did in twenty twenty one
and twenty twenty two were official acts. He wasn't. In all she will
use everything Jim Jimmy Carter did afternineteen eighty one to create a president a
post presidential official number to cover everythingthat's in that case. So I wanted
(32:54):
to ask you, guys, andI only wanted to ask it because it's
written down here and I have toread it. There is no immunity for
you. I stay on script.It is an official act to ask that
question. So what it's such infront of me, folks, is what
is public opinion really? How doesthe public form opinions in election years?
(33:19):
And when do they do it andon what basis? And Rebecca, I'm
going to throw to you because thiswas your question that I had to ask.
So I think you've got an answer. Yeah, No, this is
this is interesting. And you knowthere's a lot of talk. If you
listen to political podcasts for any lengthof time, we end up having to
(33:39):
confess, well, like we're giantnerds and we spend all of our time
thinking about this because we don't havelives. But there are people out there
who do have lives and they don'tspend all of their time thinking about this,
and so the question becomes, whereare normal people getting their news?
How much news are they getting?And you know, how is that influencing
(34:01):
them? And so, you know, I was going to ask you,
guys, how much time would youguess you spend reading or watching news each
week? And what outlets are youwatching? Kevin, I'm going to start
with you. Yeah, So I'mgoing to answer it on a deli basis
(34:22):
because I don't want to have tomultiply things by seven. I'm not that
smart. I would say I probablywatched six hours of news on television to
day. I also read newspapers online, New York Times, Washington Posts,
and you know what I've fallen inlove with in the last year, the
Drudge Report. It is one ofthe best, or if not the best
(34:43):
news aggregator that I know of online. And also Drudge is very much anti
Trump, which makes me laugh.So I, yes, I use that
quite a bit. I use aseries of different things, and yeah,
I watched TV everything from CNN toFox to MSNBC. I do do a
(35:06):
lot of Twitter and Apple News,and there's a lot of online sites that
I'm into TikTok has become a newobsession for news. I think it's fascinating.
There's a there's everything from what's hername? Uh, politics girl?
Oh, yeah, she's great,She's fantastic. Yeah, David Pepper has
a whiteboard. And I used towork with David Pepper, which is a
(35:30):
really good different from David Pecker bythe way, and yes, he's made
that joke all week long. Wellyou almost have to. Yes. And
for the record, David Pepper's awesome. Uh. And he was our county
commissioner for a long time and nowhe was the state Democratic rep for a
long time. Awesome. I canonly say good things about the guy.
(35:53):
You're not done, Greg you No, No, that's yeah. I mean.
And then you know, I hangout with the water cooler, you
know, and you know, listento what's the word on the street?
Man on the street? Yeah,and DJ, what about you? I
just I don't, really, likeI said, I don't really watch news.
I read it Washington Post, TheAtlantic, the Telegraph to get an
(36:19):
idea of what's happening in London andhow the rest of the world sees the
country. I'm trying to think whatelse The Bulwark obviously is one of my
is one of my favorites that just, you know, this nice warm fireplace
for me. I'll usually look atthreads on occasion, I'll look at Twitter
if there's something, if there's somethingbreaking, to get an idea what's going
on over there. It's my newsenvironment is a bit more shelter than it
(36:44):
used to be, and I'm notreally sure how to get myself around that.
But there's no as far as I'mconcerned, there's no point in watching
television for news when you can justread about it later. And usually it
makes more sense if you read aboutit later than if you watch it in
real time, at least for me. All Right, So you guys,
(37:04):
you're fairly typical inasmuch as you douse online sources for news. Ninety three
percent of adults in the US relyon online sources for news, including over
eighty percent who rely on social mediafor news, but they don't all trust
it. They're they're you know,they're scrolling whatever feed, but they're also
looking at it a little bit ofa side eye. As for the amount
(37:27):
of time American adults spend engaged withthe news, Kevin, you said you
spent six hours a day. Yeah, about three to four maybe six hours
a day. That that might beconservative. Ro All, I know,
your daily news consumption exceeds the weeklynews consumption of most American adults six hours
(37:47):
a week. So does my consumptionof sugar. And that is why you
are so sweet tempered. Yeah,six hours a week is about what most
Americans spend on the news. Sowe're talking about an hour a day,
give or take. You know,where they're scrolling through headlines, and they're
doing it online. They're doing iton devices, and seventy percent of people,
(38:16):
seventy six percent of global consumers preferonline news because of the convenience.
And I think because of what DJsaid that it's easier to bookmark something and
go back and read it later whenthe full story has had a chance to
develop. But and here's the statisticthat I found a little bit alarming.
Forty four percent of American adults saythey are actively avoiding the news. And
(38:44):
I can't draw the statistic out outof my memory bank. But isn't that
close to the number of American adultswho don't vote. It's close to the
number who were going to vote forDonald Trump. Yeah, but but people,
there are a lot of people whoare hiding their heads in this,
and so we are talking about publicopinion is based on people who are getting
their news in small doses online whenit's convenient for them, about an hour's
(39:09):
worth a day, when they're notavoiding it completely. So you know,
we talk about all of this stuffin granular detail because we are neurotic obsessives
who have a little bit of aproblem, and you know, our spouses
are our testament to that. Butit's you know, we we worry about
(39:30):
protests, we worry about Supreme Courtarguments and the nuance of it all.
And are maybe we just worrying toomuch? Oh yeah, absolutely, And
it's a problem for me in myhouse. You know, Jess is more
emotionally balanced than I, and shehas already made the decision, and she
(39:52):
tells me it nightly that she hasdecided to step away from the news.
Not that she doesn't listen to itat all, but she avoids indulging in
it because she realizes that all it'sgoing to do is make her upset and
bitter, and that's not a wayto live. And I want to be
more like her in that regard.I sometimes think about my online news consumption.
(40:15):
Is I remember back years ago.It's been many years, but I
used to smoke, and there wouldbe times where I'd be smoking a cigarette.
I'm like, why am I evendoing this? I'm not enjoying it.
I feel kind of ichy. Ijust have the cigarette in my hand
because it's a habit. And that'show I feel when I'm scrolling Twitter sometimes
and I'm reading these hot takes andheadlines that are just making me more emotional,
(40:36):
and like, is there really apoint to what I'm doing? Would
I be better off reading The Atlanticfor an hour a day and walking away
from it all? You know,there is one place where people could get
all the news they need in fortyfive minutes or less, and that's the
More Perfect Union Podcast. If you'relistening to this podcast and you haven't heard
of it, I suggest you checkit out. So with that, I
(40:58):
want to thank everybody for listening.If you enjoy what we do here,
please check us out. No,if you enjoy what we do here,
please share all link on your Facebookand other social media timelines so your friends
who indulge in only six hours ofnews a week can find us and make
us one of those hours. Also, as I mentioned before, we have
a substack page where you can findus. It called the More Perfect Union
(41:21):
what else would we call it?And you can find us on Instagram where
we're revitalizing our page with some newphotos and jokes that I write, and
Rebecca is doing some funny things aboutthe Trump trial. And that's a Trump
trial. I'm talking about his clothesbecause he's clothes. He has repeated some
outfits two and three times. Thetrial is eight days long, so that
(41:44):
tells you something. You are theCoco Chanel. Yeah, well like I
am, I am the Anna Winterof the Yeah, let's not say Coco
Chanel. I mean, yeah,too many Nazi connections there, Natza connections.
But yeah. So I did adeep dive recently into the brand of
suits Trump likes to wear. Theirspokesmodel in twenty twenty was not Donald Trump.
(42:05):
In fact, it was Brad Pitt. So go to our our Instagram
page to learn more about that.I'm fascinated by that now. I just
thought he bought off the rack,like well, you know, according to
one of his books from two thousandand four, he did buy off the
rack because he said that you onlyneed custom made suits if you have a
(42:27):
very strange body shape. By twentysixteen, his campaign said he was getting
custom made suits, which I guessmeans that by twenty sixteen he had a
very strange body shape, or atleast he acknowledged he had a very strange
body shape. Right. And thenthe makers of his suits, Brioni is
the company that makes his suits.They confirmed that they do make suits to
his specifications. He chooses the cutin the fabric. It's not us,
(42:51):
guys, it's him, is basicallythe content of their statements. And with
that, gregman Tusak, have youstarted working on the screenplay for The More
Perfect Us? Actually, Rebecca convincedme. I'm I'm I'm taking a step
back. Next week, you guysare gonna talk about stuff, and I'm
(43:13):
gonna say, who Donald Who?I've never heard of this guy? I
am. I am just completely notdoing anything. So his movie's on hold,
everything's on hold. I Am justgonna be like, I've never heard
of this lawyer? What? Soyou've got me to think for next week?
It's just terrible. I'm gonna contributenothing, I mean, less than
what I do now, which isnot much good luck listeners who says you
(43:38):
don't know, I'm just I'm justgonna be even more of a pretty face.
I think you should bring your saxophone. Next week, play us all out.
Welcome to the More Perfect Union,the podcast that offers real debate without the
hate. Kevin Calton and it's alwaysI'm pleased to share the mic with Greg
Matussek, your common sense liberal fromCincinnati. I it's I am just overwhelmed
by this week. So I havenothing, no jokes, nothing. It
(00:35):
is just straight into it. Whenyou often tell jokes, no no,
I like to think they're witty observationsthat the common man can get behind whips
if you will. I'm the JerrySeinfeld of the more Perfect, of the
more perfect. What's what's the dealwith social unrest? I say stuff like
(00:58):
that? And Rebecca cushmeiders here.Hi, I am here, and you
can pride my organs from my colddead hands, Supreme Court. I'm going
to be hanging on to those untilthe last possible second. I am here
in Kensington, Maryland, with allof my organs still attached. And DJ
Maguire a cat person from Hampton Roads, Virginia who has never been to South
(01:22):
Dakota. So don't blame me.Well, I wouldn't blame you even if
you had been. But let's talkabout our new friend, Christy Nome and
her strong stance on pet that newsbroke yesterday, and I mean, obviously
everybody thinks it's abhorrent, but anyinteresting observations on her decision to down her
(01:45):
dog and a goat on the sameday. It's not just that, but
she has now doubled down on it, and she's she has told people these
were these were that's what life onthe farm is. You shoot animals.
But the more on the farm,that's what life on the farm is.
But the more she talks about thestory, the more horrific it is.
(02:07):
Because I know lots of I livein Ohio. Trust me, I grew
up. I did not grow upon a farm, but I grew up
farm adjacent and I knew lots ofpeople they did not shoot their pets.
And I know she called this ahunting dog. But when her daughter said,
hey, where's the puppy, Imean, and this thing, you
know, and she had to explainto well, you know, it just
(02:29):
wasn't working out. It chased somechickens. You know, we had to
shoot it, which I guess wasa lesson for her daughter not to chase
chickens, you know. And thegoat was smelly and was annoying. So
I mean by that metric, that'sdefinitely gonna lose her the vice presidential slot
because if she shoots things that aresmelly and annoying, I don't know it
(02:52):
worked well for Cheney. The topguy might not want her on his team.
Oh okay, see, yeah,well that remains to be seen.
But what I find interesting is,you know, I don't think they just
write these books in a vacuum.I think that they you know, group
test and focus test things like this, and on some level, she thought
this was going to make her moreattractive politically to their base without a doubt.
(03:15):
That's psychotic. Yes, yes,So speaking of psychotic, the anti
Israel protests are spreading across campuses andgetting more heated, and I think it's
likely to continue through the two partyconventions this summer and into the fall when
(03:35):
universities are set to reopen. Andlet me tell you a gang. If
you think it's easy for them toshut down commencements, wait till universities have
to look at the logistics of reopeningcolleges while protests are going on. So
you go into the fall and collegesare not reopening, it's going to be
really bad for Joe Biden. It'sa really bad look, especially if things
(03:59):
get being violent, and especially ifthe police or the National Guard have to
get sent into clear them out,which did not work so well for Richard
Nixon. So with that in mind, what are Joe's political options? I
would remind everyone here that after twoyears, two and a half years after
(04:19):
Kent State, Richard Nixon carried fortynine out of fifty states and one over
sixty percent of the vote. Thisis true. So now I have to
make some students, well, well, let's not let's not do that though,
let's not be radical. I wouldn'tsay that. Kevin. I'm gonna
ask you a question, how manyhow many protesters do you think will be
(04:44):
at the Democratic Convention this summer?I don't know, maybe one thousand,
fifty thousand, okay, okay,let me let me take that back high
hundreds. Oh no, I'm withyou. I think thousands. Hang on
a second. So you're saying you'resaying less than fifty thousand, yeah,
(05:04):
oh yes, yeah, yeah,less than fifty but more than ye,
more than five okay, because intwo thousand and four, we'll say between
five hundred and five thousand. That'sjust I mean, I'm just picking those
numbers up. That's fine. Outof the air. In two thousand and
four, in New York City forthe Republican National Convention, two hundred thousand
anti Iraq war protesters showed up.The Republican Convention went on without hitching Georgie
(05:27):
O. B. Bush one reelection. And in fact, when it comes
to conventions, they're now unlike innineteen sixty in Chicago, they are now
under federal enforcement control. The SecretService is basically in charge of them in
terms of who gets deployed in thatand all that other kind of stuff.
And also they're perimeters around all thevenues, Like there's different levels of security
(05:47):
that you have to go through.It's my husband's been to a couple of
conventions. It's not easy to getclose to the venues, and it kind
of depends on who's speaking how closeyou can get. But like cab drivers
complain, they're like, I candropt you off here, but it's too
much of a pain in the assto go through the roadblock. You're going
to have to walk the next sixblocks to your hotel. So what's what
I think I must still I thinkis hapen is You'll you'll see you'll see
(06:12):
a floor fight on the platform,say Monday or Tuesday, because conventions have
floor fights about stuff like this.This is the kind of thing. Yeah,
but that'll be broadcast on c SPAN. So I'm the only one who
will see it. Well, yeah, hardly anyone's got hardly anyone is going
to pay attention Biden. In fact, Biden usually does does a very good
job with being off the cuff withpeople who interrupt his stuff. He has
(06:35):
done it on the campaign trail fairlywell. They will probably by summer.
I would suspect we may be undera ceasefire because they're talking about that again.
There may be a RAFA operation wherethe administration may actually openly be in
conflict with net Yahoo, which wouldsort of spin things, spin things differently.
(06:58):
And as much as as much asthere are people riling up on campus
and such. If you ask voters, even young voters, what their big
important issues are, Israel Gaza doesn'treally bump into the top of the list.
It stays near the bottom. JoeBiden has a lot of problems that
he needs to work on, andI think he will work on them.
This is one of them. ButI don't think this is I don't see
(07:20):
in nineteen sixty eight situation for awhole bunch of reasons. One of them
chiefly is Hubert Humphreys still won justpiteChicago nineteen sixty eight. We tend to
forget what he nearly won the election. He lost by about five hundred thousand
folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he nearly won the election. It
was not nineteen seventy two. Andin fact, if we knew now,
(07:44):
if we knew then what we knewnow, Humphrey's probably would have won the
election. Johnson knew that Nixon wasscrewing up the Vietnam peace negotiations, but
he couldn't tell anybody because then hewould have to admit that the National Security
Agency was spying on Richard Nixon,which would have been a bigger controversy.
So he had to sit on itand nix. Nixon was able to squeak
(08:05):
through. But it was a veryvery close election. And outside of the
complete wackos and communists, and therewere too many of them in nineteen sixty
eight, most of the folks whowere angry at Lyndon Johnson in the summer
still voted for Hubert Humphrey in thefall, because he went Dubvish in October
and called for a bombing haunt.You know, I had mentioned this earlier.
(08:26):
I honestly think once school is outand this and the campuses are cleared,
even some of the bigger campuses,we're not going to see the encampments.
Kids go home for the summer eveneven like you know, and the
only people who are going to beleft are going to be either professional is
going to be truly Antifa or youknow, I mean they get jobs,
(08:50):
they go do other things, andmaybe they'll protest and in camp in the
suburbs or you know, at theirhome, but it's not going to be
the same. So I think we'regoing to see that also as as a
thing that will clear out the summer. So maybe in the fall again,
but we're going to have three monthsof relative quietness. Okay. I want
(09:11):
to move on and ask what whatabout Trump and Israel? And why doesn't
the media explore what the Trump doctrinewould be on Israel if he wins re
election? Uh denial. I thinkthey're just you know, pretending like they
might not ever have to deal withit. But let's like Trump's prior doctrine
(09:33):
on in Israel, like he wasgiving away intel on the Israelis to putin,
you know, to the detriment ofIsraeli agents. We believe Kushner's in
bed with the Saudis. The onlything he ever did as president was,
you know, recognize Jerusalem as thesite for our embassy instead of Tel Aviv,
which is actually not convenient as wellas being out of step with politics.
(09:56):
So he doesn't have a history,he doesn't have an articulated plan,
and the media is just kind ofwilling to let him slide on this,
which drives me bananas because they alwayslet him slide. They give him the
benefit of the doubt that he actuallyknows something when all evidence is to the
contrary, and they need to stopit. We've seen this again and again
(10:16):
with Trump, whether it's I havethis healthcare plan and I'm going to show
it to you, but not now. I have this infrastructure bill and it's
going to be awesome, but I'mnot going to show it now. And
I've got this Middle East plan waitfor it. I'm gonna have Jared write
it for me, and I'm goingHe read twenty five books on it.
He read twenty five books and theJared Kushner piece a Middle East peace plan,
(10:39):
literally was, Hey, it's justnot economically feasible. This whole war.
It doesn't really make sense. Soif we just wait another ten years,
we're going to throw some McDonald's inand everyone will come around. And
real estate over there, that's athing. Yeah, No, he said
that. He said that the beachfront property and gaza could be very,
(11:00):
very profitable. We've said it beforeon this podcast. Trump Plaza Gaza.
It has a ring. I alsothink most of the I mean I haven't
I haven't really seen a lot ofthe coverage. I read my news,
I don't watch it, but alot of the coverage has been sort of
just the to extent the straight news, the straight news coverage. What is
(11:24):
happening? How is the Biden administrationreacting in terms of what might happen in
November. There's talk about, oh, well, these things could hurt Biden.
But in terms of this is whatBiden says and this is what Trump
says, You're right, nobody isactually doing that because nobody is sort of
in that campaign mode. For somereason. The story among the Republicans is
(11:46):
not what is Donald Trump's view onIsrael. The story among the Republicans is
how ridiculous did Bill Barr look endorsingTrump? And why are so many other
Republicans looking at and going I'm notdoing that, thank you very much much.
DJ, If I may commit somenews, Ron DeSantis is endorse Trump.
(12:07):
He did that, He did that, He did that before the New
Hampshire primary. It's just that nobodynoticed, Well, Trump was true thing
about it today. So of course, well, of course, because he's
Donald Trump and he does this kindof thing. But well, you know,
he's on a gag order. Hedoesn't want to get found in contempt
of courts. So you can justtalk about Ron DeSantis given the nature of
this race that the political coverage oftwenty twenty four is all about the major
(12:30):
party nominees foibles. Joe Biden haspolicy foibles and concern about his age.
Donald Trump has foibles, and getin that a large chunk of his party
clearly doesn't like him anymore, andhe can't string a sentence together, which
is actually getting more plain now thanit used to. They're not they're not
thinking about this kind of thing.Trump's Israel policy is not a horse race
(12:54):
matter, and that's the problem.Everything in the campaign is about the horse
race, and they're not talking aboutthey're not talking about how they differ on
this or that issue, because theassumption is it's all going to be a
character election. Maybe it will,and Trump isn't talking about it. Trump
isn't talking about it. He can'tturn it into personal agreements, so he's
not talking about it. He's justsaying Joe Biden is wrong, and that
(13:18):
doesn't make good news. And he'dhe doesn't like BB either, because BB
was the first leader to congratulate JoeBiden as victory in twenty twenty. The
other thing I wanted to ask you, guys, is about r FK Junior
on this issue. You know,we talk about Biden, we talk about
Trump. We haven't really talked aboutpolicy issues concerning our FK Junior. And
(13:43):
I don't know whether you know thisor not, but his campaign is on
the ground at the universities where theseprotests are, gathering signatures to get on
ballots in those states, which impliesthat he is pro Hamas, although we
would say anti Israel, but hewould say pro Hamas. What do you
(14:03):
think his actual stance would be andhow do you think this might affect his
campaign. I know his stance,He's talked about it, it's in the
news. He's as rapidly pro bbas Trump is, so maybe they should
like read some of his statements thosedamns. Wait. Also, if he's
gathering signatures to get on state ballotson college campuses, is he verifying residency
(14:28):
or is he just like collecting signaturesand hoping it will all come out in
the wash. Well, wherever youare, wherever you're gathering signatures, I
don't care what they try to tellyou. You gather as many as you
can, and then afterwards you worryabout which ones are going to be authenticated
or not. Yeah, he's right. I'm just saying that he's making his
job harder by not going to placeswhere everyone who is there as a resident
(14:54):
of the state. Well, again, I want to come back to there's
two issues too. That one isgetting on state ballots. But the greater
point I was trying to make isthat sends a message to all of these
protesters that Bobby Kennedy is your guy. Now, DJ's point is taken that
his actual stance may be pro bbnet Yahoo pro Israel, but having people
(15:18):
on the ground collecting signatures for himis going to start a ripple effect that,
oh, maybe he's with us,Maybe he's with us. That was
my point. It probably will createthat ripple effect. But you know,
if you look at it even alittle critically, you can see that he's
on the grift. If they lookedat it a little a little critically,
(15:39):
he wouldn't even be in this campaign. But did anybody see him on Bill
Mart's show? No, I can'twatch that. Guys. You've got to
start watching this coverage. You know, we're going to go through this campaign
and if we just go, well, I don't watch this. I don't
like him. I don't think hehas a chance. And you don't see
the man speak, you are notgoing to see what the voters are seeing.
(16:03):
No, I will watch, Iwill watch. I will watch Kennedy.
Sorry, I will watch Kennedy ona lot of things. I'll watch
him on Fox, I watch himon MSNBC. But I won't watch him
on Bill Maher because I think BillMaher's opinions and views are horrible. And
yes, he does get he doesget something right once in a while,
but so does a blind squirrel.He also reaches a lot of young liberals.
(16:25):
I think that's awesome, but doesn'tmean he's right or good. No,
you're missing the point. But he'sgiving this guy a positive platform I
expect to those people. That's notwhat I've seen in the reports on it,
the reports where he hit him prettyhard on on the vaccine stuff.
Yeah, it wasn't that hard,DJ I saw it. It wasn't that
hard. Yeah. And Bobby Kennedycan just go on to Joe Rogan and
(16:47):
erase all of it. Well,yeah, there's that too. Speaking of
people who give him a giant platform, Let's face it, Rogan has a
bigger platform than mar absolutely absolutely,and neither of them are as funny as
they think they are. That's true. But this is why, this is
why the Biden campaign is sitting onone hundred and fifty plus million dollars.
This is the kinds of things youuse that money for to get voters more
(17:14):
engaged and to get the more informed. The polling has shown it over and
over and over again. The moreengaged and informed voters are, the better
Biden does. So the solution isyou get voters more informed and more engaged,
and you use all of the moneythat is coming in to do that.
I mean, when I talk aboutthe optimism, I thinking that Joe
Biden can win this election. Idon't mean he can just sit on his
(17:37):
hands and do nothing and just coasta victory. There are things you do
besides roll your helmet on the footballfield when you take the field. He
has to do those things. ButI think once he does those things,
the only voters who will be leftlooking to vote for Robert Kennedy are folks
who would have voted for Trump ina two way race anyhow. While Biden
can cobble the pro democracy pro NATOcoalition behind him and win the election,
(18:03):
That's what I think will happen.That doesn't mean it's happening right now,
because we're still six and a halfmonths out. Good point, and I
just want to before we move on, I just want to point out to
our listeners that DJ and I wentinto this issue the RFK effect in detail
on our substack page, the morePerfect Union on substack. So if you
(18:26):
want to see his take on itand then my take on it, which
was a little real debate without thehate on paper, go to substack and
take a look for that. Okay, it was a very good colloquy.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn'tmean to colloquy all over you. Okay.
(18:48):
Moving on to the Supreme Court,where they heard two major cases this
week. The state of Idaho arguedthat there are no exemptions of BOSH law
should take precedence over a federal lawensuring stabilizing care for all emergency room patients.
And of course, in the otherbig case this week, Donald Trump
was in the courtroom of the SupremeCourt seeking presidential immunity. He wants unlimited
(19:12):
presidential immunity. Nobody thinks that that'sgoing to happen, but there did look
to be maybe five votes for limitedpresidential immunity. So let's start with the
m TALA case. I have alittle trouble pronouncing that one and the MTALA
case, And I'm going to throwto Rebecca because you probably are more informed
on this, certainly than I amand maybe my other partners here. Yeah.
(19:36):
M TALA stands for the Emergency EmergencyMedical Transfer and Labor Act, and
it's a Reagan era law that wasbasically a federal mandate to any state or
any hospital that takes Medicare has tostabilize any patient who comes into the emergency
room. And the rationale behind thelaw is you can deny care due to
(20:02):
inability to pay, or dump patientson other hospitals because they're Medicare patients and
you only want to take private insurancepatients. It was it was a completely
fiscal rationale. And this has beenon the books again, it's Reagan era,
so we're talking decades and it's beenamended a few times to clarify how
(20:23):
that applies in practice. And whatit is not a law to do is
to govern medical best practices. There'snothing in m TALA that says you must
offer ABC or D treatment. Thelaw says you must offer treatment that will
stabilize the patient and doesn't put limitson that. You know. The other
(20:47):
thing that these states and these lawsare having that I don't think we talked
about is that right now, Idahohas lost fifty five percent of its high
risk obstetricians, right and it's notthe only state. Obg y ns are
fleeing, right states for fear oflawsuits, for fear of not being able
to do their job, for fearof restrictions, and you know, for
(21:12):
fear of all sorts of things.And the ones who can leave do they
go to where they can help peoplethe most well. And it's where they
can afford the malpractice insurance. Becauseif you are in a state where you
are potentially going to be facing statelegal action, criminal legal action for providing
(21:33):
standard of what is standard of careeverywhere except your state, that's got to
be extremely expensive. And I haven'tseen studies to demonstrate this, but my
guess is malpractice insurance despite in stateslike Idaho, well it's not just providing
but not providing. If this state, if the hospital says you can't provide
this, there could be a lawsuitlater on also that they would have to.
(21:56):
So you know, these doctors thereare tied. They should move.
I mean, yeah, you knowthey should move. And I mean and
to be clear, the situations thatwe're talking about, and this has happened
in Idaho and they've like airlifted womenout of the state to go get care,
and states where the laws are notas ambiguous, We're not talking about
(22:17):
situations where somebody strolled into an emergencyroom and said, hey, do you
guys do abortions? It's not thatit is, you know, people coming
in in grave medical distress, andthese are situations that unfold rapidly. They
progress quickly, and it's life ordeath decisions or where there are like four
stages of it. We can saveyou and the baby great, perfect,
(22:41):
we can save you. We cannotsave the baby, but we can save
your uterus. Not great, butnot the worst. We can save you,
your baby and your unius are donefor, or we can't save any
of you, and you can.That arc goes very quickly in some cases.
And I'm trying to write something onthis and it's really it's hard.
(23:04):
It's not coming together well. Butall of us here, I'm guessing,
could tell at least one story ofa friend whose life was saved due to
fast medical action when a pregnancy wentsideways. And I'm talking about myself in
(23:25):
this case. No, it's it'sit's well, it's it's easy to laugh
because when I tell it, it'sa funny anecdote. Like I am my
son was face up. I pushedfor two hours. He wasn't coming out.
It was like he was lying ona raft, just hanging out,
didn't want to come out. Butthe fact is I was actually at a
point where I was in distress.He was in distress, and if I
hadn't had a c section, ifthat hadn't been available to me, then
(23:48):
the outcome could have been quite tragic. Situations like that where there is not
adequate mental medical intervention can result inboth maternal and fetal death. And I
I talk again. I tell thisis a funny story because the kid I
gave birth to is sitting upstairs.He's six foot two, He's going to
be in jazz band next year.But I think we've all been a little
(24:12):
cavalier about how close to the thresholdof death most of us walk during pregnancy,
and to not allow the medical professionalstasked with ushering us through that process,
to not allow them to do whatis best for us, is a
(24:32):
grave injustice to anyone who wants tobe a parent in this country, which
is why fewer Americans want to beparents. This is one of the reasons
why abortions have, why abortions havegun ups and stops. It's why I
keep saying that the pro life movementis literally scaring the life out of women
transmitting on binaries. This is what'shappening. This is also the kind of
(24:53):
thing that shifts voter perception, shift'sperception about what is important to them now.
Dobbs made this an important issue tovoters in twenty twenty two, in
twenty twenty three, and in twentyfour twenty four. But something like the
Arizona law which they still can't getoff the books because the State Senate went
(25:14):
for a holiday or something, orthis Idaho. I heard the House voter
to repeal it. I haven't heardanything from the state Senate. Maybe I'm
wrong, but the or the Idaholaw, you know, these are all
things that affect voters individually as well. Where this moves this thing up hire
as an issue. Hald McMillan oncewas once asked the thing he feared the
(25:40):
most is British Prime Minister in termsof politics and his rounds with events.
Dear boy, events events like thisare the kind of thing. This is
the kind of thing that can knotGaza off the front page for a few
hours or a few days, orsomething that just completely reshuffle the deck or
scramble it for swing voters like,oh wait, this kind of thing happens
(26:02):
if I sit on my hands,yeah, and I mean and the question
becomes do the conservative justices want toprevent emergency terminations of pregnancies more than they
want to uphold the Constitution, andI have concerns that they do, particularly
the ment Amy Cony Barrett. Shestruck a fairly realistic tone about saying,
(26:26):
I can't believe you didn't think ofall the contingency plans that you need to
think of when it comes to pregnancycare, probably because she's been through it
and she knows that this is notactually a joke. But some of the
guys are like, you know,I don't know what kind of complication could
cause the loss of an organ butnot cause the loss of a life.
(26:48):
I'm like a hysterectomy. You'd numpty, Where have you been? Justice Barrett
basically typifies a large section of whatwas the pro life community, folks who
were blissfully unaware of just how rudimentarypolitician's knowledge of anatomy was and just how
unconcerned they really were about real lifeevents. For years, the movement told
(27:12):
us about they've got this covered,They've got all these contingencies figured out.
Guess what they didn't because they didnot care. The other case that came
up this week, famously was theTrump immunity case, and it looked to
me, and it looked to alot of experts on television like there were
at least five, maybe more justiceswho seemed to think that there should be
(27:36):
some kind of limited presidential immunity andmaybe poised to send this back to the
courts to decide that issue. Ithrow this open. I'll start with DJ.
What's your take on this and whatyou see coming down the pike.
The optimist in me says that theirall says that Justice Roberts, Chief Justice,
(28:00):
with Justice Barrett and the three Democraticappointees will come together with a decision
that says, if a president commitsan official act in furtherance of a crime,
he can still be prosecuted. Butan official act by itself that becomes
a crime esque post facto or getscaught in the honest services fraud, malaise
(28:22):
and molasses, that is not somethingthat can be prosecuted. That's the optimist
in me. The pessimist in mesays, the Waco four are going to
want to go with or the Wacofive are going to go with full bonkers.
There are certain things that a presidentjust has to do and blah blah,
(28:44):
blah blah blah, and it willbe up to Roberts to sort of
join them, to keep them intosomething that is a bit more reasonable.
I think it's going to be acomplete mess. I think you we can
end up seeing every single justice writein opinion themselves. And I think this
is going to be something that lowercourts will have to work themselves out forever
(29:06):
until a Trump actually wins an electionand just ends this whole thing. I
think. I think the like likeall conservatives, they are going to go
back to their old standby, whichis pornography. Are you trying to tell
me Clarence Thomas is Mike Johnson's newaccountability partner, and the phone and the
(29:32):
porn and okay, they're they're they'regoing to say, like, uh,
like I don't know when it's acrime, but when it is a crime,
I know it when I see it, just I do. That's where
you're going to go. And Ithink that that's right. Yeah. I
think they're going to say, likepolitical assassination, well, that's a crime.
Blockading a a a naval base,that's not a crime. So war
(29:56):
crimes immunity, political assassination, sure, sexual harassing a hairdresser from twenty years
ago. If that's not a crime, stuff like that. Okay, So
my take on it is this,I do think that they're going to come
down with a finding of limited immunity. So technically Trump will have lost the
(30:17):
case, and that may be theheadline, but they're going to remand this
I think back to the courts todecide some form of limited presidential immunity.
And here's my question, how dothey do that? How can any one
court decide such a nuanced, sprawlingset of issues that cover domestic policy,
(30:38):
foreign affairs, wars and national defensebudgeting, federal prosecutions, national intelligence matters,
emoluments, and a whole other hostof thorny issues that aren't even before
them. So you've got two lowercourts who've already said two of the lower
courts who ruled on this before forthe Supreme Court already said they found no
(31:03):
presidential immunity. So what does SupremeCourt do? Now? Send the case
back to them and say go findsome I believe what the court does is
sends back the charges in this caseand says you need to delineate which of
these charges could conceivably be an officialact and which could be a private act.
Unfortunately, Amy Cony Barrett got Trump'slawyer to clarify that for us a
(31:26):
little bit. That was helpful actually, And they are only going to rule
on the questions in this case,which is not going to help anybody in
the long term. And it's themain purpose of it is to slow down
the DC case. Are we kiddingourselves? Am I the only one to
(31:48):
here who believes ain't who believes EileenCannon already has the brief written about how
everything is an official act and thereforeimmunity is completely unlimited. Juck can Judge
chuck this is going back to Judgechucka not going back to Judge Kennon.
Well, there's going back to both, but yes, and Judge Chuckkin's competent,
(32:09):
yes, but Judge Cannon is not. And Judge Cannon can get it
out there first because she probably hasn'twritten already. Well, I don't see
how she can rule that something thathappened after the presidency was an official act.
Now she can rule that on somecrazy, you know, hair brained
theory that he declassified this stuff beforehe left office. But that's a different
(32:32):
issue. But you can't find thatthe stuff he did in twenty twenty one
and twenty twenty two were official acts. He wasn't. In all she will
use everything Jim Jimmy Carter did afternineteen eighty one to create a president a
post presidential official number to cover everythingthat's in that case. So I wanted
(32:54):
to ask you, guys, andI only wanted to ask it because it's
written down here and I have toread it. There is no immunity for
you. I stay on script.It is an official act to ask that
question. So what it's such infront of me, folks, is what
is public opinion really? How doesthe public form opinions in election years?
(33:19):
And when do they do it andon what basis? And Rebecca, I'm
going to throw to you because thiswas your question that I had to ask.
So I think you've got an answer. Yeah, No, this is
this is interesting. And you knowthere's a lot of talk. If you
listen to political podcasts for any lengthof time, we end up having to
(33:39):
confess, well, like we're giantnerds and we spend all of our time
thinking about this because we don't havelives. But there are people out there
who do have lives and they don'tspend all of their time thinking about this,
and so the question becomes, whereare normal people getting their news?
How much news are they getting?And you know, how is that influencing
(34:01):
them? And so, you know, I was going to ask you,
guys, how much time would youguess you spend reading or watching news each
week? And what outlets are youwatching? Kevin, I'm going to start
with you. Yeah, So I'mgoing to answer it on a deli basis
(34:22):
because I don't want to have tomultiply things by seven. I'm not that
smart. I would say I probablywatched six hours of news on television to
day. I also read newspapers online, New York Times, Washington Posts,
and you know what I've fallen inlove with in the last year, the
Drudge Report. It is one ofthe best, or if not the best
(34:43):
news aggregator that I know of online. And also Drudge is very much anti
Trump, which makes me laugh.So I, yes, I use that
quite a bit. I use aseries of different things, and yeah,
I watched TV everything from CNN toFox to MSNBC. I do do a
(35:06):
lot of Twitter and Apple News,and there's a lot of online sites that
I'm into TikTok has become a newobsession for news. I think it's fascinating.
There's a there's everything from what's hername? Uh, politics girl?
Oh, yeah, she's great,She's fantastic. Yeah, David Pepper has
a whiteboard. And I used towork with David Pepper, which is a
(35:30):
really good different from David Pecker bythe way, and yes, he's made
that joke all week long. Wellyou almost have to. Yes. And
for the record, David Pepper's awesome. Uh. And he was our county
commissioner for a long time and nowhe was the state Democratic rep for a
long time. Awesome. I canonly say good things about the guy.
(35:53):
You're not done, Greg you No, No, that's yeah. I mean.
And then you know, I hangout with the water cooler, you
know, and you know, listento what's the word on the street?
Man on the street? Yeah,and DJ, what about you? I
just I don't, really, likeI said, I don't really watch news.
I read it Washington Post, TheAtlantic, the Telegraph to get an
(36:19):
idea of what's happening in London andhow the rest of the world sees the
country. I'm trying to think whatelse The Bulwark obviously is one of my
is one of my favorites that just, you know, this nice warm fireplace
for me. I'll usually look atthreads on occasion, I'll look at Twitter
if there's something, if there's somethingbreaking, to get an idea what's going
on over there. It's my newsenvironment is a bit more shelter than it
(36:44):
used to be, and I'm notreally sure how to get myself around that.
But there's no as far as I'mconcerned, there's no point in watching
television for news when you can justread about it later. And usually it
makes more sense if you read aboutit later than if you watch it in
real time, at least for me. All Right, So you guys,
(37:04):
you're fairly typical inasmuch as you douse online sources for news. Ninety three
percent of adults in the US relyon online sources for news, including over
eighty percent who rely on social mediafor news, but they don't all trust
it. They're they're you know,they're scrolling whatever feed, but they're also
looking at it a little bit ofa side eye. As for the amount
(37:27):
of time American adults spend engaged withthe news, Kevin, you said you
spent six hours a day. Yeah, about three to four maybe six hours
a day. That that might beconservative. Ro All, I know,
your daily news consumption exceeds the weeklynews consumption of most American adults six hours
(37:47):
a week. So does my consumptionof sugar. And that is why you
are so sweet tempered. Yeah,six hours a week is about what most
Americans spend on the news. Sowe're talking about an hour a day,
give or take. You know,where they're scrolling through headlines, and they're
doing it online. They're doing iton devices, and seventy percent of people,
(38:16):
seventy six percent of global consumers preferonline news because of the convenience.
And I think because of what DJsaid that it's easier to bookmark something and
go back and read it later whenthe full story has had a chance to
develop. But and here's the statisticthat I found a little bit alarming.
Forty four percent of American adults saythey are actively avoiding the news. And
(38:44):
I can't draw the statistic out outof my memory bank. But isn't that
close to the number of American adultswho don't vote. It's close to the
number who were going to vote forDonald Trump. Yeah, but but people,
there are a lot of people whoare hiding their heads in this,
and so we are talking about publicopinion is based on people who are getting
their news in small doses online whenit's convenient for them, about an hour's
(39:09):
worth a day, when they're notavoiding it completely. So you know,
we talk about all of this stuffin granular detail because we are neurotic obsessives
who have a little bit of aproblem, and you know, our spouses
are our testament to that. Butit's you know, we we worry about
(39:30):
protests, we worry about Supreme Courtarguments and the nuance of it all.
And are maybe we just worrying toomuch? Oh yeah, absolutely, And
it's a problem for me in myhouse. You know, Jess is more
emotionally balanced than I, and shehas already made the decision, and she
(39:52):
tells me it nightly that she hasdecided to step away from the news.
Not that she doesn't listen to itat all, but she avoids indulging in
it because she realizes that all it'sgoing to do is make her upset and
bitter, and that's not a wayto live. And I want to be
more like her in that regard.I sometimes think about my online news consumption.
(40:15):
Is I remember back years ago.It's been many years, but I
used to smoke, and there wouldbe times where I'd be smoking a cigarette.
I'm like, why am I evendoing this? I'm not enjoying it.
I feel kind of ichy. Ijust have the cigarette in my hand
because it's a habit. And that'show I feel when I'm scrolling Twitter sometimes
and I'm reading these hot takes andheadlines that are just making me more emotional,
(40:36):
and like, is there really apoint to what I'm doing? Would
I be better off reading The Atlanticfor an hour a day and walking away
from it all? You know,there is one place where people could get
all the news they need in fortyfive minutes or less, and that's the
More Perfect Union Podcast. If you'relistening to this podcast and you haven't heard
of it, I suggest you checkit out. So with that, I
(40:58):
want to thank everybody for listening.If you enjoy what we do here,
please check us out. No,if you enjoy what we do here,
please share all link on your Facebookand other social media timelines so your friends
who indulge in only six hours ofnews a week can find us and make
us one of those hours. Also, as I mentioned before, we have
a substack page where you can findus. It called the More Perfect Union
(41:21):
what else would we call it?And you can find us on Instagram where
we're revitalizing our page with some newphotos and jokes that I write, and
Rebecca is doing some funny things aboutthe Trump trial. And that's a Trump
trial. I'm talking about his clothesbecause he's clothes. He has repeated some
outfits two and three times. Thetrial is eight days long, so that
(41:44):
tells you something. You are theCoco Chanel. Yeah, well like I
am, I am the Anna Winterof the Yeah, let's not say Coco
Chanel. I mean, yeah,too many Nazi connections there, Natza connections.
But yeah. So I did adeep dive recently into the brand of
suits Trump likes to wear. Theirspokesmodel in twenty twenty was not Donald Trump.
(42:05):
In fact, it was Brad Pitt. So go to our our Instagram
page to learn more about that.I'm fascinated by that now. I just
thought he bought off the rack,like well, you know, according to
one of his books from two thousandand four, he did buy off the
rack because he said that you onlyneed custom made suits if you have a
(42:27):
very strange body shape. By twentysixteen, his campaign said he was getting
custom made suits, which I guessmeans that by twenty sixteen he had a
very strange body shape, or atleast he acknowledged he had a very strange
body shape. Right. And thenthe makers of his suits, Brioni is
the company that makes his suits.They confirmed that they do make suits to
his specifications. He chooses the cutin the fabric. It's not us,
(42:51):
guys, it's him, is basicallythe content of their statements. And with
that, gregman Tusak, have youstarted working on the screenplay for The More
Perfect Us? Actually, Rebecca convincedme. I'm I'm I'm taking a step
back. Next week, you guysare gonna talk about stuff, and I'm
(43:13):
gonna say, who Donald Who?I've never heard of this guy? I
am. I am just completely notdoing anything. So his movie's on hold,
everything's on hold. I Am justgonna be like, I've never heard
of this lawyer? What? Soyou've got me to think for next week?
It's just terrible. I'm gonna contributenothing, I mean, less than
what I do now, which isnot much good luck listeners who says you
(43:38):
don't know, I'm just I'm justgonna be even more of a pretty face.
I think you should bring your saxophone. Next week, play us all out.
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