Advisory Opinions - Known Unknowns

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

During a press conference on Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for President Trump’s removal from office. “Yesterday, the president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America,” Pelosi said, shortly before demanding the invocation of the 25th Amendment. On today’s podcast, our hosts talk about the possibility of impeaching President Trump, the legal machinations surrounding the 25th Amendment, and the social media crackdown against President Trump. Stick around for their thoughts on Merrick Garland as Biden’s attorney general pick. Show Notes: -Articles of impeachment prepared by Representatives Ted Lieu, David Cicilline, and Jamie Raskin. -“Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation” by David French in The Dispatch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker. And, you know, Sarah, when we started this podcast, I honestly did not expect, as pessimistic as I was about the Trump administration, as pessimistic as I was about the Trump administration, to be talking about an insurrectionary invasion of the Capitol building and its possible implications for impeachment or 25th Amendment removal of the president in the last 13 days of his administration. But that's where we are right now. That is the topic of the day right now. And I still have trouble wrapping my mind around it. Yesterday was a difficult day to wrap one's mind

around. Yeah. We've gotten so many emails and texts, though. I feel like we need to immediately dive in to all things that advisory opinion is and just start wrapping our heads. So here's what we're going to do, y'all. We're going to talk about, in order, we're going to talk about impeachment, the possibility of it, the latest developments as of our taping of the podcast. We're going to talk about the mechanics and a very interesting question, which is, can you impeach a president after he's left office? It's not as wild as you might think. Then we're going to move into the 25th Amendment. What is the 25th Amendment. What is the 25th Amendment? Is there any momentum for the 25th Amendment? And 25th Amendment, for those who don't know, it provides for the removal of the

president if he's unable to fulfill the duties of his office. Then we're going to talk about the social media crackdown against President Trump from multiple social media platforms. I have thoughts. And then we'll end up with a special edition of Insider DOJ Insight by Sarah Isger about one Merrick Garland, Joe Biden's nominee for Attorney General. So you will not want to miss that. for Attorney General. So you will not want to miss that. But let's start right off. The latest Sarah on impeachment is that Nancy Pelosi has given at a press conference, essentially called on the cabinet to remove Trump and then said in the event that the cabinet did not remove Trump under the 25th Amendment, they would consider impeachment. Impeachment resolution has already been drawn up. The text of it declares that his

conduct on January 6th after the mob, as we all saw, unlawfully breached the Capitol. This is as the impeachment resolution states, unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress and the vice president, interfered with the joint session's solemn constitutional duty to certify election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts. And what the impeachment resolution says is that Trump's conduct was consistent with efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election. It includes within that list the call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that we've already talked about, that I've written about. And it's all lumped into a broad claim of abuse of power. And that's where we are.

There's no articles of impeachment filed as of yet. So far as I know, there hasn't been a coherent threat to impeach issued by Nancy Pelosi. While at the same time, she's sort of begging the cabinet to do work for her. And there is a growing call not so much from republican office holders but a really uh amazing amount of uh conservatives across really across sort of the the ideological spectrum of the right calling for the removal of trump spectrum of the right calling for the removal of Trump. And this is where we are. It's a live possibility, maybe, not probability by any stretch of the imagination, 13 days from the end of Trump's term. Let me begin open-ended and we'll get more specific. What are your thoughts about the current state of play politically? And then we'll get more specific. What are your thoughts about the current state of play politically?

And then we'll talk about feasibility. Right. So first of all, impeachment exists for exactly this moment. There is not a specific crime that Trump committed. You and I, I mean, we get emails and stuff asking about sedition or inciting a riot. I'm not saying someone can't make a non-frivolous argument, but it's pretty... That's not what we're talking about here. That's not really what he did wrong.

What he did wrong was that he did it while being president of the United States. Right. That is what impeachment is for, especially when a president tries to impede the role of the legislature. And you want to talk about what the founders were most afraid of. It was tyranny. It was someone trying to take the office of the president and turn it into whether it would be a monarchy, like following a bloodline,

or just tyranny and authoritarianism. This is what they were trying to prevent. That's why impeachment exists. So in that sense, impeachment is the answer you're looking for. But you have a problem. There's only a few days left. And even if you need to start in a House committee, you could probably do everything in the House relatively quickly. I think you would not have a huge problem doing it in 13 days, for instance. But he'd have to be tried and convicted in the Senate. That I do not think you have time for. So in that sense, we're already to a second question, which is what happens if you were to impeach President Trump in 10 days? Could you try him in the Senate after he leaves office?

And that, my friend, is a very fun question that we'll get to in just a minute. And here's why I think that's a very interesting question and highly, highly relevant because you might say, what does it matter if you impeach, if you convict someone after they've left office because he's already out, you can't remove him. But the Constitution provides for another kind of penalty here. And that penalty is barring someone from holding public office. And that is a separate penalty from removal. It is something that we discussed in our dispatch editorial. It is a separate, and so what that would mean is that Donald Trump could not be president again.

And so in that sense- He also couldn't be federal dog catcher. Right, exactly, exactly. And I'm glad you said federal because- He could be the state federal dog catcher. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I'm glad you said federal because. He could be the state's dog catcher. He could be governor of, you know, New York, but. Article one, section three, judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law.

What that section was trying to say was the U.S. Senate can't convict you of the articles of impeachment and sentence you to prison or to death. It can only remove you from office and say, you can't come back. And then once you have been impeached and removed from office, then you are liable to trial and conviction and jail, death, whatever else, for instance, for treason after that conviction. But basically that the U.S. Senate, while sitting as a quasi-jury, and you and I have talked about how the US Senate is not actually sitting as a jury, this is not a court proceeding. But when they are sitting in that capacity in an impeachment trial, their only option is convict, which results in removal from office and barring them from holding a federal elected office or an office

of honor, which I think in this case would mean, for instance, a cabinet appointment or something to that effect. Right. Yeah. And so that's what makes this a live issue. In other words, if the only remedy is removal, then you have a classic mootness argument. But if the remedy is also barring from office, then that is a penalty that could be live and could apply. Now, before you dive in, because you've been busy doing a little bit of historical research, before you dive in, let me tell you what I think this is a fascinating question, but I'm skeptical it would ever be fully resolved in court. I'm skeptical about that. I'm skeptical. I would be worried if you removed someone from participation in public

office after they were already out of office, that a court might view this as sort of a political question, whether or not impeachment post-presidency is effective. impeachment post-presidency is effective. I don't think you could sue ahead of time. I don't think you could get any sort of declaratory relief on this, for instance. But if you were impeached and then convicted in the Senate, removed from office and barred from holding office, and then you choose to run for Congress, let's say, And then you choose to run for Congress, let's say, then I think you could sue whether a court would hear it or would kick it on political question.

Then that'd be really interesting. You know, if I were a judge, I'd definitely kick it on political question. But I know that there are certainly some judges out there who wouldn't because it is a it is a, it is a real issue and it is a question of constitutional interpretation. The constitution simply does not speak to this. There's no verb tenses for us to look to it. It, you know, it, the, the only two clauses really are the one that I read, which said judgment in cases of impeachment. Okay. That there's no tense there. There's no, who could be impeached there. Article two, section four of the constitution says the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office

on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors that to me, and we'll get a little bit more specific on this in a little bit, not former president, not someone who previously held the office of president, but it doesn't say can be removed from office. These are the only people. It just says that those people will be removed from office. Well, you couldn't remove a former president from office anyway. So it would have been odd to write it in a different way. And that's where you have this huge, what we call, thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown. I love that. I love that. Yeah. You know, and I, I, the other thing that I think you would, so let me put it this way. Let's suppose the house impeaches the president and then the clock runs out. The Senate can't agree on rules for a summary proceeding, a summary trial, because

the constitution doesn't specify in what form the trial, what form the trial would take. That's up to the Senate. If the Senate wanted to, it could vote that its trial was each side gets half an hour before the Senate votes. It wouldn't do that, but it could in theory do that. But let's say the clock runs out. Let's say Nancy Pelosi's House impeaches. House impeaches. Chuck Schumer, who's going to be Senate Majority Leader, tries to move quickly on conviction. He can't do it. And it's hanging out there into the new term. If Schumer wanted to, he could go ahead with the trial, and no court is going to stop that. The Supreme Court is not going to step in and say, no, you can't continue with the trial. He could go ahead with a trial.

He could convict and also issue a—the Senate could rule that he could not hold any office of public trust. And it would be out there. And then the interesting question would be, what would the Republican Party then do? Because that would be a very interesting question. If he had been convicted by the Senate and indicated that he wished to run again as a Republican, if the Republican said,

we will not allow anyone to participate in our presidential primary process who's been convicted in an impeachment proceeding, Trump couldn't bully his way into that because that would be the private rules of the Republican Party. But then if Trump tried to run as an independent, well, then we would have a litigation bloodbath at that point. So, David, I want to introduce you to someone named William Belknap. Oh, please do. William Belknap was the United States Secretary of War under Ulysses S. Grant. He was, I don't know what to tell you about this character. He was a man about town.

Back in the day, this day being the 1870s, if you were a cabinet secretary in Washington, it was your job to also host a lot of parties and do cool stuff. And your wife was expected to be the hostess with the mostest, so to speak. So Belknap, by the way, in this story is going to go through three wives. I think the rest died. But we're going to end with, and, uh, the second two are sisters, but the last one, the Amanda who goes by puss, as she was known in DC, which you know what?

At first I was like, I don't love that nickname. And then now I'm all in on that nickname. I kind of love that nickname. Hey puss. How you doing puss? Oh, good.

Okay. So here's the problem. Hey, puss, how you doing, puss? I'm good. Okay, so here's the problem. Belknap and his second wife threw a fantastic party when they got to town, and they were using Seward's old house, the guy in the Lincoln assassination. We never talk about that the Lincoln assassination was not just Lincoln. It was a full coup attempt. And they, in fact, grievously injured Seward and his son-in-law. The daughter finds him. There's stab wounds because he'd had this carriage accident. So he was laying in bed and terrible things happen. Anyway, so they're using Seward's house and things get out of hand. Instead of a nice little gathering of, you know, 40 of your closest friends, it's like 1200 people and a bunch of former Union soldiers descend and it's raucous and they destroy the place and the Belknaps

can't afford to fix everything. Well, what do you do when you're the secretary of war and you can't afford your lifestyle? His wife, second wife, Lady Macbeth in this case, Carita is her real name. Again, great name, Carita. Love it. Carita. Why is nobody named Carita anymore? I know. So she comes up with a fun little idea. She tells her husband to appoint this friend of theirs, Caleb Marsh, to the Fort Sill Tradership. This is

a federal office and would get some money. Unfortunately, this other dude named John Evans is already there and he refuses to leave and for some reason they come up with this new plan. Evans will stay at Fort Sill Tradership, but he will pay $12,000 a quarter to Marsh.

And Marsh, in turn, will give $6,000, so half of the $12,000, to Corita. It's like, if you were going to do a kickback scheme, let me just advise you, not in my official capacity as an attorney, but the fewer people you can involve in your conspiracy, just in general, when you're committing federal crimes, the better. And in this case, they wantonly involved extra people. You don't need that middle guy for the kickback.

And yet, okay. So the kickbacks are coming in. This is, by the way, like $100,000. Like $6,000 at that point, about over $100, dollars in our current dollars. So it's a lot of money that they're getting as this kickback. Okay. So Corita dies. Her sister Puss takes over, still getting the kickbacks all as well. They're throwing these

elaborate parties and Puss is wearing these fantastic dresses and jewelry. She's dripping in it. And Belknap has some political enemies and they're like, how is Puss affording all of this? So they investigate him. And lo and behold, they weren't really even hiding the kickbacks. So he's caught red handed and they start impeachment proceedings against the secretary of war at that point. And what does he do right before he's about to be removed from office? He resigns. Clever, clever. And by the way, just the puss's lavish lifestyle. That's also a dead giveaway on foolish spies. People are on the take. Yes, people are on the take in espionage. If they're spending all their time in Grand Cayman, those are the tells, Sarah. Those are the tells. Quite. So he gets impeached by the House, then he resigns,

and then it goes to the Senate. so now he is the former secretary of war we're in 1876 right now so a year of incredible salience to the current exactly yes yeah 1876 is about to get messier like this is in april of 76 so they don't even know they are living in the 2020. Yeah, I was going to say 1876 is the 2020 of the 1870s. Yes, exactly. So it takes weeks for the senators to decide whether the Senate even has jurisdiction over a former officer for all the reasons that we're discussing. The Belknap's defense dudes argue that the Senate has no jurisdiction, but the Senate rules 37 to 29 that it did have jurisdiction. Then they hear a bunch of witnesses, so they have the trial. It votes to convict 35 to 25. And if you're really good at

math at home, you'll know that's a lot, but it's not enough because you need two thirds, not quite enough. Uh, every Senator agreed that he took the money, but 23 of them believe that they did not have jurisdiction over it because he was a former officer. That is the only historical precedent we have on this question. There are no legal cases and we just have a dear Mr. Belknap and his wife Puss. So after that, by the way, Puss and, uh, their daughters, they flee to Europe and they stayed there and, uh, Belknap just hung out. He actually continues to lead quite the life. He doesn't die until 1890. So he's got a long time having been disgraced in the Senate trial and living back in Philadelphia at that point. So the senators, even back then, were very torn on whether you could try a

former officer. I think that that, in this case, is the answer, if you will, David, from a practical standpoint, is there would not be two-thirds of the senators who would both vote to convict and believe that you could convict a former officer. That's just such an extra high bar at that point. You're basically asking for two-thirds times two-thirds. Right, right. You know, the actual enforceability of the bar, especially in Donald Trump's case, would seem to me to be something of real salience. Because one of the things that Trump does is he fuels on grievance. He fuels himself through the persecution narrative, through the narrative of scorn. If they scorn me, they're scorning you, and I'm getting scorned all the time. And if they kept after him even after he left office,

but there was no enforceability to the bar, that would be, it could perhaps have the perverse effect of fueling his comeback. So, yeah, I mean, there's really no good answer

after he leaves office as to what to do if there's an impeachment proceeding hanging in there. There's just, there's no good answer. And so, therefore, let's, oh, two things. One, you said the name Belknap, and my military history antenna went ding. That's right. Yep, yep. This guy did some other stuff. Well, there's another, no, this has nothing to do with that dude.

Oh, a different Belknap. There was a guided missile cruiser called the USS Belknap that in the 1970s collided. One of the most infamous accidents in naval history collided with an aircraft carrier and ignited a catastrophic fire that turned it into like a floating husk. It was named the USS Belknap. And I don't know why I remember that, but I used to subscribe to two magazines, Sarah, that identify me as an extremely cool person in junior high and high school. One was a magazine called Flight Magazine. It was all about all things airplanes. And the other one was the Naval Institute Proceedings,

the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute. And I read article after article about the Belknap collision. So when you said that, I thought, wait a minute, did an impeached guy get a guided missile cruiser named after him? And the answer to that's no, it's a different Belknap. But this Belknap. But this

Belknap fought in Shiloh, Vicksburg, and he was very popular with his soldiers up until the very, very end. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Well, so that's why all of these complications, even though in theory, if people are committed, you could have a summary proceeding to impeach and a summary trial to convict. There's a certain logic in why Nancy Pelosi, aside from the political calculation of wanting to punt the football to somebody else, which everybody wants to do, as to why you would, in fact, be sort of openly begging the cabinet to exercise the 25th Amendment option. And the 25th Amendment option, really, again, what's the phrase? The known unknown? Yes.

It's a real known unknown as to what this really means, because what it permits is the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to remove the president if they deem him, quote, unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Unable to discharge. Does that mean incapacitated, as in he's a comatose, incapacitated, as in he's a comatose, incapacitated in that he's, say, injured? Or does that mean that he is unfit? Is unfit, is that encompassed with an unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office? And so this is, it provides for a summary proceeding. And Sarah, you've been looking at this as well, but it's a fascinating amendment in that it provides for the summary removal of the president of the United States

that he then gets to challenge if he contests it. But in theory, under the 25th Amendment, Trump could be out, the keys could be out of his hand in theory within hours under the 25th Amendment. So we have some problems here, as you think, as you know. Yes.

So I think that the easiest problem to solve is the unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office because that is, I think in this case, truly a political question. If one is unwilling to discharge the powers and duties of his office? Because that is, I think in this case, truly a political question. If one is unwilling to discharge

the powers and duties of one's office, I think that's, in this case, synonymous with unable to. Right. Or at least it's whatever the vice president, the majority of the cabinet says. And the court's not going to intervene. SCOTUS is not going to intervene.

No way. No way. No. They'd be asked to for sure, to intervene. No way. No way. No. They'd be asked to for sure, but nope. No one would have standing. I mean, maybe whatever the president would, I guess. SCOTUS would have standing, yeah. But he has a procedure. Anyway, go ahead. That's right. So it actually says whatever the vice president and majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide. Congress has not provided anything else by law. In fact, the 25th Amendment

basically is a congressional proposed amendment that is ratified. So, okay, here's the first problem that I see. A majority of the principal officers of the executive departments. Well, we do know what the executive departments are uh should i just read them for fun yeah please state treasury defense justice interior agriculture commerce labor health and human services housing and urban development transportation energy education veterans affairs homeland security but who are the principal officers of those executive departments? The executive departments are defined in statute. Five USC one Oh one,

as of course we all know. Yes, of course. I almost said it right along with you. So there's 15. So you would just need eight of those principal officers, but the constitution also says that uh uh the president shall have power by and with the advice and consent of the senate

blah blah blah dot dot dot to appoint ambassadors other public ministers and consuls judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States. So if you flip the logic of that sentence, it also means that there aren't officers of the United States if they have not gotten the advice and consent of the Senate. Why is that relevant in this case? Because Christopher Miller is the acting Secretary of Defense. Attorney General Rosen is the acting Attorney General. Elaine Chao just resigned, so we have an acting at Transportation. Chad Wolf is the acting Secretary of Homeland Security. Are these people still principal officers?

Now, let's take Jeff Rosen, for example. He was the Deputy Attorney General. So he did have the advice and consent of the Senate to become DAG. And it is by virtue of being DAG that he can act as Attorney General. Some little Vacancies Reform Act fun here, though, by the way. All you have to do is basically be a senior member of the Department of Justice to be acting, to be named Acting Attorney General. So you do not have to be Senate confirmed, so to speak, to be Acting Attorney General. And in that case, it seems pretty clear to me that you would not count as a principal officer. So if we assume for a second that the actings don't count as principal officers, then I think you also have to subtract

them from the denominator. So it lowers the number that you need overall as well. Right. But all of this is irrelevant, David. And that's because I think by virtue of the fact that Elaine Chao resigned as secretary of transportation because of what transpired yesterday, there is no discussion of invoking the 25th Amendment. And we've heard that from some of the other cabinet members. There's no, that's not happening. It's not going on. So as much as I love the nerdery and I love the known unknowns, is there anything I love more than known unknowns? It's irrelevant here. The 25th Amendment is not going to happen. But David, really quickly,

if it did, what happens from that point is actually pretty clearly laid out. And that part's fun. That is that the president would then, in this case, I think, contest that he is unable to discharge the duties. Then there's four days where the vice president and that majority of cabinet officers get to reassess. They can then basically both submit their cases to Congress. And then Congress has 21 days to figure out whose side they're on. And that's all to say, by the way. And then it would have to be two thirds of both the House and the Senate to continue with the vice president. So it's very, very president friendly. There's several, several ways in which

the president gets back his power. It's not president friendly with 13 days left. hour. It's not president friendly with 13 days left. That's true. So the, the, when you actually look at the 25th amendment, Pence and a majority of the cabinet could boot Trump. Then Trump has, you know, Trump content, let's say Trump contests it within 30 minutes. I mean, he's booted immediately. That's transmitted to the Senate. Trump's out. He has no power. When that written declaration is issued, it says the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office's acting president. Then let's say the president transmit to the president pro tem of the Senate immediately. I mean, just right away, right away. So he does that right away. Then, um, then the vice president has four days. He's got four days. So then let's say this happened today. So in the president contestants,

then we're at January 11th. Then once the vice president tries to persist in power, he has four days. Then Congress has 48 hours to assemble. Now we're to the 13th. Then Congress, let's say the Republicans in Congress really don't want President Trump to be in power, but they also don't want to go on record voting against him, they can just wait and debate it through January 20th and then after Biden is sworn in, just punt on the whole thing. So in theory, not in theory, in actual fact,

if there was the will to boot him immediately, actual fact, if there was the will to boot him immediately, Trump is gone if Congress just decides to kind of dilly-dally because they wouldn't have to act before Joe Biden's inauguration. And I haven't seen anyone talk about that wrinkle, but it's interesting to me, and I agree with you, I agree with you completely that overwhelming probability to near certainty this is not going to happen. Unless Trump is actually trying, you know, tries something else that's incredibly dramatic. But if it did happen, it's kind of in this weird window where the VP and the cabinet can do what they want. window where the VP and the cabinet can do what they want. They could do it and take advantage of the inertia and cowardice of the GOP in the Senate and essentially run out the clock, which is a very interesting wrinkle to this. Nobody's really talked about it. But again,

I agree with you. I agree with you that overwhelming probability this isn't going to happen. But I'm not going to say no for sure, because we don't know if Trump might be preparing to issue a wave of pardons, for example, against the insurrectionists. We don't know what he's thinking. And those who know what he's thinking, they have this tool in their toolkit. David, can I just say that yesterday was a really awful day. It in some ways reminded me of 9-11 in the sense that I was sitting there watching this transpire on my television and felt really powerless to serve my country in a way that you just want to like run out and save the Capitol. Yeah.

You know, you're trying to take down the American flag. How dare you? Yeah. And that this retreat to nerdery, David, so far is just bringing a lot of joy back to my heart, even though it's a dark topic. Yeah. It is. It is. And I'm reminded of the fact that who's pop quiz, pop quiz. Who is the worst president in modern American history? Just from a pop culture standpoint, who do we consider to be the worst president in modern

American history? Okay. So we consider it to be Richard Nixon. Correct. And then Jonah is going to absolutely come through the iPhone and strangle us if we don't say it's actually Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson. Ah, fine. I know.

But Nixon is considered the worst president. And it is so interesting to me that in 1960, Richard Nixon conceded a race that there was a lot of rumors of election fraud in Illinois and Texas. And more than rumors, there was actually some actual evidence of election fraud, whether it was enough to overturn the election. I still don't think we know. And the fact that both sides were committing election fraud certainly undermines the argument. But nevertheless, Nixon at that point in his concession referred to it as an eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people of developing, respecting, and honoring institutions of self-government. And then you fast forward to 1972. Some bad things have happened. Dot, dot, dot nixon is impeached he 74 oh you're right sorry he's elected 72 watergate's in 72 right we're in 74 about to be impeached he's about to be impeached

and goldwater along with some republican senators comes and says, it's done. We can't defend you. We are without defense. And Nixon, in his farewell resignation, said, I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first. There's a word in our lexicon, Nixonian. And to me, it means the brazen, paranoid, amoral lunge towards maintaining power at all costs. And that's, of course, not even including the anti-Semitism and racism and homophobia, et cetera. Yeah.

But, my God, Trump is no Nixon. Yeah. Nixon looks like virtue carved in marble at this moment.

He would laugh at a delegation of senators who came to him and said, for the good of this nation, you need to step aside. He would throw them out of his office and he would go back to tweeting. Well, he can't. That's going to bring us to our next topic. He would go back to trying to incite his base into intimidating and terrifying Republican officeholders into submission. You're exactly right, Sarah. I mean, one of the things about Nixon, is there a way to say that he was an honorable crook in a way?

Actually, far be it for me to rehabilitate Richard Nixon, but I just think we certainly need to recalibrate and maybe return. Maybe Nixonian should be retired because, frankly, it looks quaint. But I think it's a very useful way to put what is occurring in perspective, that what we're dealing with isn't just a president who is willing to turn his own base against the Constitution and to try to browbeat officeholders, including his own vice president, including his own vice president. Not just browbeat, David. He knew that the vice president was in danger yesterday, that the vice president's family, that his children were with him at the Capitol.

And he continued to tweet to his supporters to get him. There's no question that the supporters took his tweet condemning the vice president while the vice president was under attack as a signal flare to try to find him they were screaming where is mike pence where is mike pence that's terrifying it's one of the lowest it's one of the lowest things i have ever seen in my life and it is so dispiriting that we have just spent we have just spent the first half hour or so of this podcast describing available mechanisms to remove this man from office, and then also at the same time saying, but yeah, it almost certainly won't happen. So we're in the aftermath of one of the lowest

moments, one of the lowest moments in the history of the presidency, arguably, I mean, it's within the realm of argument. We can argue about it. It's within the realm of argument of saying the lowest. The lowest. I mean, what? You want to come up with some

Buchanan stuff that triggers the Civil War? Maybe. I mean, I'm sure that Jonah could come in here as the prosecuting attorney on Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson jailing political prisoners. Yeah, yes. But I'm talking about as a single moment and then what led to the occupation of the Capitol building, sustained occupation and looting of the Capitol building, looting of the Capitol building, something that no one has accomplished. I mean, there have been riots, there have been attacks,

but no one has accomplished what happened yesterday except for the British Army in 1814 towards the end of the War of 1812. I mean, that's a low moment in American history. What an interesting point that someone else made,

but I'm going to steal for this podcast. That's right. The British Army in 1812 burned the Capitol. They were fighting on behalf of a person, not an ideal, not a principle, not a constitution. They were fighting for a single person, a monarch. That's not that dissimilar from what happened yesterday. They were carrying not the American flag. They were carrying a flag that said Trump on it. They tried to take down the American flag to hoist the Trump flag. This is not about principle. It's not about ideals. It's not about the constitution. The symbolism is that it is about a single person. And that's what our constitution was built against.

And my God, these people in my Twitter feed or Rush Limbaugh citing the revolution. And they're like, you need to read a book on the revolution. Oh, my friends, I've read the only book that matters on the revolution. And that is the Declaration of Independence. They list their grievances, and very specifically, by the way, against the mad King George. Not ironic, by the way, that he was considered out of his mind, given what's happening.

But they list their grievances it was tyranny it was that he was fomenting insurrection among the colonies do not tell me that that this is just like the revolution or that i don't know what happened in the revolution not all violence is created equal. And certainly that violence is not equivalent to the equal of the same thing as this. You tried to take down the flag of union to put up the flag of an individual. I mean, truly bite me. Yeah, it's hard to think of something.

It's hard to think of something more antithetical to the american experiment than taking down the flag of the union to put up the flag of a person yeah like the 50 stars the 13 stripes it is the symbol of unity instead we're going to put up something that's more often seen on the back end of a truck truck sorry sorry and the confederate flag walking through the Capitol, like it hurt me inside. Oh, and the quote unquote Christian flag walking through the Capitol. That was like an ice pick into my soul seeing that.

It was horrifying. And you know, look, we quoted this in our editorial at thedispatch.com. I'd encourage you to go read it. We all worked on it together late into the night. And when we were looking at this and writing it, there were some words from Alexander Hamilton. And this is the founding generation

that had direct experience with despotism. It had direct experience with tyranny. It was afraid to the point of paranoia to create a new country that would be susceptible to tyranny. And just to be clear, you're going to be quoting Alexander Hamilton, not Lin-Manuel Miranda. Correct. This is not in the Hamilton musical. Okay. Such a shame. I know. 1792. 1792, he writes and he describes the kind of person that in his own words could destroy a republic. And I'm going to read this paragraph here. It's a little bit awkwardly phrased to our modern ears. But aside from the military reference, who does this describe?

When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty. to join in the cry of danger to liberty, to take every opportunity of embarrassing the general government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day, it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may, quote, ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. That's chilling. That's actually chilling to me, Sarah,

the extent to which it describes Trump. What hit me in that when I read it, you're the one who found that quote, correct? Yes. Let's give some credit. I know it's an unsigned editorial, but- It's the collective we. It's the collective we.

It is, it is. But when I, now that I'm out is. But when I now that I'm outing you, when I read that line that you wrote, it reminded me of my favorite line from any presidential inaugural. We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm? Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate, but the themes of this day he would know, quote, our nation's grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity. We are not this story's author who fills time and eternity

with his purpose, yet his purpose is achieved in our duty and our duty is fulfilled to service to one another, never tiring, never yielding, never finishing. We renew that purpose today to make our country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life. This work continues, the story goes on, and an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm. goes on and an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm. That's powerful. That is powerful. So there's some hope heading into 2021, heading into a new presidential administration. I very much still believe that, that an angel still rides in our whirlwind and directs the American storm. I agree with you 100%.

I agree with you 100%. And the future is not yet written. And we have our role to play to fight for this country to remain the kind of republic and to become the kind of republic it is supposed to be. I mean, it's a never finished work, really. 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?

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here's five seconds. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. It feels almost trite to move into social media policy after this. No, it's perfect. It's very 2021. I know. And now to Twitter. From the angel in the whirlwind to Snapchat.

Oh my goodness. Are you on Snapchat, David? I have them all. Yeah. I went through a phase very recently of like really enjoying Snapchat filters. It's just like sometimes at night, like when you need something to do right before you go to bed to kind of unwind your mind, there was a time like a month where like Snapchat filters were that thing for me and they're pretty fun. So, Sari, I'm going to have to tell a story on myself and regarding Snapchat. So, my friends from college and I, we've always been sort of looking, what's the perfect platform for staying in touch with each other? You know, GroupMe has its advantages and disadvantages. You know, a group text, this can be kind of annoying and intrusive. And for a while, we settled on a group Snapchat, a Snapchat group where we would speak to each other in video. group where we would speak to each other in video. And so they would ask me the, um, and I,

I loved the filters as well. And so I adopted various personas, uh, depending on the topic. And whenever they asked me about politics, I was the persona of helium pundit and used the helium voice, uh, modifier to try to talk about serious matters with the helium voice. It was amusing for like, uh, three weeks, I'd say three weeks, but yeah, yeah,

that's good times. Yeah. So I have a residual Snapchat presence, but, um, so you know what though, uh, we have that the president doesn't have today.

Uh, Snapchat, Snapchat, uh, a live Twitter account, a live Facebook, and a live Instagram. He cannot use any Snapchat filters tonight as he's going to sleep. Nope. So yeah, the latest here is, as of right now, and I checked it right before we began recording, the president is still not live on Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg announced that the president is blocked from Facebook indefinitely, and at least through the remainder of his term, he is off of Snapchat. He is off of Instagram as well as Facebook. Facebook owns Instagram,

of course. YouTube is beginning to yank down videos making vote fraud arguments. making vote fraud arguments. And I'm wanting to write about this, Sarah. And what I want you, I want you and the listeners to help me work through this in my mind because this is where I am as of right now. And you tell me if you think that I'm wrong. Where I am right now

is I think that this is a very dangerous precedent, but necessary in the moment. Um, and I'm going to say where this is where I'm thinking right now. And again, this is the, this is the kind of thing that, um,

as we talked about in our dispatch podcast, a lot of times you're not left with good answers in a answers in a crisis situation. There's not a clearly great path. But not long ago, I was in some conversations with some pretty highly placed folks, and we were talking about free speech online. and I gave my default answer, which is, look, I don't think it's the government's business what Facebook's policies are or Twitter's policies, but Facebook and Twitter should default towards freedom of expression. Your bias should be towards freedom of expression, and it's a very dangerous road to walk down

to try to create some sort of perfect little free speech environment through the use of speech codes and heavy moderation. So default towards freedom of expression, default towards viewpoint neutrality in your regulations. And I was asked this question, well, wait a minute, we have a presence outside the United States of America, and sometimes our platforms are used to actually foment violence, that our platforms are used to spread violent insurrection. And I said, well, wait a minute.

In that circumstance, you're entirely justified to pull the plug. I mean, your purpose in building this platform was not to foment insurrection in Mali. That's not why you created this thing. It's not why, as a non-governmental actor, you don't have the ability to bring order. A government that protects free speech also has the ability through law enforcement to bring order so that there's an actual ordered liberty.

But as a social media company, you don't have the ability to bring order. And if there is a tipping point where your platform is being used to foment violence, you're completely justified in pulling the plug. When I was making that argument, it did not occur to me that that might be relevant and salient in the United States of America about 18 months after I made that argument. But it seems to me that what we have right now is a situation where no lesser person than the president of the united states is fomenting violent insurrection the political branches of government are right now not checking him effectively well then these private corporations that did not in any way shape or form create themselves for the purpose of fomenting violent insurrection in the

united states not only have the right unquestionably to pull the plug, that it might be the best thing for the United States of America. And I know that's dangerous because it sets an unbelievable precedent. But what we saw in the Capitol was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. And it can't happen again. And if I ran a company and I thought that my platform was being used to create that scene, And if I ran a company and I thought that my platform was being used to create that scene, I would be appalled. I'd be appalled. So that's where I am, Sarah. Tell me if you think I'm wrong.

There's certainly a huge difference between a private company who can make that forum whatever they want it to be and a government entity, for instance, or a limited public forum from the legal standpoint where it is a free speech forum, albeit with some limitations. What you're describing, though, is somewhere in between what you'd like it to be. You would like it to basically be a limited public forum without the legal threat of a voluntary limited public forum. And so let me give two different answers. One, and this is something I'll have to give Rod Rosenstein some credit for this because he was so good at beating this into me, is I would say like, well, we should do X. He says, well, you know, we've never done X before. And I'm like, yes, but this is extraordinary. We're being attacked by the white house. We're being attacked by Republicans on the hill, literally on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. They're coming at us. We need to do X.

And he would say the rules exist. Our policies not law these are just policies we can violate them if we want our policies exist not just for the times where they're easy because then we wouldn't need the policy they exist for the times that are hard you follow them in the times where you're saying it's extraordinary and that is what what Jim Comey so clearly failed to do. He thought he was living in an extraordinary time. So he had to give the press conference about Hillary Clinton saying that she had done bad things, but not criminal things. And that led to him having to give the press conference right before the election that, well, we have to reopen this because I had told Congress that we had closed it. So now I have

to tell them that we're reopening it. And so by, by deciding that you're living an extraordinary time, unprecedented, therefore you get to bend the rules just a little, there are all these cascading consequences. And so in that sense, I disagree with you. If this were government,

a true limited public forum, this is not, this is not true insurrection. This does not rise to anywhere close to the level for me to shut down a true forum that is open to free speech. Completely agree with you. Yeah. That being said, these social media platforms, I think actually one of the bigger mistakes they've ever made is to hold themselves out as public forums. They're not. They are private companies. They have,

from a marketing standpoint, tried to say that it's the same as the town square, but it's not. It's like going into the middle of a Walmart. It's a big place. There's lots of people in it. And, you know, Walmart may let you scream all sorts of stuff if you want to, but it's up to Walmart to kick you out. And I think that these companies would have been far better off at the front end if they said, this is our forum. It is not public. You are here at our permission. I don't think we'd be having this 230 debate. And I don't think we'd be having a debate over whether they can ban the president because of course they could. But the problem is that once they held themselves out to be a public forum, then we all treated it like a public forum. And then for instance, when the president blocked people on Twitter, those people sued. And in fact, those people won and said that the president could not block them on Twitter. Well, that would be crazy if this were just, you know, the white pages or something, but it's all wrapped into one thing.

And so I think they can't have it both ways. I think they figured that out yesterday for some reason. And I hope that we're turning a corner where the social media companies will just say what they are. They are large Walmarts that sometimes let you yell stuff and sometimes they don't and it is entirely up to them whether to let you yell it.

And if I don't want, if I don't like their yelling rules, I don't have to go to Walmart. You can go to Target. I can go to Target. Now, here's what, and look, I am, you know, I have long been uncomfortable with the ideological monoculture in Silicon Valley. Got it. I have disliked the way in which in individual instances, although it's really exaggerated, the amount of social media censorship of conservatives, it's really, really exaggerated.

But there have been individual instances of unfairness. Well, unfairness is a disparate treatment, treating conservative speech worse than equivalent progressive speech. Got it. And there's way more examples of it on the right than the left. Yes. Yeah. Let me give you a little bit of brief history of the mindset, though, that might help you understand how we got where we are.

I would say a lot of the folks who built these social media companies were far more idealistic than human nature warranted. Oh, that was so diplomatic of you. Yeah. Thank you, Sarah. And you see a lot of this in the early days of the internet, not just the early days of social media. It was sort of like, this is the thing that's going to bring us all together. We're going to have an explosion of free expression. It's going to bring the world together. It's going to erase boundaries that have hindered human development and human unity throughout all time.

And very quickly in the larger internet, you realize, nope, it just sort of puts human nature on blast. Well, with social media, there was sort of this idealistic notion that. And then what ended up happening is a lot of people kind of got taken by surprise by humanity. And they got taken by surprise in the ways in which people would use their platform. And so on the one hand, they have this idealistic vision that says, this is this great marketplace of ideas

that we have created. And then they're confronted with the reality that, yeah, there's a lot of virtue that happens here. And there's a lot of crap that happens here. And so then you begin to get the classic challenge that you've seen universities deal with, that you've seen other institutions deal with that are private institutions.

They say, how can we keep what is good and shed what is bad? And then that's where you get into these moderation decisions. But they never really did this transition that you talk about, Sarah, which is to say, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. This is our company. This is the kind of community that we want to create. That means this is the kind of stuff that we're not going to allow.

Here's the stuff that we will allow. It's totally up to us. Don't think of this as a kind of stuff that we're not going to allow. Here's the stuff that we will allow. It's totally up to us. Don't think of this as a marketplace of ideas anymore. Think of this as our house. And you're a guest in our house and there are the rules in our house. And you can have a great time in our house under our rules, but if you transgress those rules, bye.

And that's a difficult transition to make when you've spent years sort of saying, come one, come all, you're going to feel great here. This is where you belong. And I think that we're in that transition moment right now where people are saying, wait, we can't, oh, wait, hold on. Human nature on blast doesn't look pretty sometimes, especially when there is a dysfunctional society that we're putting the social media on top of and maybe in some ways making more dysfunctional. So bear with me a second, but here's my metaphor. Okay. I think that of all the people who are upset about the two Georgia races going to the Democrats, here's someone who I think is at least in the top 10 of people who are not that happy about it. Joe Biden. Joe Biden was going to have this ready-made excuse to keep his far left wing in check. Sorry, the Republicans control the Senate. And then when he really wanted to get something done, he was going to invite Mitt Romney to the White House

and they were going to hash out some compromise deal that Mitt Romney would join. And therefore, basically Biden would get the things he wanted done and he would have an excuse for why he couldn't get the things he didn't actually want done, done. I wonder whether these tech companies might not benefit from the end of Section 230.

Because if Section 230 went away and they could be held liable for libel in what people said, first of all, I do not think there'd be some race of a bunch of libel lawsuits against Twitter. I do not. I do not think they would win those lawsuits. But for Twitter to be able to say, well, we could be held liable. Therefore, we're taking down all this stuff. We're getting rid of all the anonymous eggs. You have to be a verified user, which Facebook has done for years. So it's not like hard. And I think that would change a lot, a lot, a lot of the behavior in a way that the tech companies might actually just want at this point. You know, well, I mean, there has been, Facebook, for example, has called for new regulation. Right. Facebook's all about it. Yeah. No, and what's clear is I think what you would see is a kind of Section 230 reform.

The idea would be to not so much just get rid of it, but to put the government in greater control of speech on social media, which for somebody like me is, wait a minute. But for social media companies, it's sort of like this, hey, don't blame me. Blame Biden-Harris. I mean, I'm just doing what I got to do. It also makes it far harder to enter the market. So they also get a little bit of capture along with it. And industries love some capture. Yeah. And what it would leave is the smaller entities. As you're saying, it's this, it would increase, for all those who are worried about monopolies and are worried about big tech consolidation. Yeah.

Some good old-fashioned regulatory capture is just what the doctor ordered for some of these guys. And also, quite honestly, it is exhausting to be blamed for everything. It's exhausting. I mean, we are talking about human beings here, right? I mean, these are human beings who are being basically blamed for everything. You know, as some listeners may know, I wrote a book this year, like last year, sorry, last year. And there are three questions that I've gotten more than any other question. One is, and the subject of the book was, could America break apart? One is, why shouldn't we? I never thought that that would be the number one question that

I got, but it's sort of a sign of how bad things have gotten that people said, why shouldn't we? The other question that I've gotten is, what on earth can we do about it? And then the third question that is constant is, isn't this all social media's fault? So think about that. And this is from conservatives and from progressives. You're in an industry that you began with idealistic intentions that in your heart of heart thought could be a benefit to the world and left and right is believing that you're the problem with america that's exhausting that's exhausting there's no wonder that many of these guys are looking to the government to bail them out of responsibility um and for those who wonder what's my answer to the question of, is this all social media's fault?

One of my quick answers is, well, it certainly in some ways exacerbated the problem. And I'm no social media historian, but I think Twitter was in its infancy in 1861, and we still had a civil war. So human beings have found a way to hate each other to the point of death long before Twitter was invented. So do not think social media reform is the path to utopia. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day

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And to be clear, every mom in my life has this frame. Every mom I've ever heard of has this frame. This is my go-to gift. My parents love it. I upload photos all the time. I'm just like bored watching TV at the end of the night. I'll hop on the app and put up the photos from the day. It's really easy. Right now, Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $30 off plus free shipping on their best-selling frame. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Use code ADVISORY at checkout to save. Terms and conditions apply. Well, last thing last, Joe Biden announced his attorney general pick.

And of course, he waited to find out the results of the Georgia races, which I think left a lot of people thinking that he would do a far left pick once he realized that he could have pretty much anyone he wanted confirmed. And so, we all held our breaths, assumed, of course, that Doug Jones was no longer in the running. That turned out

to be correct, because Joe Biden picked D.C DC Circuit Judge Merrick Garland. Yes. Whoa, did not see that coming after Democrats took those two Georgia seats. So Merrick Garland, as you all know, is the guy who Obama nominated to fill Scalia's seat, the sort of, the seat that launched a thousand wars. Mitch McConnell refused to even have a hearing on the nomination. It held over

until the November election in 2016. Donald Trump won, and he, of course, filled the seat with Neil Gorsuch. Yep. And so,

that is one of the seats that the Democrats consider to be their stolen seat. And of course, poor Merrick Garland is just this like volleyball being spiked from side to side and hitting the sand. And so I saw this great tweet. Joe Biden announced his leaked his pick was Merrick Garland on Tuesday night. And so on Wednesday, as all this stuff is going down around the Capitol and it's just chaos and sacking and all of this, someone said, Merrick Garland, when he woke up today, finally, a day that will be about Merrick. This is your day. Oh, no. I don't have a whole lot of insight into the Merrick Garland pick as

qua Merrick Garland. But here's what I'll say. During the Bush administration, he picked Mike Mukasey as his attorney general. Mike Mukasey was a district judge. And I would say that Mike Mukasey was one of the better attorney generals in the country's history. And I don't just mean from a policy standpoint, actually. I mean from an administrative standpoint. He was very good at running the department, level-headed, not overly political, but savvy enough. And I think that's sort of your ideal attorney general. You want someone who doesn't need a job afterward because I can't think of a job that is more apt to have to make really unpopular decisions that are correct, that are moral, that are just, and that are deeply

unpopular with the populace. And so you want someone where this is their last job yeah you want someone who understands how to run a staff uh and you want someone who has a deep appreciation for the law i don't think you need a law professor i don't think you need a constitutional scholar um and merrick garland certainly is those things by the way that's not necessary but you do want someone with an appreciation for it you don't want someone to walk in who happens to be a real estate lawyer and is like, ah, I'm attorney general now. Yeah, yeah, right. I also think that the deputy attorney general that they picked, Lisa Monaco, someone with a

great deal of national security experience, was a federal prosecutor for quite a while, did the Enron case, for instance, a great pick for DAG. Again, in that role, you want someone with criminal law experience. Ideally, they've been a prosecutor. And so, look, it said a lot of good things about what the Biden administration intends to do with the Department of Justice to me. And I think that Merrick Garland, how do I phrase this? I don't think he'll surprise anyone because I don't think it should surprise anyone when he turns out to be an attorney general who tries to stay apolitical, doesn't enter into culture wars, and makes good decisions that might not be popular in the time that we are seeing them.

And I'm great with that. I think he's the best reasonable choice, the best reasonably foreseeable choice that we could expect from the Biden administration. And I think for a lot of these folks who say, well, if Biden had the Senate, then his radicalism would emerge. I'm like, have you met Joe Biden? You know, he became president by confronting the radicalism of some of his primary opponents. So I didn't expect him to come forth with an AG even after the Georgia victory that was going to be particularly radical. But I was pleasantly surprised at Merrick Garland. I thought that was a better choice than

we had reason to expect. But it's interesting, going back to something you said earlier, I feel like with the Georgia Senate loss, we've moved from the Biden-Romney administration to the Biden-Mansion or Biden-Cinema administration. Yes, quite. or Biden's cinema administration. Yes, quite. And I even tweeted out the gif of when Darth Sidious assumes power in Hurl's mace windu out of the open window

in Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith. And he says, unlimited power. That was Joe Manchin in his office. And by the way, I don't know Joe Manchin in his office. And by the way, like, I don't know Joe Manchin, but just the accent alone and the West Virginia-ness of the whole thing. You're like, yeah, it's Joe Manchin's time. It's Manchin time. Honestly, is there an, or Kyrsten Sinema too. I mean,

both of those are probably the most moderate to slash conservative members of the Senate, Democratic members of the Senate. Man, it's a good day to be them. So there's the attorney general. And if you look at the org chart, nobody reports to the attorney general. They all report to the deputy attorney general. So all the department heads report to the deputy and then through the deputy to the attorney general. Basically, this office was created in the 70s, and all this is a loose way to frame it, but the civil folks all report to the associate attorney general, and the associate attorney general reports to the deputy attorney general. So, except they kind of also report directly to the deputy attorney general. The Biden administration announced that they had picked Vanita Gupta for that number three spot. Right. That is the person who I am least enthused about for the Department of Justice.

I think she is a deeply partisan actor. She absolutely is looking toward what her job will be after the Department of Justice, something that always makes me a little wary. Very, very, very political during the last four years and being a commentator and a pundit on the activities of the Department of Justice. And now she's going to walk in those same civil folks who she was criticizing on cable news. She's now going to need to command their respect. It's a tough road. The department folks tend not to respect political hacks. But more than that, I think she's going to find that maybe that number three spot isn't all you think it is. So you still have the assistant attorneys general. So like the head of the civil division, the head of the civil rights division,

all of those guys are Senate confirmed and run their divisions. And then you have the associate basically trying to get in there and like get some action with the ball, like pass it to me here. I'm here. And it can be a very, very frustrating job for someone. And it's generally goes to a really qualified person.

And then they sit there and like try to figure out why the associate position exists. I know several, a couple former associate attorneys general who might believe that perhaps it should not exist anymore. Interesting. that perhaps it should not exist anymore. Interesting. So that's all to say that I think she is not a great pick for associate attorney general, but I also think that if you're gonna stick someone somewhere

who you don't like, it's like putting them in the vice presidency. It's like worth a bucket of worms spit that associate attorney general spot. So it's not great, but also, you know, it might be the job you would wish on someone who's not great. Good resume bullet point, however. It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Outstanding Sterling. Well, we've covered a lot. All I'm going to say outside of the world of politics and constitutional law and impeachment and insurrection, as if that isn't enough to talk about, I'm going to say Cobra Kai season three started slow, coming on strong.

And The Expanse season five started strong, coming on even stronger. And we can discuss those at a later date. Wait, David, important question. Yes. Have you dabbled in Bridgerton yet? So we had flipped through streaming options and considered it, but went with episode one of The Flight Attendant on HBO Max. Yeah. I don't know about The Flight Attendant, but I also watched the trailer for Bridgerton after all these people

were like, Bridgerton! It's like Gossip Girl meets Jane Austen. And I thought, there's a very, there's certain parts of Jane Austen

I like a great deal, but the Gossip Girl part isn't one of them. I never watched Gossip Girl and I watched the trailer and was like, oh my God, it's hard to imagine

a show that I would like less. But, if someone's listening to this and they're like, you're just wrong, the trailer makes it look sillier than it is. You should give it a shot. I mean, I love things set in the late 18th century. Let me just say this, Sarah. If you're giving me an elevator pitch for the next show to stream, Gossip Girl meets Jane Austen is not the pitch to give me. That's not the pitch. It's like a late 90s rom-com, at least

according to the trailer. The idea is this girl needs to up her chances at finding a good suitor, and this guy is super popular, and so all these moms are throwing their daughters at him. And so what did they do, David? They joined forces and he pitches her and says, let's pretend to be courting.

And that way you'll be more attracted to the guys. And I'll stop getting harassed by all the ladies. And then Wynonna Ryder walked in, you know, like. Again, you're not selling me here. You're not selling me. Yeah, okay. Just about to say. I'll be interested to see if listeners come at me

and are like, no, it's better, it's better. I'll monitor to the Discord and I'll tell you if anyone in the Discord has something to say about it. Okay, okay. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a lot.

It's been a lot. It's still been a lot. It's going to be a lot before Monday, but we'll be back again. And thank you so much for listening. Thanks for hanging with us through our holiday hiatus. And we, as always, we appreciate hearing from you. We've gotten a lot of good listener feedback. David at thedispatch.com, Sarah at thedispatch.com. And also please rate us at Apple Podcasts. I didn't say iTunes first that time. Wow. Please rate us at Apple Podcasts, five stars, and give us a review. We really appreciate it. It helps us out a lot. And until Monday, this has been Advisory Opinions with David French and Sarah Dispert. Get to know yourself and your roots better in 2024 with AncestryDNA. Want to know where your family comes from in Northern France? Maybe you'd like to see how your genes influence certain traits

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