Advisory Opinions - Defending a President

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris ruffled West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s feathers when she sat down with local television stations in his state to chat about Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill without first giving him a heads up. On today’s episode, our hosts break down why these sorts of intra-party kerfuffles matter and how they might shape the Biden administration’s relationship with the Senate moving forward. Also in the hopper for today, Sarah and David put their trial lawyer skills on full display when they explain the former president’s best defense against impeachment. Show Notes: -“The Senate’s impeachment trial is illegal and a sham” by Rand Paul in the Washington Examiner. -Explainer on bills of attainder and House Resolution 24 - Impeaching Donald John Trump, president of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rebelsis. Ask your doctor or visit Rebelsis.ca. Order up for Rebelsis. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker, and we've got mainly impeachment talk today, but we're going to do something kind of interesting in the aftermath of a tremendous amount of turmoil in the president's legal team, with his entire legal team apparently resigning over strategic differences with the president

and how to argue in his defense with the president naming a new legal team. We're going to talk about what if we were representing the president, how would we defend him? In other words, what is the defense? What is the best defense that former President Trump has for impeachment? So we want you to understand and know the arguments that are going to unfold in the impeachment trial. And we're going to talk about what is the former president's best defense for impeachment. We're also going to talk a little bit of politics. I'm going to talk to Sarah, professional political operative, and get her opinion on some

recent political kerfuffles. One, a little bit of sniping within the Democratic camp, and another one, a lot of sniping within the Republican camp. So we got a few things to cover. Republican camp. So we got a few things to cover. But first, let's talk about a little Democratic controversy and whether it's a big deal. And then I have a theory, Sarah, to share with you. Okay. All right, here we go. So as some people who are completely immersed in the news cycles and and political sniping and arguing and fighting and backbiting, know Kamala Harris went and gave some interviews to West Virginia and Arizona news media outlets.

Those are kind of key states, West Virginia, Joe Manchin's home, Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema, two of the most moderate members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. And Joe Manchin apparently didn't know about it. The subject was coronavirus relief and advocating for the Biden package, which Manchin has expressed some skepticism of a part of it, particularly the cash payments. And Manchin was mad. Manchin was apparently upset, felt blindsided. And here was my question. When I read the story, I thought, I want to ask professional, political professional, Sarah Isger, about these little spats that arise from time to time where someone steps on someone's toes and someone

walks on someone else's turf without permission. Does this matter? Like when you're reading a story like this, are you thinking, huh, interesting? Are you thinking, huh, slow news content day? Well, it is a snow day here in DC. I mean, it doesn't make any difference because no one's going into work anyway or to school, but we are all trapped inside under, I don't know, five to eight inches of snow from yesterday. And then we're expecting some more today. By the way, my favorite part of snow day is seeing all the little fox prints in my backyard because they come visit during the night and I wake up and it's like Christmas and you just see these little fox prints and it's really fun. Okay.

The reason to go into someone else's turf is if you think that sort of, what's a polite way to say this? You're the political big swinging hammer. You're the big foot. You're big footing them. Yeah, that like you can basically get their constituents out from under them, forcing them into this place where they have to come around to you

because you've taken their support from them. Well, so A, you can see why this would deeply annoy the person who you're doing it to, because that's always going to be your goal if you go do something like that. But you only go do that when you're definitely going to do it. You can win that. don't come at the king type thing. And in this case, a newly minted vice president who hasn't really been introduced to West Virginia voters, for instance, beyond the campaign, but most people don't have any like tried and true affection yet for Vice President Harris. It's an odd maneuver in that sense. It would be different, for instance, if Joe Biden

went in. He's the president. He's very well known. He's been in public life for a long, long time. People have thoughts about Joe Biden. They just don't know Vice President Harris very well yet. So I'm a little surprised by that decision. Also, and this to me probably was a mistake of her team. I'm going to guess that it was not a strategic decision. You never surprise someone. You never surprise another politician. You never surprise the press. Even when you want to quote unquote surprise them,

you still don't actually surprise them. You, like in my biggest surprise press conferences, and I'm talking special counsel, I'm talking like some hit parade stuff. You don't let people walk into the room having no clue what's going on. Right. It puts them back on their heels. They've got bosses who then ask them questions and they're like, well, I don't I don't know that yet because I just got told this thing. So like, I don't know what the special counsel statute is.

I don't know. because I just got told this thing. So like, I don't know what the special counsel statute is. I don't know. Um, so like, just to, to follow that example, when, uh, at that point, acting attorney general Rod Rosenstein announced that he was appointing Mueller. I told all the reporters, um, that they had 30 minutes. I think it was roughly 30 minutes, might've been 45, to get back to the Department of Justice. That's unusual.

So they were all like, what? I mean, I didn't have to do that. I could have just only told the reporters who were there or blasted out a press release. That in and of itself is like, hey, there's about to be a big deal. Start thinking about what it could be. I can't tell you yet. And then the second they were there,

I put them in a room, just shut the doors, made them put their phones down, told them exactly what we were going I put them in a room, just shut the doors, made them put their phones down, told them exactly what we were going to tell them in a few minutes, put papers in front of them of all the stuff I thought they were going to need to know

and that their bosses would ask them and had experts in the room to answer their questions. We did that for an hour before we told anyone outside of the Department of justice that that special counsel was being announced and then sent out a press release to the world telling everyone what had happened so that we had these you know 20 or so reporter experts who then didn't feel

surprised could go immediately on tv or on the phone with their boss or start writing who then had all this information. Just imagine if you just sent out the press release. It puts everyone in a bad spot professionally. And so if you're a strategic political operative, whether you're in government or on the campaign side, you never surprise people. So I'd be stunned if they actually sat down and thought to themselves, let's do an interview in West Virginia. Let's sort of shoot one over Manchin's bow.

But, you know, should we call him or tell him we're doing this? No, let's let him find out from a local reporter who calls him. Whoa, no way. They must have somehow not thought about it, or perhaps they did try to tell someone on his staff and the message didn't get relayed. These are all new relationships. The vice president's office is new. Somehow the levers didn't quite all work there. In of whether it matters. Wildly so. So on something relatively small like this, the politics in terms of voters and constituents doesn't matter.

No one's going to remember this. We're so far off from an election. This isn't a galvanizing issue right now. But you know who is going to remember it? Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin's going to remember it. I think that unfortunately, uh, president Biden just, uh, potentially lost a really important tool in his toolkit, which is building that relationship between vice president Harris and Joe Manchin so that, um, that can be sort of his go-to because otherwise Joe Biden's going to have to do it himself. You can't really send a sort of random staffer type deputy for the really important conversations

with someone with your single vote that you can't lose. One last thing to undo everything I just said. Sometimes I have found in my life, and I'll be curious whether you have found this as well, David. And I don't think you can do it intentionally. I think it just has to become organic. Sometimes I have found that the best way to build a relationship of trust is to screw it up the first time. You that person who you meet, you make a really bad first impression. You say something wrong. You get into that fight. It gets heated or whatever else. And then if you can back up and say, you know what? Wow, that just got off on totally the wrong foot. I am so sorry. I did this, this, and this wrong. That was stupid of me.

You are this, this, and this positive attribute. Can we start over? And can I take you out for a drink? And let's just back this whole train up that sometimes showing sort of some soft underbelly, some humility about what you screwed up can actually be that foundation of trust moving forward. So I'll be interested to see whether the Harris team

can turn this downside into a really big upside. But right now they have a cranky pants Joe Manchin at them. So he- Cranky pants. This is his interview with his local radio station. So Harris gives an interview to this station on Thursday. Joe Manchin then calls in on Friday and says, I saw the interview.

I couldn't believe it. No one called me. We're going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward. I think we need to do. But we need to work together. That's not a way of working together. But we need to work together. That's not a way of working together.

I mean, you can feel that Joe Manchin both feels embarrassed that this happened on his home turf and also by calling in the next day is sort of reasserting himself. Because, you know, the interesting thing about this to me was because you you began and you were talking about sort of can you walk in and sort of bigfoot the whole thing can you are you showing that you're the one with the real power but that's not the dynamic right now because kamala harris is a tiebreaker in the senate she is. She is not a voting member of the Senate unless there's a tie. And you know when you don't have a tie is if Joe Manchin's voting against you.

I mean, this is Joe Manchin at the apex of his power. I mean, I almost feel like we need to put into a style guide in the dispatch, you know, like how in Game of Thrones, you couldn't refer to somebody by a shorthand name. You had to refer to them by their, you know, the introduction. You know, this is Joe Manchin, first lord of the coal-soaked hills. I mean, this guy is at the apex of his Virginia knew her, would not be a she would not be a successful West Virginia politician. Let's let's just put it that way. She's far to the left of the voters of West Virginia. And, you know, the thing it was obvious to me, a why he would feel insulted, be why people would look at the Biden team and say, what the heck were you doing? But what was less obvious to me would be, C, does Joe Manchin then say, as all of this coronavirus stuff is going to be negotiated, sort of come to the Biden team and say, you screwed up, man. And what you could have had, you can't have now. I'm more skeptical about that.

But I do feel like this is the kind of thing that the Biden team will have to do something to compensate for, whether it is a very real and genuine apology. And I agree with you 100%, Sarah. I'm somebody who is, I'm more often in the position of saying, oh man, shoot, I'm sorry, we got off on the wrong foot. Because I have a lot of, and this is for me, it's not like walking into someone's turf. For me, it's scheduling. I make scheduling mistakes all the time. Like somebody will say, hey, let's meet at noon. And they mean noon Eastern.

And I'll put down noon, which is my time, which is one Easter. Like that's a constant. And so I'm always, oh crap, I'm late for this thing or, oh,

I misscheduled this thing. And if you just fall on your sword, you know, I found most people are, you know, pretty, they understand it. They understand when you're a human being and they have compassion for your human beingness.

See, that's funny. I can see a situation. Between me and David, listeners, is David's biggest sin is scheduling snafus and conflicts. I'm just obnoxious. Like, I have to apologize for being obnoxious really often. I'm just obnoxious. I have to apologize for being obnoxious really often. I'm sorry I made a face as if what you said was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard a human being say out loud. It's not that I didn't mean it at the time. It's that I shouldn't have made that face. And I know that now. That's hilarious. No, I think we all have our things that...

Persistent problems. I mean, I just recently double scheduled a Zoom speech. That's one of those things where I'm thinking my nightmares in all of the scheduling. I had two of them scheduled at the same time. So who do you call and say, crap, I got to move it. I guess you go the person

you scheduled second and you go with the person you scheduled first. My favorite, Sarah, is I've always had these nightmares about scheduling. My favorite is, or my biggest nightmare was I'm not in the right city at the right time. Back when we had these speaking engagements. Yes. Well, not long after I came back from Iraq, I was at this big ADF event and I had a bunch of speeches to give. But I'd been gone a lot because of my deployment and then my litigation schedule. So I was just gone a ton and I really wanted to get home, looked at my schedule, didn't see anything else on my schedule, and then got an early flight and flew back home to be with my family. And it was the morning, the next morning, 8 a.m., phone rings. It's my friend Jordan Lawrence from ADF. And he says, David, where are you? And I

said, home. And he goes, you're on in 30 minutes at an event in Chicago. Fortunately, Jordan knew all of the things that I was going to talk about. It's a fantastic speaker. Didn't have a conflict he could fill in for me. But Sarah, do you know it is a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize that you have a speech in 30 minutes and you're not even in the right city? Yeah, that's kind of... I mean, why even have the sinking feeling at that point? That's just... That's baked. It is. It is. So one of those...

Bottom line on the Manchin thing, Manchin, what they're arguing over is that Harris wants to just get this thing out the door, have 1,400 direct payments towards everyone. Manchin wants targeted payments towards those in greater need versus, as he put it, people making $300,000 don't need as much as someone making 40 or 50K. So if you want to judge how this whole little gambit went, let's see if there's targeted payments in the end or if it's a blanket payment

yep well said well said all right so let's move on uh and we're going to talk a little bit about gop politics and again i'm going to turn to professional political professional sarah and i'm going to ask a question. And the question is this. Let me preface by saying there is an abundant amount of evidence that is emerging into play that there is still an enormous amount of loyalty to Donald Trump within the grassroots activist class of the GOP. We don't know necessarily about sort of like the casual GOP voter. Are they completely dedicated to Trump or they're just still whoever's going to be a Republican, they're going to support. But amongst the grassroots activist class of the

GOP, there's an enormous amount of evidence that there is still intense loyalty to Donald Trump, so much so that state GOPs are censuring politicians who have disagreed with Trump. There was a rally hosted by Matt Gates in Wyoming against Liz Cheney. There are some wild statements being put out by some state GOP is everything from Texas hinting at secession to Oregon arguing that the January 6th attack was a false flag. There was a I think the most recent censure was a South Carolina GOP censure of a congressman who voted to impeach Trump. And I suppose the question that I have is, Sarah, do you perceive that there will be a lingering, if we fast forward one year from now, there isn't an Twitter, the Facebook oversight board maintains the ban on Trump on Facebook. Are we still in the same position or do you think that there has been a cultural shift in the GOP in which there is going to be not just a dedication to Trump the guy, but Trumpism the ism manifested as manifested by some of the more extreme elements of the party. Trump allegedly just talked to Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example. If you had to put on your forecasting cap, one year from now, are we back to a quote-unquote normal GOP?

Are we still in a sharply divided GOP or at least a GOP that is much more dedicated to Trumpism, if not Trump the guy? That's my question. I will make no such prediction. What I will say is that I think some people at least are thinking about this a little wrong. They see like these big movements, you know, the GOP, Republican voters. And I guess what I would remind them is that what largely this will be decided by is individuals who are seeking to maximize their power or influence and how successful those individuals are at persuading others. So what seems to have happened is sort of the non-Trump people, you know, Jeff Flake, let's pick him as an interesting example.

Right. Rob Portman. Those folks tend to be bowing out. Now, you can say they're bowing out because they have failed in persuading people, and therefore they don't think they can attain power or influence, and that's why they're leaving in the first place. Maybe so, but the fact that they're not even sort of there to contest anything, and there's fewer and fewer people on that side of the ledger, you know, that's something. And then when you look at

some of these voter registration numbers, several thousand people have dropped off, you know, went in, and in the last two months have changed their voter registration from Republican to Independent. You know, in total, we're talking about tens of thousands of people

around the country. Again, that's actually not going to determine anything in particular or even the future of the Republican Party, but it tells me that the non-Trumpism folks aren't that interested in fighting anymore. No, yeah, I agree with that. They're more interested in saying bye. Yeah, like't that interested in fighting anymore? No, yeah, I agree with that. They're more interested in saying bye.

Yeah, like in that sense, it leaves open these paths for the people who are feeling emboldened, want to seek that power and influence. There's a lot more out there, a lot more elbow room for them to squirm around in because the Rob Portmans of the world are like, you know what a lot more elbow room for them to like squirm around in because the Rob Portman's of the world are like, you know what? I just don't, this isn't worth fighting for anymore.

And that's fascinating to me. And, you know, obviously I, uh, changed my voter registration. So I, I think perhaps I'm projecting a little, or I was projecting until the Rob Portman resignation, you know, A guy who said he's not going to run for reelection in Ohio in 2022. He was a shoo-in. He crushed his last reelection. People thought he would be in trouble and he won by double digits. So Rob Portman saying like, this isn't worth it anymore. This wasn't because he was going to lose. This is because he doesn't feel like it. Yeah. There was something written, my friend Russell Moore from the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission wrote a

really interesting piece after January 6th in the Gospel Coalition that I think captures where a lot of people are in this quote-unquote civil war. And he was talking about how the really toxic backlash that he experienced, for example, in dissenting from Donald Trump, that many of us at the dispatch have experienced is not something that is just experienced by people who at the, quote unquote, elite level or people who have public platforms, such as congressmen who dissent from trump or the jeff you know jeff flake former senator or that it is something that filters all the way down the grassroots that if you're in a party committee at a local in a local county and you're going to disagree with trump that it's not just a disagreement that occurs. It's not,

come let us reason together. It is a backlash that can be extremely angry, extremely personal, extremely vicious, and Moore used a word that I think is entirely apt, exhausting. Exhausting. And I think that that's where I feel like if you had to sum up where a lot of folks who politics is not their life, it's not their religion, it's not their be all end all, why be exhausted? Why be part of that raging fight all of the time? And I think that even extends to some politicians. And so the issue isn't, oh, I'm going to fight for the party. It's more like, well, if you're going to be like that, I don't want to be a part of this. And I just don't, I don't need it. I'm a human being who does not need to be involved in this. And I feel like that might be where a lot of folks are. And that then leaves the Trump, I mean, the GOP almost wholly in the possession of the grassroots activist ranks with the people who are the most angry, who are the most dedicated to not just Trump, but Trumpism, this particular style of politics that personalizes disputes and reacts with personalized fury at disagreement. that I have seen emerging more in the last decade than I had seen. I think that the first time I got really involved in sort of Republican politics at the tactical political level was all the way back in early 06, trying to kind of... Sarah, my desires to get Mitt Romney in the White House lasted a long time. It first started in 06. And let me put it this way. The old phrase, politics ain't beanbag. Well, sure. It wasn't beanbag in 06, but it was

also something that I felt like, hey, a lot of pretty normal, great folks are involved in this. And hovering out around the fringe are some not normal, not great folks. And hovering out around the fringe are some not normal, not great folks. And a lot of that I feel like has been inverted. That there's a lot of not normal, not great folks who are at the heart of it and some normal great folks who are at the periphery and that's not sustainable. Or it might be sustainable, but not sustainable in a healthy way. That's sort of my thoughts on it. This ad for Fizz is only 25 seconds long,

but we had to pay for 30. Those leftover five seconds shouldn't just disappear, right? It's kind of like what happens to your unused mobile data at the end of each month. Except at Fizz, your unused data from the end of the month

rolls over so you can use it the next month. Hey, you paid for it, so keep it. Try the other side. Get started at fizz.ca. If you need some time to think it over, here's five seconds. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. All right. Let's do some impeachment. So over the weekend, Donald Trump's defense team, we found out, had largely resigned. He had this defense team that had been made up of a bunch of South Carolina lawyers. We don't know exactly why they all resigned, but it appears that they wanted to

pursue a different line of defense than the former president wanted to pursue, and they have amicably parted ways, at least amicably for now. And he has announced two new attorneys. One is Bruce Castor, and one is David Schoen. I want to spend just a couple minutes on these guys because they will be the ones presenting the defense before we present our own defense. So Bruce Castor, to start with, I mean, this is a well-known, very well-experienced guy. He was actually the acting attorney general for a few days in Pennsylvania. He was the solicitor general of Pennsylvania for a longer amount of time. Real lawyer, don't know what else to say. He was the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania for eight years. Now, here's why this is relevant, David. He's the guy who declined to prosecute Bill Cosby when one of

those very early initial allegations came up that he had drugged and sexually assaulted a woman. Now, I think you will agree with me that there are lots of cases where as more evidence piles up way down the road, we treat these prosecutors like they should have had access to that evidence. And those accusers, when they had to make a declination decision in the first instance, when they didn't have any of that evidence, and they had a shaky witness who was getting some stuff wrong, and they just did not think that there was any chance of prevailing a trial. Those are tough calls. Sometimes they're not aggressive enough in trying to pursue getting more evidence,

et cetera. But when I read that, I was like, well, you know, I don't want to go back and research how much he really knew at that point. Yeah.

So I'll just extend some benefit of the doubt on this one because there certainly is a reasonable explanation that could be available. But then, David, then there was this. So in 2016, Castor had to go into court and talk about the fact,

he testified at a hearing that on the aggravated and decent assault charge against Cosby that his 2005 announcement not to file criminal charges amounted to a pledge that his office and his successors had dropped the case forever. The agreement not to prosecute was never described in that announcement, nor was it made in writing. But he swore under oath that that was a promise that he made and that it was binding on his successors. And remember, he's testifying to this in 2016 after we have all this other stuff. The judge, for what it's worth, did a two-day hearing on it and said the promise was not legally binding

and ordered that the criminal case proceed to a preliminary evidentiary hearing. Literally every single former U.S. attorney, AUSA, I mean, it's just like the internet is littered with former prosecutors going, say what now? It is one thing, of course, to decline a prosecution. Right. But a sort of in perpetuity, regardless of whether more evidence comes forward, I promise not to prosecute you, but also on behalf of my office. It's bizarre to the extent there are such agreements. It's possible. But in general, first of all, you would sort of be giving your word. You would never bind your future office. You would always, if you're the defense attorney, want it in writing. So why wasn't it in writing? And then lastly, you would have to have

some public consideration, right? Like if you're going to have sort of this binding contract, so to speak, we know from contracts law, offer, acceptance, consideration. Right. And so the consideration in this case can't be you personally because you are not acting in a personal capacity. You're acting in your public capacity. So there has to be

something that the public is getting out of this. How would the public get something out of just a random promise not to prosecute unless, for instance, Cosby was turning state's evidence on something else? But there's nothing about that. He wasn't testifying against others. That would't, you know, that would be a pretty, pretty big thing to say no matter what evidence ever comes forward of any future crime, including, you know, in this case, dozens of women saying that you had raped them. So that was stunning. That's Bruce Castor. David, let me introduce you to the other lawyer. Please.

So, David Schoen. I was on his website. Because he says he does voting rights stuff. You know, I know some voting rights things. Been there a time or two. So, here's what his website says. Most recently, David represented the Alabama voters before the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County, Alabama versus Holder, a challenge to the pre-clearance requirement under the Voting Rights Act. I was like, well, that's weird. I remember

that case really, really well. I worked for the attorney who argued it. And the attorney who worked on the brief, actually, several of them are some of my closest friends. I was like, I must forget this guy. So I went to that brief, the cert petition and the merits brief. And the counsels of record are, as I remember them, Bert Ryan from Wiley Ryan argued the case. Uh, the other councils of record were, uh, Will Concevoy, Tom McCarthy, who have now formed their own firm, uh, Concevoy McCarthy, which you might've heard of. So then I was like, well, could be amicus. He does say Alabama voters, so maybe there was like an amicus brief from Alabama voters or something.

So I went and looked at the Council of Record for every amicus brief in that case, David. You have time on your hands, Sarah. This is what I did with the baby this morning. He played with a train, and I went through amicus briefs. We both found some joy in our morning. I know this will come as a shock to you.

Yeah. His name isn't on any of the amicus briefs as council of record. So I don't know what to make of that. Basically I can't find evidence to support the claim. That's about all I can really, that's as far as I can go on saying that it's a weird thing to claim because, you know, I thought like maybe he was just counsel, you know, local counsel at the district court level or something. But what his website says is David represented the Alabama voters before the United States Supreme court in Shelby County versus Holder.

So I don't know. Um, so the next sentence is he he has represented candidates contesting election procedures and results in a variety of cases, and he consulted with counsel for the Gore team during the election battle in Florida that arose in the 2000 presidential election. Kind of sounds like a phone call, to be honest. I also tried to find any evidence of his name coming up in the 2000 litigation and was unable to do so. So then, not to worry, David, my research did not stop there. I found an interview. I wasn't worried, Sarah. I wasn't worried that your research would stop there. I just want to go on the record as saying that.

He represented, he said he represented Roger Stone and Jeffrey Epstein. And I was like, whoa, okay, that's a big, you know, you go from Shelby County, which maybe he didn't actually work on, I guess. I can't find evidence of it. And then all of a sudden, like Stone and Epstein, this is a varied legal practice he has.

So he gives this interview and there's just this really weird moment in it. So this is from the interviewer. You trained as an actor. How did you execute your role on the discovery channel show on jeffrey epstein believed the longest standing child trafficking case in history showing i studied at the actor's studio and herbert bergoff studio the producer approached me while in dc on the stone case they sent a production team from new york rented a townhouse and filmed there

no lines to learn they just asked me questions It aired as a three-hour special on Investigation Discovery Channel. I did some interviews to promote it on Fox, Good Day New York, Daily Mail. There is an upcoming HBO special I've been asked to appear in, but I've had enough. Takes too much time away from legal work. Three different agents have called me. David, to the extent this is a window into what we're going to see next week in the impeachment hearing. Yeah. There's a lot of, I don't know.

The way I read that, it sounded very defensive to me. And it made me think that several things in that answer were not true. I don't know whether they're true. I just want to say that. But the way that he says them, if he is telling the truth,

he has a way of sounding like he's not. That's a good diplomatic way of putting it. So, Sarah, I'm fascinated by this legal representation issue because it actually raises some really interesting questions about legal representation in general, and how do you respond, and how do you handle legal representation in general? So, a few days ago, it looks like almost the entire, as you said, Trump legal team quit. Why did they quit? Well, there was a strategic difference with the client.

Apparently, this is, you know, according to reports, Trump wanted to continue to argue that he had won the election. And his legal team wanted to have a very different kind of defense to impeachment. Which, by the way, arguing you'd won the election isn't technically really a defense to impeachment. It's not relevant. It's not a defense. Yes, it's not a defense to the charge. So apparently, again, according to these reports,

Trump wanted that airtime, that time you have in the Senate with the eyes of at least some of the nation on you, he wanted to relitigate the 2020 election. And his legal team said, no. And that raises an important sort of point of practice because we know we have a lot of younger lawyers or law students or people who want to be law students who listen to this podcast. And the answer, when you have a client,

your client, it does not exactly function like a boss. The client is not exactly a boss. It's not a precise analog. That your job as the attorney is to represent the interests of your client ethically, is to represent the interests of your client ethically, to ethically represent the interests of your client. And many times the client wants more from you than that. I remember one of my favorite stories as a young lawyer, the guy who's my mentor in the practice of law, he was a former Marine JAG officer.

He was the chairman of our firm, just really incredibly accomplished litigator in Kentucky. And he called me and I'd worked on a summary judgment motion and we'd just gotten the results back and we had won. We'd won. And he says he wanted me to be on the phone with the client when he delivered the good news of the victory. And he said he thought it would be educational. And I was very interested in this. I mean, I thought it would be a celebratory call. We'd won on very narrow technical grounds, but the case was done. It was over.

So he calls the client, and the client is livid. The client is very upset. And why was he upset? Because we hadn't won on the broader grounds. We'd only won on the narrow technical grounds. And I'll never forget the next words. The chairman of the firm, he puts down the phone. I'm just gobsmacked at the anger of the client. And he says, the practice of law would be magnificent if it weren't for clients, which I thought was just hilarious. But he said, what you have to understand is a lot of clients want what the law cannot deliver. They want it to be a declaration, not just you won under this legal doctrine or that legal doctrine, or we find the facts are in your favor or not in your favor. But they want a declaration that you're right, you're virtuous, and the other side is going to hell. They want a sweeping vindication. And it sounds like that's kind of what Trump's initial legal team was looking at, was Trump was wanting the impeachment proceedings to not just be a victory for him in the sense of an acquittal, but to try to re-litigate 2020, to put him to reaffirm his expressed belief that he was the rightful winner.

And that's not ever what this proceeding was going to be for him. I'm going to be interested to see the relationship also between Castor and Schoen. These are very different lawyers with very different experience on the face of it. By the way, in that interview that I was reading you, the last question in the interview, and this is like out of nowhere, by the way, the question before it is on police misconduct cases that he had worked on, you know, like qualified immunity stuff. Last question. Last word on Jeffrey Epstein. Again, like the only question about Jeffrey Epstein was the one I read you about his acting history. Last word on Jeffrey Epstein. Schoen. I still think he was murdered.

Last word on Jeffrey Epstein, Schoen. I still think he was murdered. Okay. So he was actually not Epstein's lawyer, by the way. He went to meet with Epstein eight days before his death, I believe,

about representing him, but never actually represented him. So anyway, there's just a lot of, a lot of interesting stuff coming up here. But David, our whole thing about defending Donald Trump's impeachment came up in an interesting way. We were on our editorial call with all of the dispatch bigwigs. And we were talking about like, you know, we should get someone to write sort of the best defense, the definitive defense of Donald Trump and like who we could get to write that, etc. And I said, you know, gosh, I actually think David and I might be in the best position to do that. As long as it can, as long as David and I can find a way to be clear that we are doing this sort of in our attorney-ness, not our personal beliefs, but sort of what a good defense team would argue. What is their best argument?

Not quite devil's advocate. I don't know. What do you call that, David? Well, I think of it as an intellectual exercise. I mean, I, you know, look, I, I used to teach law school. I taught at Cornell law school, um, for a while and I taught legal advocacy. And one of the things I did at the start of the semester, my, my semester was a case. And my students argued one side or the other of a, one year it was, the case was centered around a free speech, around threatening communications at a school.

Another year, shoot, I can't remember what it was the other year. But anyway, so we set up a case. And I said, here's the deal, guys. For this to work, we have to split evenly. And so I have to have, if there's 20 people in this room, I have to have 10 on the plaintiff's side and I have to have 10 on the defense side. So I want you to think hard and I'm not, if I have to assign somebody to one or the other, I will, but I want you to think hard about walking through a position that you don't agree with and trying to see if you can understand it so well that you can advocate it.

And I never really had a problem. People were actually eager and interested to do that you're not going to or your witnesses through a mock cross-examination, you better be cross-examining the heck out of them. You better be poking all the holes. And so, no, I think this is something that is actually a very useful exercise. And how about this? Let's break it down into two parts, Sarah. So part one, I'm going to ask you a question, and I'm going to ask myself the same question after you answer it. That is, what is your strategic goal? If Donald Trump hired you to be his lawyer and you agreed to do it, what is your overall strategic goal? And number two is,

what is your tactical approach to getting to that strategic goal? Because I've kind of got a two part. If I was Donald Trump's lawyer, I'd have a two part strategic goal. Okay. I'm curious about yours first. You go. Okay. Here, here. So here's mine. Um, one of the things that I found, cause I, one of the things that I found was, and this goes back to the little anecdote I told, my clients usually had two interests. One that I could meet, or two goals. One I could meet and one I could contribute to. And to actually have a real robust relationship with the client, they had to feel

as if you were accomplishing both, okay, to some extent. So here's the thing that was the narrow goal. The narrow goal was win your lawsuit. In other words, if you were filing a case that says someone has retaliated against you on the basis of your political preference or your religious beliefs, prove retaliation. Prove retaliation.

Prove the elements of your claim. That's your goal. That's your narrow goal. But they also had another goal. And that other goal was, or lack of a better term, show that I'm a good person too. In other words, make it to where the jury isn't reluctantly ruling for me, make it to where the jury isn't reluctantly ruling for me make it to where the jury wants to rule for me and and the two goals are not can sometimes be a little bit in conflict but they actually dovetail pretty nicely because you do want a judge to or a jury to feel not just that what they're doing is necessary but what they're doing is necessary, but what they're doing is right. And those two things are not always the same.

And so if Donald Trump called me and I was willing to represent him, I would have two goals. One is easy, acquittal. Acquittal. So, Mr. President, we're going to get you acquitted. And in many ways, you would say that was the easiest goal. I mean, he's already got, there's already a lot of evidence that this jury is pre-cooked in his favor. Rarely do you enter into a trial where at the jury selection process, they already say to you, yeah, I'm inclined to, I'm pretty much going to rule for you.

So you know you've got a pre-cooked jury. But here's the other thing. It is acquittal and rehabilitation. It's acquittal and rehabilitation. So the two things I think would be the strategic goal that I would walk into. And the acquittal would be, I think, the easier of the two. The other thing that I would try to do if I was him, if I was representing him, is I would be trying to rewrite the first draft of

history around the post-election contest. And that's why I think you would have a real tension with the previous defense team, because if his desire is to press forward on the election was stolen narrative, you're not rewriting that first draft of history. You're chiseling the one that already exists into stone. And that's a huge tactical problem that also would jeopardize, to some extent, the primary strategy of achieving acquittal.

Because if you're hammering down your worst possible argument, you're hammering down your worst possible argument, you're jeopardizing your primary goal. So it's easy to see why the defense team would say, I don't want to be a part of that. So anyway, that was my thought. You know, I think my strategic goal, when you asked me that, I'm assuming acquittal's in the bag. There's really, I mean, maybe there's something you could do to get a whole bunch of Republican senators to switch their vote to vote to convict, but yeah, I'm going to assume acquittal's a done deal. So in consultation with my client, I'm going to tell him that our best strategic goal is to position him well to run again in 2024. And that this is our, you know, especially now that

he's been off social media, this will be the biggest audience that he has had since leaving office and, uh, will have for at least some time into the future to make that case. And it's, it's actually not that far off of your vert, you know, rewriting the first sort of version of history about all of this. But I would position it in such a way to him and to myself that the goal is to speak to your voters. still in this, that you plan to fight for them, and that you're going to prevail in 2024, which is why they're doing this to you. I'm going to use that as the motive for why this is happening. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that kind of connects with the rehabilitation point. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that far off. Because I think one of the things that if you're

representing him is you want to re-establish his winner identity. Yeah. Because that is a huge part of the appeal that he initially had, especially, you know, there were a lot of people who held their nose and voted for him in 2016 who basically would have bulldozed anyone to get to the polls in 2020. There was that transformation, and a lot of that was due to this winner identity. And so I think that reestablishing that winner identity would be absolutely key. Which, by the way, would mean, if possible, peeling off some of those five republicans who had voted to keep the case going uh if the then if he if that number increases beyond five and he's well into a definite record of number of politicians from his own party voting to convict it kind of takes some

of the luster off but if he can peel away some of that five and it's back down to like say mitt romney and i don't know susan collins or mitt romney and ben sass then he's got this very small target that he can then fixate on in a very what he would perceive as a very small faction to crush um before moving into 2024 potentially either himself or one of his kids or his handpicked successor. Yeah. All right, Sarah, how do you do it? Well, I want to raise one other strategic goal that would not be mine. I wouldn't recommend it to my client.

I don't think you would either. But Rand Paul has made this case in an op-ed that he published last week in the Washington Examiner. I'll just read the last, basically the last paragraph. I want to put the Senate on record. I will insist on holding a vote that makes every last senator vote on whether they believe this proceeding, the impeachment trial of a private citizen, is unconstitutional, illegal, and essentially a bill of attainder on whether there is any fairness or due process in having a partisan Democrat already on record

as favoring impeachment presiding over this trial and on whether this is how our politics should be. Let me phrase that in a different way, David. Okay. Let's assume that my client tells me that he doesn't want to run again in 2024. He's, I mean, just like, screw these people, right? What I want is revenge. So I want as many of these Republican senators to vote to convict me as want to. I want them on record,

and then I want to go after them politically. So I want to get them saying as much stuff as I can use when backing a primary opponent in their next election. And I want to basically go through a whole process over the remaining years in my life of burning down the Republican Party. And this is my first step of getting the evidence I need to burn those people to the ground. Again, not a strategy I'd be interested in on behalf of any client, but one wonders in reading this, huh, interesting. It ends with, this trial is a sham, a travesty, and a dark blot on the history of our country. I urge my colleagues to reconsider this kangaroo court and move forward to debate the great issues of our day.

As emphasized by your cat at the very moment you finish that. Zoo does not think that Rand Paul makes a particularly persuasive case there. Also, God, David, it just bothers me so much when people like reconsider this kangaroo court due process. This isn't a trial. Yeah. Because then it would be a bill of attainder. So a bill of attainder, just so we can spend ever so brief moments, this is banned in the constitution. Congress basically can pass any legislation they want that fits into their limited powers, of course.

But one thing they cannot do is pass a bill of attainder. And that is basically where the Congress creates a special law that says David French committed arson. He is guilty of arson. Now, there hasn't been a trial for David French. David French wasn't arrested for arson. It's just like Congress gets to decide that David committed arson. That is what is not constitutional. That is a bill of attainder. Impeachment, the process of impeachment is written into the constitution. It is not in the judicial process. I know I have screamed this at the top of my lungs on Twitter and elsewhere for all these people who think that senators are jurors and so-and-so's the judge.

And like, nope, it's not. It has certain things that will remind you of a trial, but it is a political process. And it is not- You know, but that- Yeah. But you just hit, okay, I've got on my, I'm in my Sith chamber now. Yes, I'm in my Sith chamber now.

Yes. I'm in my Sith chamber and I'm getting ready to defend Donald Trump. And I think, a trial, I shall make it. Right. That is, that's my goal. My goal is to say, okay, what we have here is impeaching somebody and trying to convict somebody, and emphasizing this word convict, for something that's not a crime. Now, all kinds of people will jump up and down

and say impeachment doesn't involve just crime. This is a political process. It doesn't involve crimes. And then I say, but, well, then what's the limiting principle here? If you're going to impeach somebody for some nebulously termed abuse of power, that's not really defined anywhere. When we have a criminal code that actually does define,

look, in 1800, the federal criminal code was almost nothing. There was almost nothing there. But now here we are 220, you know, 221 years after 1800. And we have a criminal code. It's voluminous. It probably covers too many things, Sarah. And you know what it does not cover? The conduct of Donald Trump. What Donald Trump did nowhere in this incredibly voluminous federal criminal code, can you tell me that he violated the law? And because your audience is twofold, you're talking to the senators who are already inclined to acquit you, what are you doing? You're giving them something to hold on to, that they can turn around and then argue to the public. And I've always said this about impeachment.

Impeachment is not a legal process, but it is a legally informed political process where every impeachment that I've seen, now this is number three in my adult life. I was only five when Nixon was about to be impeached. So three in my adult life, all three have had an element of argument about criminality. In 1998, there was a big question, did Clinton commit perjury technically? Did he technically commit obstruction of justice? Where in theory he could

have been impeached even if he didn't commit perjury and obstruction of justice. There was a lot of argument in January 2020 over, wait a minute, what crime did Trump commit? What crime did Trump commit? And then one of the unfortunate side effects of using the term incitement is that there's a legal definition of incitement for which he has very good arguments that he did not meet those elements. He has good arguments. You and I have talked about it. So if I'm tactically pursuing this, one of my front lines of defense is, where's the crime? Where's the crime? And then I pounce on the response, well, there doesn't have to be a crime. I pounce on that because then that says, wait a minute, then where are limiting principles? This is an abuse of power, et cetera, et cetera. So that would be phase one for me, Sarah.

So I put this under my outline, constitutionality, he did not commit a high crime or misdemeanor. As your co-counsel, I'm going to stand up after you make that brilliant legal argument and make the political argument that the reason that they're doing this, that they're pursuing an unconstitutional impeachment because there was no crime, is because they want to silence my client. The way you know they want to silence him- Cancel culture. They have cancel cultured him. They have forced these, you know, uh, regular, you know, folks to cancel him. And then they've colluded with big tech to remove him from all of those platforms because he was defending you. He was representing you. And now when he gives a speech, a speech that he has given

over and over again to his supporters, you out there, they want to impeach him for it. He's not even in office, mind you. We'll get to that as my second piece of the outline in a second. They want to cancel him for speaking out, for supporting you, for defending you for four years while in office. And he didn't even commit a crime. It not only wasn't a crime, it was his First Amendment protected right to say what he said, the same right that you have. And if they want to take it away from him,

they want to take it away from you. Clever use of cancel culture, co-counsel. Thank you. Clever use of cancel culture. Okay, so my next point on my outline is constitution. It's unconstitutional because he's out of office council. Yeah. So my, my argument there is essentially going to be, look, and this is where you're going to make an appeal to authority. So what you're going to do at this point is you're going to say it's not my opinion that this is

unconstitutional and then i'm going to refer to like michael litig's opinion i'm going to refer to the opinion of scholars around uh that have been published since the impeachment while trump was still in office since the impeachment there's a variety of arguments that have been made across the political spectrum or across the media spectrum that say, no, this is improper. And so what you're going to do is you're going to make an appeal to authority. Don't trust my view of this. Donald Trump's attorney. Here's the view of a scholar who is not being paid by Donald Trump, who's just analyzing

the text and history of the Constitution. by Donald Trump is just analyzing the text and history of the Constitution. And what you're wanting to do at the very least is say, is your worst case scenario is you just muddy the waters over whether this is constitutional and appropriate. You raise the idea that this is a hotly disputed circumstance, and then therefore you're setting a really difficult and negative precedent. And in best case, you're just going to essentially be able to give to your jurors who are already willing to acquit you something very concrete to hold on to, a concrete argument that comes from an external authority that they can share with their constituents and their constituents

can share with people on Facebook and Twitter, et cetera, to say, here are authorities who say this is wrong. And so I'm going to rely less on my argument that this would be unconstitutional and much more on the argument of other scholars, almost as they're my expert witnesses. They're my expert witnesses. So that's how I would do phase two. Thank you, counsel. Persuasive. Senators, I want to read to you

from Article 2, Section 4, the only place in the Constitution where it talks about who can be impeached. It's the only place. You all have your pocket constitutions at your desk. I put them all there. I've highlighted this for you. Just flip on over

Here are the people who can be impeached the president comma vice president and all civil officers of the united states That's it folks It doesn't say anything about former officials. It doesn't say anything about private citizens. And for those of you watching on TV, let me tell you where this goes.

If they can impeach a former president, a private citizen, they can impeach you. Maybe you said something online that people didn't like, and they don't want you to ever hold office. Maybe that's their goal. Maybe that's what they're going to say at your impeachment trial. But according to this logic, they can have an impeachment trial against you because they can impeach anyone they want in the country, and they can say they're doing it to make sure that you never have a job in the United States to hold office or any appointment to anything because they don't like what you said. That's what's happening here. They didn't like what the private citizen

they're trying right now said. Nothing in the Constitution says this is okay. And if we say it's okay today, if you senators say it's okay today, every single person watching on TV can be impeached next time. They're going to impeach Trump first and Tucker Carlson next. That's right. Seriously. But David, according to this logic, what prevents them from impeaching Tucker Carlson? Maybe, you know, Tucker says he's going to run in 2024 and a Democratic Senate

and a Democratic House decides to head that off. Well, counselor, since I'm on your team, I find that to be an incredibly persuasive argument. All right. Uh, number three, David, in our outline, uh, the article of impeachment itself. Right. I think there's a, I would spend a few hours just attacking the article of impeachment. Yes. Well, that was going to be a big part of my point one. Okay.

Attacking that through the legal lens of incitement. What is incitement? But anyway, proceed, co-counsel. Well, so this is an argument actually that Chip Roy made that he would have voted for an article of impeachment that was perhaps more specific, but he wouldn't have voted for this article of impeachment. more specific, but he wouldn't have voted for this article of impeachment. But I think, you know,

at the risk of violating what you don't do in media interviews, which is repeat the allegation against you, you know, the folks who support Donald Trump watching this on TV, I think don't, you know, are going to be less moved by that. He interfered with the peaceful transition of power. Here's what Donald Trump did that day. He gave a rally to his supporters. He gave a rally, you know, go through all the times he gave a rally and all the things he said at that rally about all the things they've accomplished in the last four years and all the good things

he's done for the people of this country. That's what they consider interfering with the peaceful transfer of power. Now, mind you, when Barbara Boxer did this in 2004, they didn't consider that interfering with the peaceful transfer of power, yada, yada. Anyway, we don't have to harp on this one, but I would go through the article of impeachment and make it look as partisan and as liberal as I possibly could line by line. Yeah, no, yeah, I agree with that. Absolutely. Absolutely. about the um impeaching the argument about impeaching officials after they're in office which is the shorthand way in which a lot of this has been made putting i'm now taking off my donald trump council hat oh okay is that he was impeached while he was in office so you know the the question is about impeach not not about impeaching after he's out of office. So that sort of raises, that deals with the parade

of horribles involving, you know, like impeaching Tucker Carlson, impeaching George Washington, because you don't, you want to impeach all of the presidents who were slave owners or impeaching, you know, you name it, that he was actually impeached while in office. And I think that if the impeachment managers are going to deal effectively with this argument, they're going to have to hammer home that what they're talking about is a trial after the impeachment of a sitting president.

And I think that because we're so loose with the language of impeachment, we often say, well, is he going to be impeached? Meaning removed. It's impeachment and removal. And so we're so loose with that language. between impeaching someone while in office and trying them after, which precludes a lot of the parade of horribles that have been sort of raised as the slippery slope. But anyway, okay, my cap is back on. Get that hat back on. Sorry, sorry. I want to, there'd be a little asterisk in my outline here.

If for some reason something had gone catastrophically wrong and I was now actually fighting for acquittal, as in we had, for some reason something had gone catastrophically wrong and I was now actually fighting for acquittal, as in we had for some reason all these Republican senators had flipped on us and we have a big problem on our hands and I'm actually trying to get my guy acquitted. Like Trump got back on Twitter and then did worse. The argument that I would make that I actually think would be the most effective in flipping Senate votes is that he was impeached for the wrong conduct, that the conduct that they have in the article impeachment is political. They have a political disagreement with him, that the conduct that they should have impeached him for and they just didn't was the conduct after the riot has started anything that happened uh with the national guard for instance uh not calling for folks to you know back off remain peaceable for hours that that was actually uh the conduct that would rise to the level of abusive office and a high crime and misdemeanor. And that they didn't include any of that. And so because of that, you must vote to

acquit. That is when you are bailing water out of a sinking ship. Right. My boat is going down. That would be, I just need one more vote. Okay, back to the- Senators, I know that he took action or inaction that might've led to your death, but that's not really in this political document that you don't actually have to meet all of the elements of to throw him out of office. That's your, okay, we're bailing now. We're bailing now.

Get you a bucket. All right, last piece in my outline is a prudential argument, which is that this impeachment trial and the conviction of Donald Trump would be bad for the country. And it undermines our democratic institutions. It does not strengthen them. Right.

Counsel, do you have arguments along those lines? Well, this is going back to your unity argument in some ways that if this is a time of healing why are we doing something that has never been done before and and never been done before and not only never been done before never been done to a president united states who still commands the overwhelming support of his party. This is not sort of housecleaning a universally discredited figure. This is a power play. This is a power move of one faction against the other to diminish and to discredit the leader of the opposition, not just anybody, but the actual leader of the political opposition in this country. And there is, if you, this is where you say, okay, I understand that you are angry about the transition. I understand that you are angry about the riot, but the most important thing that you can do right now is cool tensions in this country. Cooling tensions in this country is your patriotic duty. It is not vengeance. And I would

use terms like vengeance. I would use terms like revenge to describe what was happening. I would stay away. I would rebut every opportunity in which somebody used words like accountability or justice. Because this is where you flip around and you say, wait a minute, if you want justice, go file your criminal case. That's the justice system. This is our political system. I know I just made some arguments about legality. Ignore those. Ignore those. We're in a different phase. I'm in my closing arguments. I'm making all my arguments in the alternative. This is where I'm appealing to sort of patriotism. And it says, when in this country will anyone start to prioritize political peace? When will people start to prioritize cooling the temperature? Someone has to do it.

It needs to be you. It needs to be you. And that's an argument that is resonating big time with the Trump base, that is resonating big time with the Trump base, which is, of course, of course, when people have when when somebody is feeling attacked for their political conduct, their view of unity is going to be their definition of unity. But that appeal to unity as a way to cool temperatures in this country, I think would be an indispensable part of any defense. Yeah, the only part I would add, co-counsel, is that the only outcome that is possible here if you vote to convict senators is to prevent voters from getting to vote for Donald Trump in the future. It is literally the most anti-democratic thing that you could want is that you don't trust voters. You don't trust them to look at what happened on January 6th.

You want to tell them that what happened was unacceptable and that they're not allowed to vote for this person ever again. And again, you want to look at motive? To me, it looks like the Democratic Party doesn't want to have to go up against Donald Trump again. They don't want to face him at the ballot box because they know, voters, what he did for you. They know that want to face him at the ballot box because they know, voters, what he did for you. They know that you still support him because he puts America first, etc., etc., etc.

He made America great again, etc., etc., etc. He did this, this, this, this, this. They're afraid of losing to Donald Trump in 2024, so they don't want to give you that option. And that in the name of protecting democratic norms is they want to create the most anti-democratic outcome they possibly, possibly can today. Please vote to acquit. And that, Sarah, is why people hate lawyers, because they can in such a compelling way, because think about it. You would be talking about to protect democracy, you need to have no accountability on the guy who threatened the peaceful transition of power more than anyone, any president,

any president, arguably in American history. But to protect, that's good though. Thank you. That's good. You had me. Yeah. I was like, yeah. What are the chances that like 10 years from now,

someone pulls this audio, strips all of the context out of it and just takes like that line that I said and is like, see, Sarah, Sarah was supporting acquittal. Like really hot, right? 10 years from now, what about, no, it's not 10 years from now. It's like 10 days after this podcast.

And I'll be like, no, context. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. yeah yeah exactly exactly no it's i think that's a near inevitability which is why we we also have on recorded uh our ability to slice out a little bit of dialogue and say hey bad faith twitter troll this is what we were really doing so uh we're going a little long, but I think Sarah, you have incredibly, you have you have ably

represented your client today. But I have one quick cultural question for you. Yes. Okay. I'm assuming because we haven't talked about it before, you've not seen Lupin. I have not, but I did watch the trailer, and I'm considering it. We are currently re-watching

deadwood but uh it's been a little slow going a variety of reasons related to a seven month old who has been waking up a little early recently we just started peakaky Blinders. Good. Very good. Okay, so here's the question. You're watching a show. You're watching a French Netflix show. Do you watch it in French with English subtitles or do you watch it with the English overdub?

Not a question. Not a close call. Overdubs are Satan's playground. No, definitely not. I think we've never agreed on something more. To not be able to hear the actor's voice, even if you don't speak the language,

you are missing part of the art to me. So for instance, in Narcos, which is almost entirely in Spanish, I loved watching with the subtitles because I also was getting to brush up on my Spanish, although I will say that most of what I brushed up on from Narcos

was maybe not polite company Spanish, but nevertheless. Well, I started watching it and when you start Netflix, it will by default give you at least on my netflix it will give you the english overdub terrible choice netflix terrible default everyone had told me watch lupin watch lupin and it started and i thought it's five minutes in i'm like this is the abomination that causes desolation as foretold in the book of Daniel. This is horrible.

And then I was like, okay, I can switch it. Which made me realize someone also told me to watch Fauda, an Israeli show similar to Homeland, anti-terrorism show. And I started watching it. It's overdubbed. And I couldn't tolerate it. So I'm trying to figure out, I'm going to go back and see if I can get it

to where I can watch it where they're in Hebrew and Arabic and I've got the subtitles. Now, wait, David. Now there is a potential exception to this rule that I'm curious

where you fall on foreign cartoon overdubbing. I'm thinking anime here, for instance. You know, I might have to turn in my nerd card. You don't watch Japanese anime, David? How strange. I have never seen in my life, I don't think, a foreign cartoon.

And I've never watched even a minute of anime. So in general, I'm a little torn. I'll do either one. But in general, I don't mind the dubbing on a foreign cartoon because it matches up with the mouth just fine. And it sort of depends of why I'm watching it. I guess if it really was

because it was some great acted piece that maybe I do want the voice of the original actors, but generally it's for the plot in which case the dubbing actors. I'm sure also delightful.

Right. So does it can I keep my nerd card if I say the reason i haven't watched anime is because i was too busy playing world of warcraft yeah i think okay i think that's fair okay all right all right that's a relief that's relief all right well that is our advisory opinions for monday so i'm sure we're going to have a lot to talk about Thursday. We're going to have, there's going to, there is continued impeachment battles over the text and meaning of the Constitution. And I just, as a preview, I want to, on Thursday, at least dip our toe into the water of some of Professor Michael McConnell's arguments about impeachment, which I think have been, he has made them in the Volokh conspiracy, which is Eugene Volokh's kind of microsite on Reason.com. And if you love this podcast, you will love the Volokh Conspiracy.

Shout out, by the way, Eugene Volokh actually wrote a whole law review article on the current applications of Gibney, that free speech case that I talked about last week. A reader sent that in. So thank you. The law review article is called The Speech Integral to Criminal Conduct Exception that he published in 2016 in Cornell Law Review. But yeah, David, I love that The Volet Conspiracy mini blog on the Reason site. I read it all the time. One last fun note, though, David, that I haven't told you. The Supreme Court has indicated that we might have an opinion day. They might release opinions not on a normal, like not during a sitting, not on an opinion day.

So we could any given day now have an opinion day. Oh, fun. Okay. Well, you know, opinion day is just Christmas day for advisory opinions listeners. So, all right. Fantastic. Everyone, please go to Apple Podcasts. Please rate us.

Please subscribe. Do not rate us on your agreement with the arguments that we made today for Donald Trump, but please rate us otherwise. And we appreciate it. So many of you have already done that, and we appreciate it very much. It helps us out a great deal. So thank you for listening, and we will be back on Thursday. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame

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