Judging Freedom - State of the Republican party with KT McFarland

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Judge Napolitano talks to KT McFarland about the state of the Republican Party. When will Republican leadership recognize that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, and just move on to 2022?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there, everyone, and welcome to Judging Freedom. Judge Andrew Napolitano here. This is my new podcast where I get to think however I want and say whatever I think and chat with friends and foes. Today, a friend, a longtime colleague from the political wars and from my days at Fox News, KT McFarland, who's a longtime stable rock of republicanism in the Northeast and throughout the United States, an expert in defense policy and foreign policy, and a wonderful and dear person. KT, what a pleasure. Thank you for joining us on Judging Freedom. I can't think of a better person to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon with than you. Thank you. Oh, you're so kind. So you and I have a mutual friend, and I didn't realize

he was a mutual friend. His name is Jeff Shepard. Now, for those of you who don't know who Jeff Shepard is, listen to this. Jeff Shepard was the youngest lawyer in the White House legal team under President Richard Nixon. And one of his jobs was to listen and transcribe the infamous Oval Office tapes. And in doing that, he concluded that Nixon did not know about hush money and did not know about cover-up until after it was already done, that it was orchestrated by John Dean, and it was orchestrated by John Dean to preserve and protect the reputation of his then-fiancée, who would eventually become his wife. Jeff Shepard wrote a book about it, and the book was turned into a play called Trial on the Potomac, which presumes that Nixon did not resign and in fact was tried for

impeachable offenses. And the audience gets to vote as to whether he was convicted or acquitted. Do I have all this right, KT? You bet. I was there. It happened exactly the way Jeff said. And I'm so excited that you were part of that project. Well, I was one of the producers for Richard Nixon. Yeah, I was one of the producers, minor producers, and I was the legal consultant on the play because the majority of the play, I'd say 90 percent of it, is a trial before the United States Senate presided over by an actor playing Chief Justice Warren Burger, who was the Chief Justice at the time. And the audience sits where the members of the United States Senate would sit. Well, you introduced Jeff to me at Fox probably 10 years ago.

Oh, easily, yeah, easily, at least 10, yeah. Before that, you gave me his book. And when I met Jeff, I said to him, and he reminded me of this. Now, this is 10 years ago. This is not our work this summer. Jeff, if half of what's in this book is true, you're going to turn history on its head. And that half expanded is what's in the play. The play was very successful. It was off-Broad Broadway for five weeks. It's going to be brought back off Broadway again, starting in the spring in a larger theater,

right in the heart of the theater district in New York City with much of the original cast. So every time I worked with Jeff on this show, which was probably 10 or 15 days during the summer, I thought of KT McFarland. Two great legal minds, Jeff Shepard and Judge Napolitano, and both are people who come to it with a clean slate. You know, you weren't biased, you didn't have a political axe to grind, and I was so excited that you got involved with this project because it really is,

like you say, turn history on its head. Yes, yes. Yes. And I believe in examining and re-examining history. Sometimes alternate history turns out to challenge the myths that all of us have been taught to believe. One last thing before we get on to the state of the Republican Party today, seen through the eyes of KT McFarland. The actor who played Richard Nixon is the comedian Rich Little. Now, Rich Little, who is Canadian by birth, and who when he became an American citizen was asked by the federal judge presiding at the citizenship program to take the oath of citizenship in the voice of John Wayne, which he did. Rich Little does a better Richard Nixon than Nixon himself did. I mean, it's absolutely marvelous, marvelous imitation of Richard Nixon, not just the words, but the

body language and the body movement and the harumphs and the jowls and the five o'clock shadow and all that. All right. So the reason we're here, well, the reason we're here is to reunite an old friendship. But tell me what your opinion is of the state of the Republican Party today. Not how poorly Biden is doing, but the state of the Republican Party. Is Donald Trump a uniting force or a divisive force? Do honest, intellectual, serious Republicans like you really think that Trump won and Biden lost, or are they going to get beyond that? Let's just get beyond it. I don't know. I'm not an election expert. I wasn't underneath the table. I just know that Joe Biden is our president now and that we need to look forward as a party. You know, if you're so busy looking in that rearview mirror, you never look

forward. And this is a unique opportunity, not just a political opportunity for Republicans, but a real necessity for a very different view than the far progressive, I think, loony left that seems to have taken over Washington, the media, Hollywood, big tech. And I think it's a really important time for conservatives, Republicans to lay their case out before the American people, let the American people decide. So not only is it an opportunity as a Republican, I'm thought of getting back in the House and Senate, getting the White House in 24. Those are all exciting things for me. But I think we have actually a national responsibility, because we're in a very strange and difficult time

right now. And if we don't get it right, we don't get another do over because we have a foreign adversary, China, who plans to replace the United States within the decade as the dominant world power and then totally rewrite all the rules of order to our great disadvantage. So we have a chance to get this right and we better not screw it up. Some of your friends, and we both know them from Fox, and I'm speaking of the leadership in the House of Representatives, refuse to say publicly, you know, Kevin McCarthy, you know, Steve Scalise, these are members of the Republican leadership, refuse to say publicly that Donald Trump lost and Joe Biden won. I mean, how much longer is

that nonsense going to go on? Or are they afraid of the former president that they might find the slings and arrows of his tongue aimed at a target on their backs? You know, I guess I don't look at it in those terms. I mean, they're figuring out their own thing. That's them. But for me, and I've talked to President Trump since the election, and I've said it publicly on the airwaves and shows like yours, that I think it's time to move on. Don't look back. And the people in the Republican Party, I talked to President Trump right before his coming out party.

He spoke at CPAC a year ago in Orlando and or nine months ago. And I said, look, you know, people want to hear the Republicans. And we're at sea. We don't know. I mean, who is going to lead the party? What are the policies that people want to hear the Republicans and the, we're at sea. We don't know. I mean, who's going to lead the party? What are the policies that are going to lead the party? We're now being trashed in every way, economically, foreign policy, morally, culturally, socially, we need leadership. And what we need is somebody who comes forth and says, here's the plan. Okay. So take the house, take the Senate. So what I told President Trump, and what I've said publicly is, I want to see President Trump on the trail. I want to see him go choose your candidate that you're going to be behind and then get out there because President Trump, love him or hate him. He spoke to a group of Americans who had felt disenfranchised, people who had never voted for him. They may have had opinions, but they never bothered to register. They never bothered to vote. I think we're a healthier democracy when everybody participates, thinks that he has feet in both camps, the pro-Trump camp and the, I don't want to say anti, the not pro-Trump camp of the Republican Party.

And he thinks he can be the nominee. What would you say to him if Chris were right here? Wait, Chris thinks that he, Chris, could be the nominee or that Donald Trump could be the nominee again? Now, KT, we're talking about Chris Christie. We're not talking about Mother Teresa. Chris thinks that Chris will be the nominee, even if he has to go toe to toe with Donald J. Trump. If Chris were here on this broadcast with us, what would you, backbone of the mainstream Northeast Republican Party, say to him? I would say, Chris, what are you going to do about getting the House and Senate back in 2022?

Where are you campaigning? I don't care about you, Chris Christie. I care about the party. I care about the policies. I don't, I mean, I think that 24 takes care of itself because who shows up in 22 to go around the country doing the tough stuff of seeing groups of people. Let me just jump and tell you why I'm concluding this. During the beginning of lockdown, my husband and I were from New York. We went to Florida, Sarasota, Florida, where our daughter, Fiona, whom you've met, had her first baby. So we went for five days, the obligatory grandparent visit.

We stayed five months because of lockdown. We were like the in-laws from hell. And so as that time went on, my daughter was campaigning for the House of Representatives for the Florida State House. And it was during COVID. It was during lockdown. I babysat. My husband got in the car. Alan got in the car and drove Fiona around

because you couldn't do normal campaigning. Right. You couldn't go to groups of 100 or 200. And you had to do it singly or you didn't campaign at all. So my daughter, Naval veteran, Naval Academy graduate, superstar, everything that she's done she's done brilliantly but she knocked on every door in her district she knocked on 30 000 doors did she win she won she took a democrat district she flipped it republican and she won by 10 points

okay that example to me is that's what republicans have to do and she ran on the principles you know good uh strong economy pro-business et, et cetera, et cetera, low taxes, strong foreign policy. If Republicans make the effort, and that doesn't mean buy a bunch of campaign commercials and do a bunch of flyers. That means getting the hard work, going to county after county all across the country and making the case directly to the American people. Then I think we take the House and Senate and 22, 24 takes care of itself. But I don't want to see presidential candidates who think they're going to go on a couple of talk shows, raise a lot of money,

have a lot of campaign commercials, and somehow they're going to be anointed. I want to see somebody who's going to do what my daughter did. All right, Chris Christie, are you listening? No, he's not here. Anybody who wants to run, get out there and sell the story.

I think he's the only one, and I say this because I live in New Jersey and I have so many friends in the Republican Party. I think he's the only one who's telling friends and confidants that he is going to run. Now, I don't know if he still has his gig on ABC News because I've seen him on Fox and you're not supposed to be on both, but whatever. Yeah, we know that. He's telling the people that begged him to run in 2012 when he turned them down that he's now ready to do it. mention their names, but they are very substantial money people in the Republican Party that you and I know who, if they like Chris, could easily fund a very, very expensive, probably billion, billion dollar series of primary elections throughout the country. But I want to ask some specific questions. About three or four weeks ago,

when Chuck Schumer wanted to borrow another trillion dollars, the Republican, right, I raised my eyes to this. I'm an old fashioned, as you know, libertarian who believes that you shouldn't spend money that you don't have. Republicans said no. When George Bush was in the White House, they said yes to $2 trillion. So are they just naysayers because they want to frustrate Joe Biden? Or is there suddenly some urge amongst Republicans to become fiscal conservatives? They haven't been fiscal conservatives since George W. was in the White House. Look, I can't speak for anybody else. I'm a tightwad. And I believe, like you, that you don't live beyond your means. You picked up the tab at our dinners many times.

In fact, you've taken me to dinner where I can't pay that lovely club of yours on the Upper East Side. All right, but I must say, I milked you for every bit of information I could get. And you got it. All right, so you're a tightwad. But what do you say to these Republicans who are not tightwads? Does everybody get on the same page? I'm not going to judge them.

They judge themselves. But no, I think that Republicans shouldn't endorse Democrat spending. I don't think anybody should endorse this kind of Lollapalooza spending. And I think Republicans were wrong when they were expanding government. You know, I'm a Reagan Republican. And Reagan shrunk the size of government. Well, at least shrunk the size of the growth of government. And I think the biggest threat is not only how much we're borrowing and the fact that we're borrowing a good bit of our foreign barriers to China was does not have our best interests at heart. But what it's going to do is bankrupt the United States to the point where investment can't happen.

And the only way the United States remains a dominant sort of world leader is if we invest in technology. And if we're busy paying off debts for money we don't need, you know, what we're doing now and what I think we did in the Bush administration, we're spending money we don't have on stuff we don't need and we're borrowing from countries that don't like it. All right. You and I are on the same page on that. However, when President Trump was in the White House, he floated the idea of a trillion dollar infrastructure bill to repave that both houses are interested in, except the progressives obviously want another three and a half trillion on top of it. But just that trillion dollar infrastructure package, none of which is authorized by the Constitution, now has Republican support. Does it have KT McFarland support? Because every nickel of that trillion has to be borrowed.

It has to be borrowed. Okay, I would look at it. I believe in infrastructure investment. I believe in technology investment. I would look at it in a slightly different way. I'm more familiar with the Defense Department budget. And people always like to say, well, you're soft on defense

if you don't want to reach this dollar level. I'm saying I'm happy with this dollar level. I might even be happy with this dollar level, but I want to spend it really differently. And so when people say, oh, the trillion dollar infrastructure, is it really for infrastructure? I mean, is it really to have communications infrastructure, 5G network? Is it really for better roads and bridges and all that stuff? Is it really for technology investment, which I would consider infrastructure investment, you know, communications investment, technology?

If it's for that kind of stuff, which is a force multiplier, which as the Defense Department spending goes, we always used to calculate if you spend a dollar for defense, how much more comes back in technology or investment that the private sector could then pick up. And usually the multiplier is not, you know, it's a significant multiplier, you put spend a dollar for defense spending in, in creating some new technology like Teflon or Delcro was a famous space program side effect or the internet. All that stuff was defense dollars that we spent, but look what we got back as a result of that. So when I look at national spending, I'm not just looking at a dollar for dollar. I'm looking at qualitatively, where are you going to spend that money? If you're just going to spend that money and throw it away at a bridge to nowhere, you better believe I'm not for it. At the same time, if we're going to spend a trillion dollars, I'd like to see us cut a trillion dollars out of someplace else. Again, for stuff we don't need, all we're doing, the politicians do, and you and I know this, that they get programs that they spend so that they can get reelected. So they're taking your money, borrowing the rest of it from China and other places to buy stuff nobody really needs in order to get people who don't deserve it

permanent employment. You know, there's a way of interpreting legislation called legislative history in which judges look at what legislators said about the legislation at the time they voted for it. The late, great Antonin Scalia often said, I don't care about legislative history, and I don't care what they said about why they voted for it. There's only one reason they vote for everything, and that's to get reelected. It doesn't matter what they say. So a point to underscore yours. Switching gears to your bailiwick. We're speaking on the day after Colin Powell died. A great human being in American history. I didn't agree with him on politics, but a man of moral character, courage, and a trail breaker. He's the only other Republican in the military side of things that I

know of besides you, who thinks the defense budget is bloated and argued that the defense is wasting too much money. I have friends who graduated from West Point who are now, that have done their time in the military and they're now business people who rant and rave and rail about wastage in the military, that they could find, you know, $100 billion to save, but it would never be popular because they would be tarred and tarnished as not being defense hawks, but being defense softies. You have managed to be both intellectually honest in your attitude about defense spending, but not lose your image as a defense hawk. Am I right? I don't know about my image. I'll let other people judge that.

All right. But I'll take the point. I mean, so for example, if I look at Afghanistan, and what really rips me is that those same generals for 20 years, those guys were trotting up to Capitol Hill and they said, oh, we just need a few billion more. We're a few more months. And every time they asked for it, they got it. They got it. They got asked for every time they asked for it, they got it. And they knew we were never going to win that conflict.

They knew it was a loser. What were they doing? They were just, I guess, wanted another star on their shoulder. And at the end of it, they retire. Big, happy retirement party, and then they go become defense lobbyists. I think that is the ultimate, as Eisenhower warned, of the defense industrial complex. All right. I want to segue into a defense issue before we leave, because I know you are a student of China. But China's run by probably the most dangerous person since Mao

Zedong ran the government, President Xi. If we wake up some morning and find out that President Xi has surrounded Taiwan with military equipment and is about to launch jets over Taiwan, what do we do? Do we honor our commitment and defend Taiwan militarily, or is it not worth it, KT? See, I guess I come down on it. You know, a smart person solves problems. A wise person prevents them from happening in the first place. And what I would do is I don't want that morning to wake up because there are no good solutions there. But what I want to do is in advance of that morning, I want to do a bunch of things.

I want to make sure that we've strengthened an alliance with Japan, India, Korea, Australia, the countries in that part of the world who have the most direct impact on it. I also probably want to sell defense equipment to Taiwan. Let Taiwan defend itself by itself. I also want to make sure that the supply chain, which China could threaten by surrounding Taiwan and by supply chain shortages directed at the United States. I mean, microprocessors, for example, semiconductors. Taiwan is that produces more semiconductors, which is an essential ingredient in modern technology. And so one of the things that China wants Taiwan for among sort of national pride

and as a military positioning for the South China Seas, they want to get their hands on the semiconductors. Would you send troops, American troops, to Taiwan? I don't think it would ever end up that way. I mean, I can't tell you because I don't, you know, tell me how it's going to play out. I think what Taiwan, what happens with Taiwan, if everything goes as it's currently going, is that China gets through its Beijing Olympics. It gets through its next party conference where they'll elect Xi Jinping president for life. And then I think China makes a move. Now, I don't think it's like you're saying.

I don't think it's going to be an invasion of Taiwan. China's too smart for that. They'll do it very differently. They might do economic warfare to Taiwan or they might do a supply chain interruption for the United States. They'll play economic warfare and they'll play technology,

potentially even cyber warfare. So I don't think that means we send in the troops. I think what that means is we play smart too. And we deal with our supply chain vulnerabilities. We go to the allies in the region who are most affected, not only by China's expansionism, but by the acquisition of Taiwan. Because China's objective, in part, by having Taiwan be a part of China, is to then take the South China Sea,

which is the world's most important maritime trade route. All the trade that goes from the Middle East and Europe to Asia, all of Asia, all the trade that goes to the United States, back and forth to Asia, goes through that South China Sea. And the Chinese think if they have Taiwan, then they control who enters that South China Sea and under what circumstances. I don't want that to happen. But again, I'm going to play this much smarter than boots on the ground. So I don't think it's a choice. Do we not defend Taiwan? Do we leave Taiwan to itself? Or do we send in the Marines? I mean, sending in the Marines hasn't seemed to work real well in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. So I want to play this much smarter. And I want to do the way Reagan

won the Cold War. You know, the way we won the Cold War was we mashed the Soviet Union. So I want to play this much smarter. And I want to do the way Reagan won the Cold War. You know, the way we won the Cold War was we mashed the Soviet Union. So we had a superiority, but not a huge one militarily. And so that kind of neutralized itself. And then we fought them with economic warfare and technological warfare, which were our strategic advantages. And that's how we defeated the Soviet Union. That's how I want to deal with China. When are we going to have lunch again at that fancy club? I'm going to go to your fancy club, Judge. You're going to pick up the crap. KT, it's a pleasure. I hope you'll come back and join us again. An absolute delight. We've been talking for 23 and a half minutes. It seems

like it was two minutes. Thanks a million. We'll do it again. Thank you, Judge. And thank you, my friends, for watching and listening to another show of Judging Freedom. Until the next time.