MTracey podcast - "Today's News" -- May 1, 2026

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Beware, there is modest disagreement in this video. I’m traumatized. I’m a Survivor now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mtracey.net/subscribe

All right, welcome to today's news live that we didn't just arrive. We couldn't even do our five minutes of pre-show private banter because I just barreled in looking like an unmade bed. And you know what, Michael, you never look like that. That's not a look that you favor. I know. Two or three times a year I'll like put in the effort so that I can look at least. 30% presentable.

But if I'm just at home and I'm, you know, just doing stuff on the computer, why bother? The one really humorous, first of all, hello everybody. The little subnote to this whole thing that happened at the sub-sac party was the sticker for your size on your chinos. I'm so glad that that happened to you and not me because I've done that. I'm sure that's happened to me before, actually, because sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by the amount of laundry that I would hypothetically have to do or dry cleaning.

Right. Okay, I got a specific event coming up. I was trying to order like two new pairs of clothes. And so I did not study. And I knew I knew there was a possibility I would have to go, I would be going to maybe some like, you know, brunch style. events that are spring themed. So I wanted some of the pastel colors.

And that was a bad move. I should have just shown up in the hoodie on Saturday and not even attempted to wear any kind of professional clothing because it backfired. I mean, as usual. But now I'm just going to claim that the leaving on one of the more hidden tags on one of the pant legs, that was actually a deliberate fashion choice.

Oh, was it? Yeah. It's like, because I know people do that with hats. They leave the, you know, that's getting big in the New York fashion scene. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like on the runway, like Charlie, I saw Charlie X-CX doing that. I've actually given a speech standing up in front of a whole room of people at a union with my flydown.

So, uh, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nothing can be worse than that. But you know how people knew about the tag? that was left on the pant leg, it was because Tara Palmieri that, you know what, just like sneaking around

surreptitiously filming me. Yeah. Which fine. I mean, she didn't get anything scandalous on camera. So if you wanted to... You got that, though. You got to give her...

She wasn't aiming for that. Of course, all the internet sleuths zoomed in on it. And they caught me. So, you know, I admit it. I should have brought my mom down there with me so she could dress me properly. I think that would be better.

From now on, Michael Tracy should have mom in toe. Some woman should have come down and dressed me. That's for sure. Yeah. All right. A lot has happened. We are going to get to some of the aftermath of this somehow still smoldering.

Day five or six now. And look, I'm not trying to milk this story for all it's worth, although maybe I am. But there are actually some larger themes that are worth pointing to that don't have to do specifically with my little annoying. personal journey. Yeah. In terms of how the media works and like these weird hierarchies that get subtly ingrained into even the new media or independent media and how, you know, you could just freely lie and distort at will.

And like if you're understood to be lying and distorting about a baddie with a capital B, anything goes. And so that has import beyond the peculiarities of my little turmoil. Yeah, there were some peculiar, some particularly graphic examples of that. week but we'll get to that later um let's let's get that's for the paid subscribers who are just not going to be getting any paid content on this stream right yeah well we're doing this live so it's doing it live bill o'reilly you know bill o'reilly actually has a podcast now of course like everybody and he i think uh commendably has called it we'll do it live that's the name of the pod long

form podcast it should it should be called fuck it let's do it live i don't think he says Fuck it. It's just, we'll do it live and you could fill in the fuck it. I knew, I knew Bill as a kid, he, he worked at my dad's TV station, yeah, for a little bit. In Massachusetts? Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while, an old clip of Bill will pop up from one of the random local TV stations he was out. Like, I saw some clip of him in Texas where he's covering, what was it? It was some, he was covering an old law where you can't, you can't dance inside Dallas city limits past a certain time of night or something. Oh, it's like footloose.

Yeah. Well, he's just doing a little segment on that like when he's like 30 and he's got the big hair and everything. How did, did you, did you get along with him? No, nobody did. He had it. Well, it wasn't his politics back then. It's a whole separate discussion, but he,

there were issues with let's just say some other things that that he would do like, like in live shots, he would hog air time. a little bit more than... Oh, I'm shocked.

So, it was that kind of thing. Is he one of the guys that your dad fought back in the day? No, he was not one of those guys. My dad fought other folks. I didn't witness any of those, though, so I shouldn't... I know, we got it. You got to memorialize those, do some kind of oral history. I want to hear about your dad's journo brawling in the 70s.

My dad did a little bit of brawling. He was a little bit of... Lose cannon? Yeah, he was a loose canon. But as any good journalist should be. Turned into a fine gentleman. So, all right. Let's look at SOT 2, which is ABC's special report on a, I would say a pretty significant Supreme Court decision this week.

This is an ABC News special report. And we should let it roll for a little bit because the correspondence. The first analyst comes to a point that is kind of interesting. So let's just keep going. The Supreme Court has just released a major decision, which could have a profound impact on the midterm elections. The justices issuing a ruling on a case out of Louisiana involving the Voting Rights Act, redistricting, and whether states must end any consideration of race

when redrawing congressional maps, the decision potentially reducing the influence of minority voting, voters and minority representation in Congress. Let's get right to our senior Washington correspondent, Devin Dwyer, who covers the Supreme Court force. Devin. Kira, this decision is six to three written by Justice Samuel Alito. And it's a significant decision and a setback for the landmark

Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was a pass to guarantee equality in how we vote. And of course, addressing the systemic and historic racial discrimination, especially across the South. decision came in a case out of Louisiana involving a court order drawing addition of a second majority black district in that state because of the size of the state's population. And the Supreme Court today in this decision said that the court violated the 14th Amendment by adding, the state rather, violated the 14th amendment by adding that district. They used race impermissibly, consciously to add a second district to aid those voters.

And they said that is simply not allowed under our Constitution. Justice Samuel Lito didn't go as far as saying race can never be used in drawing these maps. That's something the court has affirmed before to comply with the Voting Rights Act, but he put a significant new limit on how courts can order states to draw their maps to be more equitable. He said that Section 2 imposes liability only when evidence supports a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its map to discriminate. So a setback for minority voters in Louisiana, and now, Kira, the impact of this decision is going to start to ripple across the country. Let's talk about that impact and bring in our legal contributor and law professor at Hofstra

University, James Sample. I mean, James, this is clearly gutting landmark legislation here. Absolutely correct, Kira. This is a ruling that almost completely constitutionalizes a color blindness principle to the point that even race-conscious remedies designed to remedy racial discrimination are unconstitutional under the very amendments, the 14th and 15th amendments, that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were designed to make real and manifest in the country. So this is a diametrical shift in voting rights practices, a diametrical shift in the area of race. and racial discrimination and the remedies for racial discrimination. James, thanks. Let's bring in Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce now.

Mary, we can stop there. All right. So my man, Samuel Alito, laying it down again, fellow native of West Caldwell, New Jersey. Shout out to Phil and Laura. Is he a native of West Caldwell, New Jersey? He's a native of Trenton, I believe. But he lived in, he and his family were from West Caldwell, New Jersey, where I'm from originally. So I went to school with the school with the,

elite. I didn't even know that Laura Alito, who was in my grade for years, that her, like, we vaguely knew that her dad was some kind of judge, maybe, but I had no idea what that even meant. And then all of a sudden, boom, senior year of high school, we find out that George W. Bush has nominated Samuel Alito to replace Harriet Myers, who was the victim of a Republican revolt in the Senate. I don't know if you recall that whole ordeal. I actually don't. What do they get around? So in 2005, George W. Bush nominated, sorry. He first initial, his first nomination was John Roberts.

George W. Bush had no, had no Supreme Court nominations in his first term. So from 2001 to 2005. So conservatives, federalist society types were getting angsty because normally a president will get at least one nominee for a vacancy. in a full term, but it's all sort of random. It depends on just the lifespans of particular justices. But then he gets reelected and finally the big chance comes to nominate the replacement for a Rehnquist who, the Supreme Court, the justice who dies in office. That's John Roberts.

It's unclear whether conservatives are getting what they really wanted with John Roberts, but they're willing to tolerate it. And then, but then the next one comes around, right? And that is the Sandra Day O'Connor, I think, vacancy who retires. And conservatives are chagrined because Reagan nominated her as the first woman Supreme Court Justice. And she turned out to be more of a quote unquote moderate or not a doctrinaire, hardline ideologically sort of rigorous conservative, which is what they wanted. So she didn't vote the right way on the abortion rulings. I think it was the, I'm forgetting the name, the one now in the 90s.

It was like the add-on to the Roe versus Wade decision that kind of got recodified it in the 90s. So they're all upset and they want to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. But Bush nominates his just friend from back in Texas, Harriet Myers, who's basically just like a senior advisor, I think, in the White House. Really didn't have any kind of established legal record or jurisprudential history. And he has to withdraw that nomination because Republicans in the Senate eventually sound their objections enough that he gives in and then appoints somebody who really is in the sweet spot for the conservative legal community, which is Samuel Alito, who happens to be who happened to be from West Cald, New Jersey. I attended his CCD classes like the Catholic education classes. Wow. And I was on the tennis team with Phil, Laura I was friends with.

And, you know, we just got blown away all of a sudden one day where he was nominated by Bush. And his kids had to be summoned to D.C. so they were absent. And all of a sudden we see, we see like Laura on the news then. And I was like, wait, what? Like she's with standing there with George Bush. It was pretty crazy. And, you know, my claim to fame is that Samuel Alito did what I think must have been his first interview of any kind, first or maybe only interview of any kind after between when he was nominated by Bush. And then when he took office as Supreme Court Justice,

because that happened to coincide with my being in an AP government and politics class with Laura in our senior years. So he came in just for the day and just talked to the class, right? And of course, you know me. I'm so obnoxious. I monopolized a little class asking him questions about like stare decisis and stuff. And then like running home as soon as I could to like write it down on my, you know, my old Dell computer because there was no way to record it at the time. But I still have the notes. Anyway, so that's my little tie in with Samuel Alita.

We're both somehow notable people on the West Caldwell, New Jersey Wikipedia page, which doesn't say much for West Calbal that I'm even on there, but there you have it. That is very interesting background. Well, okay, so this is actually a fascinating case. One that I think people will have differing feelings about depending. It won't be straight down partisan lines in this one. I don't think, even though it was in the Supreme Court. So let's just start with acknowledging that there has been a problem with gerrymandering and redistricting for a while.

There were the sort of redistricting wars after the 2010 census, right? What were the states that had the problems? I'm trying to remember. After the 2010 census? Yeah, because that was a big Republican wave year, right? So what were like Wisconsin, Michigan? I think it probably would have been.

Right. Places that are kind of like swinging or swingish, swingish states, but went Republican in 2010. So then the Republican governors and state legislatures try to pull out all the stops to kind of consolidate power for the next decade. And Democrats do the same thing, obviously, when they get a chance. Yeah, no. They did the same thing even that year.

You know, they were, if I remember correctly, it was Pennsylvania, right? No, no, I'm sorry. Pennsylvania was Republicans. There was Maryland, Illinois. California moved to a, to a commission or something. A commission, which is probably where a lot of these things are headed. Um, because that was that that way and California obviously they're so referendum heavy. Mm hmm.

Being ballot initiatives that I think they were able to sell that idea to the voters. So you're almost like you on with the idea being you're almost taking away the redistricting authority from the politicians, which is a pretty easily saleable concept. But now you say this has been a problem for a long time. Do you know the genesis of the term jerry, gendering? No. That would be elbridge jerry. Yeah. who was the vice president, if I'm not mistaken,

yeah, vice president of the United States from 1813 to 1814. And that term was coined because when he was governor of Massachusetts, from 1810 to 1812, he tried to devise like a random arbitrary district in Boston for his allies political advantage. So it's been a problem for, you know, not since 20, just since 2010, but since like 1810. Right. Yeah, but no.

in recent history that this has kind of come back up there there there are been um increasingly aggressive attempts to redraw the map yeah you know part of why is that as as uh as uh u s politics has gotten increasingly increasingly nationalized where there's no like regional idiosyncrasies anymore like you used to have west virginia democrats who could get elected a cycle after cycle after cycle or you would have like you know some northeastern republican who could get elected even in Vermont or something. That's mostly gone. Like Susan Collins is the last remnant of that,

and she's probably going to lose this year to this Platner fellow. But as this polarization has taken effect, there's more of an incentive for the parties to consolidate their power wherever it's concentrated, because there's no even notion that there could be some, like, partisan variation in certain states that, maybe don't go totally in accordance with what the national trends are. Joe Manchin was like the last relic of that too, which is why he had to retire this last

cycle rather than even attempt to seek a re-election in West Virginia. And a related downstream effect of this is that as the parties have consolidated their power and sort of tweaked the districting. We have fewer and fewer every year competitive districts. Yeah, I hate this trend. So when I first started covering this, I did a story about this for Rolling Stone like 15 or 20 years ago. I remember being shocked by the number.

It was something like 83% of districts, you know, had historically the you know the had been won by more than five points right uh and now that number is even higher uh i think the in the last election cycle it was in the 90s uh so another reason why i hate this is because it blandly homogenizes u.s politics even more than it already is so we don't have that regional variation anymore where you can have this like idiosyncratic political tendency that is unique to a particular area of the country, like the quintessential West Virginia Democrats, not that they were without problems,

but it was sort of like, you know, emblematic of whatever the political dynamics were in that locality, but now it's just kind of washed over into this overwhelming nationalized trend. Because like if you, if we're going to have a system, Staten Island Democrats is another one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Actually, you know, Staten Island is still is mostly represented by AM. by a Republican right now. But by registration, it's, it's overwhelmingly Democrat. Staten Island is? Mm-hmm. Is it still? Okay. Yeah, yeah. So you have like almost that that's almost like a or it was. I'm not sure about I have to go check. It's definitely higher than Republican registration than any borough, any other borough. And there was a flip, I think in 2018 with this guy Max Rose, who was like one of these, you know, tough guy, military recruit people that the D, D, C wanted to put in every competitive race and it actually was successful like the cia gang um he was in there for

two years but now it but then it flipped back to nicole maliotakis and who's a republican so she's satin island and like southern brooklyn like bay ridge so that's like an example of something okay so new york city i mean you want literally every elected official in new york city to just be a down the line democrat probably not you probably want a little bit of competition a little bit of uh i don't know creative energy so nicole mali otacus you know i don't have that much of of an issue with her representing Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn. In fact, it's probably better than like just some generic Democrat who gets in there through some party selection process in like Kings County and then never has to worry

about a competitive race again and is his or her entire life. And likewise, you know, you maybe you want like there's still to be, I don't know, some Democrats in Florida, you know, you want there to be some Democrats in like California, some Republicans in California and, you know, go on down the list. otherwise everything just gets so tediously homogenized, which is what this latest redistricting battle, where it's like one state going after the next, Virginia just had that referendum where they approved new Democrat favorable congressional districts after, you know, Texas did a version of that in favor of the Republicans, and then California did in favor of the Democrats. And, you know, Trump wanted the Indiana to do it. And then he wanted to primary the state senators who wouldn't go along with that.

I mean, it's just so, it's so tedious. And it's for no higher. purpose than just raw partisan power that people then graft these like highfalut and bogus principles onto which makes it even more annoying okay yes and no i i disagree a little bit on that but but but um but you know absolutely the both parties have been you know appealing to the courts doing whatever they can to try to beef up their representation what do you disagree with well i I think there is a highfalutin principle involved in this one. I think it's a complicated one. So, uh, oh, this court case, yes, in the Supreme court decision.

I'm talking about like the larger redistricting sort of shenanigans. Yeah. Yes, there's a higher principle at stake in this, in this Supreme court case. Yeah. So, uh, just to give like some personal background, like, um, when I wrote the, uh, the book about the Eric Garner case, uh, I had to meet lawyers who, um, going back, Deckerner case. Uh, I had to meet lawyers who, um, going back, had worked to get race out of the law, right?

Sometimes risking their lives, right? They'd gone to rural Arkansas to desegregate communities. They had bricks thrown at them, right? And this was the driving concept in sort of American liberalism in the These are like New York Jewish lawyers pretty much. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So they would go into these places and they would try to, you know, take out laws that said they're, you know,

that X schools had to be black and you know you couldn't send you can send black students here blah blah just had to be race neutral and that concept held for a significant period of time like the idea of removing race from the law that was once considered progressive then there was a kind of a shift in the political temperature starting in the I don't I don't know, 2000s, 2010s. And we started to see these concepts of, well, we have to do, the law has to be tweaked in some cases to address historical or cultural inequities.

You know, some of the more controversial cases, right, involve things like, you know, which communities will get the first access to COVID vaccine. Right. Remember, there were some cases involving that. So here... Ever DeSantis got attacked because he was prioritizing the elderly? Right, exactly. Exactly.

Which is exactly, by the way, what they should have done. Exactly. And... Meaning, he was prioritizing the cross-racial elderly in Florida of all places, rather than laser focus on, you know, disadvantaged minority communities as though, like, a 21-year-old black guy should have priority over an 85-year-old white woman. Right.

Didn't have a lot of sense. So, okay. So this district in case, what's the name? What's the name of the case? Hang on a minute. It's, I have not read this week's case, but I remember reading there was a Louisiana v. Calais. Yeah, yeah. There was sort of a precursor case that I do remember reading from, I think it was 2013.

Remember, oh, here, yeah, Shelby County versus Holder, which was about the constitutionality of other you know of certain provisions of the voting rights act of 1965 which is why i'm not sure i totally buy i'm not you know the idea that all the sudden in the 2010s suddenly race neutrality was tossed aside in favor of a new you know activist incubated ideology that actually put a premium on racial characteristics i'm not sure that's quay right because like what was the whole purpose of the voting rights act of 1965 it was to impose a federal backstop so that states could not according to the supporters of the law, like LBJ and so forth, states could not unduly... Discriminate.

Well, thwart the ability of blacks to obtain political power by using the mechanisms of the state governance to marginalize them more or less. And a lot of those measures that were used to like legitimately marginalize blacks, like poll taxes, those were technically race neutral. The poll tax laws did not say blacks are hereby forbidden from voting unless they can pay a certain tax. That was obviously the intended outcome, but it was mostly, in my recollection, constructed race neutrally with the idea being that the ones, you know, overwhelmingly the ones who aren't going to be able to pay the poll taxes are blacks with, yeah, some poor whites thrown in. But that was fine for the people who wrote the laws because they knew that, you know, proportionally, it would mean that blacks would be, inhibited from gaining political power in like the genuine deep south,

Alabama, you know, and Mississippi and so forth in like the genuine, in the era of American history where like that genuinely was a political project for the white, you know, ruling class, so to say, in the deep south. Yeah, I guess though, but the overwhelming principle of the Voting Rights Act, voting rights act and the most of the laws that came afterward were anti-discriminatory. The idea was the way we talk about, the way we're going to address race in legislation and in laws from now on is to prohibit consideration of it to favor one over the other, right? And, you know, that was a principle that mostly held for a while. But Matt, there was there was necessary racial consciousness to assess whether the ballot, the

voting districts were drawn in such a way in the deep south to prevent blacks from having adequate representation. And that still holds even in this ruling. Yeah, yeah. Which I don't even think is necessarily. I mean, I'm not even defending that on the merits anymore. I think you could just kind of get rid of the whole paradigm at this point. Or at least you ought to, you should aspire to. Some people don't even aspire to.

I'm just saying that was the logic of like 1965. So I'm not sure I totally buy the idea that, you know, there was like race neutrality as a consensus agreement principle. And then only in 2010. I thought that was the aspiration. I mean, I think that if you went back. and yeah i mean famously you know that was the faith that was the speech yeah i i have a dream that one day my

yeah children not be judged by the color of the skin etc right and then the sort of switching out for equality for equity that that kind of thing um you know it hasn't for instance that was in the background of the loudon county case uh controversy where there there was a um like sort of a gifted student program right and the problem was that the town intervened because all the south asian kids were dominating that the program and it was decided that they had to to redo the admission so that a proportional number of each group would would get into those programs and And that created all kinds of hostility, right?

And so, you know, with this one, what exactly is the background? When did they add that second district, the 2020 in Louisiana? I'm not sure. I should have done more prep on that decision. But, you know, just one more thing, though, on sort of like the historical backdrop of this.

The reason that right-wing sort of legal thinkers have been opposed to the civil rights laws of the 1960s for ages, not just since the 2010s, but for ages, is that they posited, I mean, read Richard Henanilla on this, who's like sort of a weird guy ideologically,

hard to pin down, but he's originated on the right, for sure, and definitely on the racial conscious right, racially conscious right, alt-right-ish. And, you know, he had a book called The Origins of Woke, which was actually pretty influential,

in the first year of the second Trump administration where they were sort of using some of the arguments as the basis for the executive orders and so forth that would root out institutionalized DEI. And Hanani's whole point is that you can't just stop a DEI that all stems from or springs from the legal framework that was institutionalized by the Civil Rights Act of 19, the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s because they they effectively instituted racial preferences on behalf of blacks, not colorblindness, even though even if that might have been like the rhetorical selling point, but pro-minority racial,

institutionalized policy. And so you had to uproot the whole underbelly of it in order to actually do away with vote. That's the argument anyway, and that's an argument that has like, you know, pretty long-standing genesis in the right. So I think, you know, I think the people who are the most in sense by by what they see as undue racial preferences imposed by the federal government to advantage of blacks that has now just been partially overruled by the Supreme Court.

They would disagree with you because they think, no, it's actually got to go back to the 1960s. Despite the patina of racial neutrality, it was all about pretty much arbitrarily hoisting up blacks because the liberals were race guilty. and like the 60s radicals had taken over and had infiltrated the civil rights movement and you know got LBJ to do their bidding etc. Yeah. No, I remember going to one of the early Tea Party meetings, which was in a, it was in like a suburban county in New York State and they were protesting the fact that the federal government was going to build low income housing in their town, right? And, you know, the essence of their complaint was that, you know, sort of it goes against American principles to, that we all moved here to get away from the city, right? White flight. Yeah. No, but this was, this was pretty far out of the city, right?

It was not just a, it was like Rockland County or negative. Yeah, yeah, something like that. It was more in the direction of Albany. I can't remember exactly where. And, you know, so there are, there are different ways of thinking about this. Like, you know, is it absolutely necessary to make every county in the country, you know, part of the project of providing low income housing to, you know what I mean? I mean, I don't think any of these things are easy questions. I mean, I'm not unsympathetic to that argument, actually.

I don't think there's some inherent virtue in empowering the federal government to micromanage all. these aspects of how we organize society from on high when they're sort of marinating in these weird ideological fads that kind of can change in a dime given the political or cultural or cultural or algorithmic now, you know, dynamics. So I'm not unsipathetic, unsipathetic with that at all. I mean, I think, you know, there was a famous line. They're not a famous line. I don't even know why I remember this, but Jonah Goldberg, the guy formerly of the National Review, one of the early political bloggers. I just remember him saying, I think it was around the 2010, actually,

that, you know, they're talking about problems within the conservative movement on some early podcast, blogging heads, I think, with Bob Wright. He was like, yeah, we don't like, you know, us guys in the conservative movement, because he was still in good standing at that point. This is well, pre-Trump. Us guys in the conservative movement, we tend to find, we can find oftentimes libertarians to be annoying, but you always want one of them in the room,

because they're always going to be sort of looking at the underlying principle as to exertions of government power. And I think that's kind of right. I think there's nothing an even inherently right wing about having that tendency. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. And this Louisiana case is, look, that second district that they built, that they, that they drew,

um, it's, it's almost impossible to argue that this is not a racially, run district. Yeah, right. So are we going to end the era of districts like that? Because both parties have taken advantage

or have used that tactic to... Yeah, I mean, the tit for tat that is now being sort of proposed in Florida as a retaliation for the Virginia redistricting referendum. By the way, it's the green here for

people. who were looking at i mean there are you pull up the put the the congressional maps in maryland there's there's a one particular one district that's particularly insane um that you know i think that is uh pretty old in its its origins like maryland maryland is the one thing that like when the potty of america guys will concede the democrats have done some you know cynical gerrymandering too they'll point to maryland because the yeah it was 2011 they added one that was like totally nuts yeah yeah and then they shunt out the one republican andy harris so like the fall west that like borders west Virginia.

So anyway, I just find the whole thing depressing. And, you know, I think most of the time there really is no underlying principle in terms of just like this, again, tit for tat. Virginia does it. Now Florida's got to do it because Texas did it and then Illinois wants to do it or whatever. That I don't, that I find just sort of pure tedium in the sense that there really is no higher principle of sake other than raw exercises in political power, which I guess is what politics is.

But on the idea of racial consciousness, or as least as it relates to this Voting Rights Act decision, yeah, I think there's, I think the liberals of the legal, philosophical, legally liberals are the ones who are kind of just sort of obstinate and unwilling to like reevaluate anything decades after the fact when the whole premise behind those laws in the 1960s were supposed to be that they were time limited or that they were not indefinite, meaning that they would be subject to reevaluation with, changing times and changing attitudes. And I think, you know, there has been a big change in racial attitudes in the United States. I know we were all told that we were, you know, headed back to chattel slavery in 2020, you know, despite having a black president for eight years and so forth. But it's, it's on the ground when you talk to people. It's mostly bogus. Yeah, there are still, obviously there are still, you know, go talk to black people.

They will still have particularized grievances around their perceived mistreatment that I think have some legitimacy in the main, but in terms of how that man, but in terms of how that meant, yeah, especially with the cops, but in terms of how that manifests in terms of like some kind of political choice in terms of like who's going to represent what particular precinct. I mean, this is ridiculous. So the Republicans, you know, I guess the Republicans actually did make a concerted effort to get lots of women and minorities into their fold. And, you know, it's been pretty effective. For a while, Ben Carson, remember this? Ben Carson was leading the Republican primary polls in October of 2015.

Yeah. And in the cycle prior to that, 2012, Herman Kane for a while was leading nationally, the Republican primary polls for president of the United States, because Republican primary voters love them some, you know, sermonizing, you know, black preacher talk around what traditional, what proper morality is, pull up your pants, go to church, et cetera.

So there's no racial animus that's born. that's, you know, inhibiting them from supporting those types of people, they love it. So, I mean, just like take some solace in that, I guess, if you actually want some bona fide change in racial attitudes. But if you're just stuck in this, you know, inertia of a civil rights act of 1965 paradigm, then, you know, you're the one who I think is a little bit too stubborn. I remember I was actually covering the primaries at that time. And, you know, Carson was the last person to be in the lead who wasn't Donald

Trump yeah that year and uh and his candidacy got knocked off its uh access by the release of the that weird video when he was talking about the pyramids as grain storage facilities uh when he gave that speech and trump started beat to it sounds trump started like gently going after him you know in his joking way because obviously you know he wanted to keep carson sort of on his side but there was a week or so where he's like all right i got to go after van a little little bit because he just he just abandoned me. Remember there was the whole thing about stabbing? Yeah, yeah, no, that's what I was going to say.

Ben Carson, like, wrote in his book or something that when he was a kid, he attacked his mother with a knife or with a wrench or some pretty hard for object. It was a knife. Yeah, yeah. And Trump's like, I don't know if we want somebody who attacked their own mother with a knife, do we? I mean, I'm sure he's a great guy. You know, he's a brilliant guy, neurosurgeon, whatever.

But attacking him with a knife. like I never I never attacked my mother with a knife. Like Trump actually said that I remember. Yeah. Yeah. And look, that worked. All right. Did you see his quote yesterday? This is great.

This is why, okay, so I take back everything I said like a couple of weeks ago on our, is Trump still funny conversation? Because the answer is unequivocally yes. Here's what he said. He was asked about, he was asked by a reporter about wearing a boltproof vest going forward after Saturday's incident, the shooting at the White House correspondent's dinner. He said, quote, I don't know if I can hand. looking 20 pounds heavier.

He's got a point. All right, well, let's look at some of the reactions to this. Let's go to number one, Sot 1. This is Yvette Clark of the Congressional Black Caucus, blasting. Let's go to this decision. And then we'll go to three after that with Hakeem Jeffries. We did not become a true.

truly multiracial democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced the 15th Amendment because black Americans demanded the right to be seen, heard, and counted. That progress was paid for in blood, in sacrifice, and in unbreakable resolve. And now, 60 years later, we are watching that progress be ripped away. With this decision in Louisiana v. Calais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on black voters across this country. This is an outright power grab. It's about silencing black voices. Vantling majority.

This is Yvette Clark from the congressional black caucus. And bringing the map so that politicians can choose their voters instead of the other way. around. We have seen this. My deranged buddy, I'll re-in- We know exactly what this leads to. And we will not go back. Let's listen to Hakeem Jeffries, you know, for a limited amount of time.

Yeah, it was an illegitimate Supreme Court majority. Strikes a blow against the Voting Rights Act and is designed to undermine the ability of communities of color all across this. country to elect their candidate of choice. How is the Supreme Court- is not here to step back?

We're here- grousing about Merrick Garland? Yeah, yeah, I don't, I guess that would be. I think that must be what it is. They're still grousing about Merrick Garland in 2016, not being voted on when he was nominated by Obama after Scalia died. So for the past 10 years, the Supreme Court has been illegitimate. And I suppose I thought I was supposed to revere our institutions and norms.

Well, yeah, the argument being that the Republicans in ignored the norms in 2016, which they did. Yeah, which they did. Came out earlier today. It's an unacceptable decision, but not an unexpected decision. Because this isn't even really the Roberts Court. It's the Trump Court. Yes. And what we would expect from the Trump Court is an effort to continue their scheme to suppress the vote and rig the midterm elections and beyond. Because these extremists have failed America in every possible way. They failed on the economy. They failed on health care. They're failing as it relates to this reckless and costly war of choice. The extremists have completely and totally failed America. So they've concluded

aided and abetted by the Trump court that they have to cheat to win. Yes. The Trump court, Trump is constantly putting out these wild screes bashing his own Supreme Court justices that he nominated. Yeah, I know.

Three of them in his first term because they won't go along with whatever he wants on any given day. He thought that they would actually just be so loyal to Trump, even though that they have a lifetime appointment. And he's mad at the Federalist Society for recommending Gorsuch, Cavanaugh, and

Barrett, I guess, especially, for not just like mindlessly ruling in the way that Trump wants, but it's the Trump court? No, it's not. It's the Roberts-Elito Thomas court. And I hate that performative thing where it's the whole, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, you know what this reminds, remember in 2021, I think it was, where all the Democrats, I think, including Biden himself, came out and, like, very sternly and melodramatically declared that, like, some tweak to the voting laws in Georgia was the Jim Crow 2.0 because of like some voter ID requirement, which like I'm sort of agnostic about on the merits, but like whatever the impact,

it was not like some egregious, you know, crisis in like racial tyranny. And like then when the data came in about, you know, voting patterns post the enactment of that law, it had no effect whatsoever. But like that in like the, and didn't think the MLB have to like move their All-Star game or something out of. Yeah, Atlanta. Yeah. Yep. There's also, you know, this isn't a hugely significant story, but it's part of it. There's a presumption by everybody that white people are going to vote for Republicans and the blacks are going to vote for Democrats, but it's actually bled in the opposite directions for a couple of cycles now. And this is, I saw this Harry Anton, the former 530. 36.com pollster. 538. 538.

Nate Silver will be so disappointed in you. I'm sorry. As a former baseball prospectus contributor, I apologize. Were you really? I was, yeah. Money ball map. Yeah.

So this was, I thought, just a little bit interesting. This just came out. After the Supreme Court's decision, here's that moment. When did it come out just now? No, it came out this morning. But basically very much narrows the voting rights act.

Would you consider to win for the win for Republican House? I love it. Cian's chief data analyst, Harry, Anthony running the number. That's all he has to hear. Harry, let's kind of baseline for everyone right now. How is the president doing right now with African-American voters with black voters

now versus this point in the first term? Yeah, I think what we're seeing right now in the numbers is President Trump and the Republican Party are chipping away at the long-term advantage that Democrats have had with black voters with African-Americans. You can see it right here.

Look, Trump's approval among African Americans at this point in term one, he was at 12%. You know, he's been losing ground with a lot of people. He's gaining. And they're young black men. African Americans, he's up to 16% at this point. And you say, this isn't that big of a shift. But I will tell you, Republicans absolutely love

this shift that's going on because Democrats have had such a long-term advantage. The fact that he's actually gaining ground versus where he was in term number one, this has major implications for election. down the line because Democrats, especially in a lot of these tight races, you talk about places like Georgia, right down in the south, you see this type of movement for Trump actually gaining ground? This could have major ramifications and help put Republicans over the top in a number

of southern places in the midterm elections. So do you see this as part of a bigger trend? I see this as absolutely part of a bigger trend. Donald Trump's Republican Party is absolutely gaining ground, not just him gaining in terms of his approval rating, but look at the party ID margin, Kate, because this to me was absolutely stunning. Look at this. Party ID margin among African Americans at this point. In Trump term number one, Democrats had a 63 point advantage. That is absolutely fall. Look at where it is now. A double digit shift away. Democrats, of course, still have the advantage, but it's a 12-point shift to the Republican Party. And I look back through Gallup's records. They sent me their records. And this, in fact, lead that Democrats have

is actually smaller than any lead from 2006 to 2021. So Democrats are leaving, but again, we're talking about chipping away. Republicans are chipping away. He's right. I mean, it is a longstanding trend. One of the ironies of the 2020 election, right? Was that for all the screeching about election fraud and a Venezuelan fraud algorithm that had supposedly infiltrated the tabulation systems and Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and all that nuttyness, January 6th, there were actually some, you know, let's say hopeful signs for the Trump era Republicans in the data that. they kind of weirdly overlooked, especially in so far as minority demographics, trending pretty

discernively toward Republicans in a way that would have been radically counterintuitive if you had listened to any of the prevailing media narratives during that first Trump term where we were in this nightmarish white supremacy, you know, apocalypse. And so like, you know, so Trump, you know, and his, you know, accolades would scream, oh, though, there's, we're going to go out. There's obviously this decisively corrupting voter fraud in the metro, in the four inner cities in the swing state. So Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit. But, you know, I did a big, I did a big, actually, newspaper feature on that for the New York Daily News.

And when you look into the, looked into like the granular data, Trump was overperforming in the inner city precincts. sinks in a Milwaukee and a Detroit compared to 2016. And Biden was actually underperforming Hillary and Obama. But, you know, Biden still won over the states overall, like in Michigan because he was like drastically. Because he was gaming in the affluent suburbs. It will, particularly the affluent suburbs, you know, across the board. But in like the more impoverish, you know, actual inner city areas, there was an uptick that

was pro Trump. But like the Republicans didn't talk like the Macca people never talked about. it because they were so consumed by this like overarching hallucinatory election fraud narrative that like these data never impinged on them but like this is a continuation of of that trend i would say which was harry is a you know elucidating there so i think this this is a thing that has gone on for 20 years having you know having covered campaigns for a long time it's been a long time source of frustration that we have reporters have fixed ideas about who votes for whom and they just never change right even though

there's uh constant change uh in which demographics go which way right so you mentioned that the republicans aren't talking about these gains very much the democrats also aren't talking about their gains in the affluent suburbs right like uh you know they've become almost dominant. I talked about it. I talked about it. That's like the center of power in their party now. So that's where you would expect their priorities to be centered on,

you know, legislatively, politically, and otherwise. So yeah, I mean, that's definitely a longstanding observable. I mean, it coincides with the republic. It's like a flip from 20 years ago where the Republicans are more a lower class oriented or they're, they're down now. their center of power is farther down on the scale of like the socio continuum now yeah as opposed to you know 2004 or something it doesn't mean that the republicans are awarded or 1992 even yeah yeah it doesn't mean like the republicans are like a thoroughly working class party or something which i remember

ted cruz declaring after what which election was it either 2020 or 2020 i think it was after 2024 which is like an overstatement of the case it's just in terms of the trend lines that's what's going on with the Democrats coming in relatively more affluent, Republicans becoming relatively less affluent. So you would expect that you also go hand in hand with some movement in their favor amongst the more socioeconomic downscale minority demographics who kind of just relate more to the Republicans on a visceral instinctive level and, you know, probably are consuming the podcast and so forth, Rogan, what have you. And yeah. And there's another thing that's going on. Every, every, presidential election cycle there's always a pundit um trope there are no swing voters so don't even bother

going to try to talk to them don't you know nobody's actually trying to make up their mind there are no swing voters like that's always like this kind of like you know pundit cliche every cycle meanwhile if actually go out as i do every cycle and like just talk to random people at walmart or something there's plenty of swing voters because they're not tuned in like harry ent and day in day out to the nitty gritty of like what's going on there are tons of swing voters and And the only reason that we don't see more is because people consume tons and tons of media that tells them they fit into a preordained, you know, slot. You know, there are certain things that are true. Male turnout helped Trump.

Female turnout helped Democrats last, last time around. but within the you know those that sort of broad parameter there were subcategories like affluent white men tend to vote for Democrats now yeah or with a graduate level education or something graduate level education right and there's an even weirder thing that's going on with and women forget it that's like 90-10 or something yeah right meaning affluent white women or highly educated white women. Especially single women. Yeah. Especially single. Married less so. Single? Much more democratic. Yeah. But as you start going farther down the age scale, you get, we're getting things now where there's like less and less party affiliation,

the closer you get to 18. And then, you know, at 18 and 19 people, you know, there's almost a, a majority neither position with young people, right? Like there isn't the thing that happened a long time ago, where we assume young people voted for Democrats, right? That's not true at all anymore. They may not vote for Republicans, but they're all over the place politically. And so...

It's not like Obama 2008, which I was right in the middle of, I'll admit. as like a 19, 20 year old where it was sort of, I mean, what you think like your, your, your, your, your friend on your college campus was going to be voting for John McCain. Right. No, not so much. It was Obama for sure. Even like amongst like kind of like Republican, I mean, even like the Republicans that I knew because I would always like, you know, do collaborations and stuff with like the college

Republicans, even they were kind of like not. If they were voting for McCain, it was like as unenthusiastically as they possibly could. but even like the people who might be more attracted to the college Republican program, they couldn't even, they couldn't convince to vote for McCain. It was just Obama all the way. You know, in 2024, I wrote something for Newsweek about the, like, what I sort of was detecting was the quintessential swing voter or undecided voter that I was encountering.

So it went to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and so forth. it wasn't it wasn't a swing voter that was necessarily deciding whether to vote for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump it was somebody it was a voter that was deciding whether or not to vote at all right and if they were deciding whether or not to vote at all almost invariably I found like nine times out of 10 they were going to be voting for Trump right right and that's that's an extension of the I mean there was that weird stat including minorities like I remember I talked to like, all day I spent pace to talk to minorities out of Walmart one day. And every voter of that profile that I spoke to, it was they were undecided.

They were like, what's the deal with this Kamala thing? How did she even get in there? I might vote. I might not. I don't care that much. If I do vote on voting for Trump, things that we were basically okay when he was last in power. Yeah. In 2016, there was a really weird.

Good job with the producer. There we go. a mystery producer comes through again. What's the name of the piece? So people can read it. Undecided Pennsylvania voters told me what they really think about Harrison Trump. That's kind of the lame headline. I did not write that.

But anyway. Yeah. Most of the time the writer does not write the headline unless they're the editor of the site. In 2016, one of the reasons I thought Trump could not win for sure is because I got sat down by a Democratic pollster in the convention. who showed me the disapproval ratings and the historical disapproval ratings of other candidates and said, there is no way a candidate with disapproval ratings as high as ever going to win a national election. And the problem, the thing that I didn't think of, he didn't think of is that among the 19% of voters. Who dislikes both Hillary and Trump.

Yeah. It was almost the two to one margin for Trump. And that's an extension of what you're talking about. among the people who are deciding whether or not to vote. The Trump's an asshole, but I'm voting for him anyway, voters. Right, yeah, exactly. He's getting a lot of those votes, right? It's traditional politics that is turning people off, you know, which is fascinating.

So there are all these trends that are going to come into play. Now, you mentioned Barack Obama. Let's see what his post was on this decision before we move on to the, It's very inspiring. The indictments of the week in a moment. I mean, the Republic, however, when we were talking about like maybe some positive portents for Republicans politically in the long run, perhaps, or at least a diversification of like traditional racial allegiance in terms of how it kind of coexist with partisan

affiliation, but I mean, the Republicans are on course to get totally swamped in these midterms. So, I mean, look at every pretty much, every data point for every election that's been held in the past year. Special elections, the gubernatorial elections last year, even like local, like, I mean, a Democrat won a state legislative seat that

contains Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, they're going to get, they're going to get wiped out. That's like they're rushing to kind of consolidate, I mean, like Republicans in particular are rushing to consolidate whatever gains they can cling to now. Probably still can. Right, right. And it probably, and it won't be enough. But it's still interesting.

I mean, the Republicans reminded us very frequently, you know, not not unjustifiably in 2022 when the gas prices were going up because of the Biden policy on Russia, sanctions and whatever that, you know, this is Biden inflation. Well, I mean, everybody can drive around and look at the gas prices nowadays. That's because Trump, in his own blinkered brain, decided to randomly launch a war with Iran. So there's no, nobody else who really gets the, blame for that. Michael, do you want to read the first graph here of Obama's thing? Okay, should I do the Barack Obama voice?

Yes. Good evening. Let me be clear. He does always say that, yeah. The notion that, I noticed he always says the notion that, I mean, not that you can't say the notion, but it was just a verbal tick I've always noticed. Anyways, today's Supreme, so when was this Wednesday or yesterday? Wednesday. Okay.

This is April 29th, 26. 16. Today's Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities, so long as they do it under the guise of, quote, partisanship rather than explicit, quote, racial bias. And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority of groups against majority overreach. The good news is that such sex backs can be overcome. We shall overcome. And Trump

does, we shall overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across this, country who cherish our democratic ideals like my good friend sherid brown who i'm going to campaign for in ohio i mean he's going to like all these people who cherish our democratic ideals the lamest people like gretchen whitmer continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers not just in the upcoming midterms or in high-profile races but in every direction and every level well thank god the democracy isn't fully destroyed which is what we were warm was going to happen if trump got back in so we're announced way maybe there's like some you know regrettably democrat democracy undermining measures as they see it but like the democracy itself is like pretty much still intact it's just like

we got to like worry about sam elito yeah and and the way the ruling is written it it it seems to say almost the opposite of what obama said that uh that the that the new test was going to be you know the basically that the federal government can intercede only when there's strong evidence that racial discrimination was employed in the in the drawing of the map. So I don't know. It's kind of like remember that there was a like a fairly landmark gun control ruling a few years ago on gun regulation, gun policy that was that was authored by Thomas. I think it was in the same batch of rulings actually. with the overturning of Roe versus Wade. So that would have been 22, if I'm not mistaken.

But that gun control ruling, I can't remember the name of it now. Either producer can look it up. It's kind of a wild ruling, frankly, where Clarence Thomas goes back to like colonial America. I think he might even go back to like England in the Middle Ages or something to find precedent for the various arguments he's making. But the effect of it was simply to require that state. if they're going to impose requirements for a handgun permit or gun permitting, they have to be kind of like standardized. So there were some states whose regimens were basically invalidated and had to be revised.

But then like a handful, a bunch of others whose regimens complied with the Supreme Court's new test. And yet the rule, the, the commentary of the instant, you know, blithering headlines at the time were like, you know, this hard, this right-wing court, it's going to be allowing mass shootings to break out in every school in the nation and like you can no longer control gun provision at all. It was just like totally inimical to what was actually written in the ruling. And even Kavanaugh added like a little addendum or like a concurrence where he's like, you know, just so everybody's clear, this does not affect. this does not this ruling does not in any way inhibit the ability of states to regulate who is permitted to purchase a firearm

we're just calling for more a standardization of like the approval or disapproval criteria yeah and this this is something that we can come back to you know if we if we can get to your your thing again it's just you can say whatever you want in analysis now or commentary uh it doesn't have have to strongly coincide with facts in any way. You can just say this means X and you know. Here's what, here's what, oh, sorry, this was Alito's concurrence. I stand corrected. I thought it was Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh also did a second concurrence. Okay, so they both did concurrences. This is what Alito said about that supposedly apocalyptic ruling that we were told at the time in June of 2022 had abolished the ability to regulate, you know, machine guns being, you know, sold at the corner store. Our holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun, nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess. Then Kavanaugh says the court's decision does not prohibit states from imposing licensing requirements for carrying a handgun. And quote, does not affect the existing licensing regimes that are employed in 43 states.

So I at the time, it's like if you live in Illinois or Colorado, like not known to be like necessarily bastions of freewheeling, you know, free-filling. ownership, but Colorado maybe a little bit different, but Illinois is for sure. The gun control regiments were unaffected. It was about something that got screwed up in Connecticut. Yeah. And this is just the phenomenon of fundraising narratives bleeding into the news, right? So you have interest groups that are freaking out about something, and so that becomes part of the way. I'm sorry, the right-wing jurists are much more interesting and insight.

to read than the current left liberal jurist like katanji brown jackson is like well she's just historic you know i don't want to be too rude but not the most um i mean here's stuff on on speech is like but it's like beyond belief i mean uh kagan can write a good you know a decently argued uh well written decision occasionally um but you know i mean maybe this is going to be seen as racially insensitive for something but so do my or and katanji brown jack actually so do i on now and then has a decent point to be made, a point to make on like civil liberties type issues or, you know, a due process. But by and large, the right wing jurists on the court are just much more, just attractive and like the level of thought that they're giving to the subject

in my experience. I guess, yeah. I don't know if the- Like Gorsuch is always, Gorsuch always has an interesting take. You can never quite pin him down. He's got like this idiosyncratic affinity for the Native Americans out in Colorado and like the Native American rights. And he's like kind of, whenever that issue comes up, it always like throws a monkey wrench into the whole Supreme Court distribution of, you know, power because he's going to side with the Native Americans because he has like, you know, he had a whole, you wrote a whole book basically on like Native American law and he sides with like the sovereign rights of Native Americans to not be necessarily required to do stuff by the government and so on and so forth.

It's just more interesting, I find. Yeah, that is interesting. It's just like this wrote, oh, we got to like preserve the same legal framework from a 1965 for all eternity or else, you know, blacks are going to be, you know, putting chains. Right. Yeah. No. And, you know, this whole thing, you know, the practice of drawing like weird spaghetti-shaped

districts just so that you can have, you know, a member of Congress who's of a certain color. Like, I don't know. I think that's a little silly. But get rid of the congressional black caucus, too. Get rid of any racially specific caucus. They're not needed anymore. You're not telling me that, like, the black Democrats have no other venue to gather without declaring a specifically racialized caucus for themselves.

Okay, I would maybe understand the logic for it 60 years ago. But now it's just this anachronism that then allows them to bloviate at their little press conferences and, you know, talk like, you know, Jesse Jackson or something. Right, yeah. RIP. Right. Yep. Yeah, here's Trump's truth about this.

let's quickly move on to the next issue though let's look at number 11 which is the Comey indictment if you haven't read this you know when I go to read the indictment of a former FBI director I'm expecting you know I may crack open a whole new beverage yeah you're going to settle in you know get into the easy share. Right. You know, there must be a lot in it. On a pipe. You're getting ready for a good, like, hour and a half or so of some, you know, reading. All right. So honor about, and it starts like this, count one, honor about May 15th, 2025 in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the defendant James Brian Comey Jr. did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president. of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet, social media site, Instagram, which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out 86-47, which a reasonable

recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States, in violation of Title 18, blah, blah, blah. Count two, honor about May 15, 2025, James Brian Comey, Jr. Noly and Willey did transmit in interstate and foreign commerce, a communication that contained a threat to kill the president, Donald Trump, specifically by posting a photograph, et cetera, et cetera, same stuff. Forfeiture notice notices hereby here,

given that all right title and interest in the property, described herein is subject to forfeiture. And this is just formulaic stuff. This is copy and pasted. This is copy pasted at the bottom. And then how much farther does it go? But you're done. That's it.

That's the whole thing. And this is all over an Instagram post, and we might as well just go straight to the Colbert interview, where Stephen Colbert asks Comey about this. This is, let's see, SOT 8, if we can. What is this sod? Sound on tape. Okay. I just heard you say that and have no real understanding of what it means. In here, but you, you, is this Instagram?

Instagram, yeah. You graammed this. You were walking on the beach. What happened? You were walking on the beach and you saw this on the beach? Yeah, my wife and I, Patrice, were walking on the beach and saw those numbers in shells on the beach. You didn't do this. Somebody else did this.

Yeah, somebody else did it. We were on a walk preparing for this week to roll out of my book. She looked at it and said, why'd someone put their address in the sand? All right. And then we stood at it, looked at it, trying to figure out it, trying to figure what it was. And she'd long been a server in restaurants. And she said, you know what I think it is?

Yeah. I think it's a reference to restaurants when you would 86 something in a restaurant. Right, it's off the menu. Yeah, I said, no, I remember when I was a kid, you'd say 86 to get out of a place. This place stinks, let's 86 it. I was a bartender.

You would 86 a customer if they were getting drunk. Like, that's 86. I'm like, give him a low proof alcohol, something like that, yeah. And so I said, I think it's a clever political message. And she said, you should take a picture of it. I said, sure. And then she said, you should Instagram that.

And boom. Well. All right. Now, remember I told you last week when we were talking about the SPLC indictment that you can never put it past the Trump, DOJ, to screw something up that might otherwise have some valid investigative impetus, but because there's such a clown show that they're inevitably going to spoil. whatever might be legitimately investigated about the subject matter.

I mean, could we have gotten a more perfect representation of that? No, this is the ultimate version of that. And let's just let's get out some of the other contemporaneous videos. Let's do number five. This is Trump being asked if he thought Comey's post really endangered his life. slot five and then after that we'll just do six quickly which is comie's response do you really think that he was endangering your life or threatening your life well as anybody knows anything about crime they know 86 you know it's a mob term

for kill him you ever see the movies 86 him the mob's too one of his wonderful associates 86 and that means kill him it's uh i think of it as a mob term. I don't know. People think of it as something having to do with this term, but the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody, they say 86% of a gun. I'm trying to keep the language nice and clear. They don't use that term, son of again. They use another term. But that's a mob term for kill them. Yeah. Do you really think your life was in danger? Probably. I don't know. Based on what on Boom, acquittal.

The people like Comey have created tremendous danger, I think, for politicians and others. You know, Comey is a dirty cop. He's a very dirty cop. He cheated on the elections. He tried to help. Okay. Okay. So when Trump hems and haws, when he's asked by Caitlin Collins,

who is otherwise kind of annoying, but, you know, this was the right question to ask in this moment, did you actually think that your life was in danger as a result of this Instagram post? Yeah, you got to say yes, absolutely. Okay, bam, instant acquittal. Throw the thing out and can we just move on with this already? You're not going to nail Comey on anything, I guess. How about devoting some of our tax dollars to something that's, you know, that improves society somewhat? Also, I'm pretty sure it's not a mob term.

I'm pretty sure it's like a stocking term. Like, it was a code for... I thought it was some social media thing where like kids would say. No, no, this goes back way like a long time ago to, to like, I think like loading shelves and stuff like that or restaurants also use the term. I've done a lot of Sopranos rewatches. I have never heard any character say 86. You've heard them say whack, right? Yeah.

Steep with the fishes. I don't think they said that actually. But, you know, yeah, 86, I don't think so. Take care of them, you know, handle it. Yeah. So let's look at that video from Comey. This is video response. Well, they're back.

This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it. But nothing has changed with me. I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let's go. But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country.

This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be. And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith. This is why the second Trump administration blows so much. They are now forcing us to side with James Comey, first and foremost on First Amendment grounds. because they couldn't nail him on anything else. And so they cook up this Kakamami Instagram post prosecution by, again, venue shopping to, you know, Eastern District of North Carolina,

just like they did with the Alabama thing with SPLC. And Comey's just right. I mean, like he's substantively correct that this could not conceivably constitute a crime, except if you are serving as a loyal lackey of President Donald J. Trump, and your highest priority in terms of public office and public policy is simply to do his kind of like, you know, petulant bidding. I mean, isn't there anything else that maybe could be worth your while in terms of your deployment of public resources? Is it all about just getting this like petty, you know, tip for cat on behalf of the principal? Like, don't, like, don't you have any like higher aspiration in terms of how you want to exercise power?

Apparently not. It's just so lame. So, okay, I do think the first amendment of James Comey was totally legitimate. The first indictment. The first indictment. Yeah, the first indictment of Comey. Comey, for people who don't remember, was leaking stuff about Russiagate to the news media. After he was fired. Well, yes.

but even before he was fired, he brought in Daniel Richmond and gave him a government designation so that he would be clear to look at at material, and then Richmond then spoke to the media on his behalf. Where's the crime there? Well, it's leaking.

I mean, if he's the FBI director, he has the authority to designate somebody a rightful recipient to certain information. Okay, does that Wasn't that, wasn't that guy He was a Columbia law professor, right? Wasn't he like, He was a Columbia law

Special government employee or something? Yeah, he was a special government employee, but he brought somebody into the FBI. So that's a political problem, Matt. Why is everything now, why is every dispute have to be settled through the apparatus of criminal law? This is my whole problem with the Trump prosecutions

while he was out of power and I was warning the Democrats who were high on their own supply that, you know, the minute they get back, the Republicans get back in power, or they're going to come right after you using these same sleazeball Jack Smith tactics. So no. But this,

I don't think it's clear cut that the first one was legitimate either. And this one's even more farcical. Well, I'm sorry. I disagree. If leaking is a felony criminal offense and, and he definitely leaked and he leaked repeatedly. And he not only leaked repeatedly, he did it systematically.

And I don't know. So you're saying, so he leaked when he was FBI. both serving FBI director and then former FBI director? Yes. Yeah. There's an IG report about it. How can you leave when you're a former governor employee?

Because he still had some of the material. Yeah. When he left. And his personal effects. No, they weren't his personal effects. I just don't understand what, okay, so you don't think there's any ambiguity there. You think that you would have been locked up? No problem?

I don't think so. I just don't, I just don't, okay, so even if you object to some of the conduct with in terms of him disseminating information around the time that he was fired in 2017 or whatever it may have happened, why is that an issue that has to, if so facto be resolved through the application of punitive criminal law. This is why I'm a, I guess, an instinctive defense attorney, no matter who the target is, Jeffrey Epstein or James Comey or you name, you know, fill in the blank. I'm sorry, if Chelsea Manning's got to go to jail for leaking material, then James Cunning has. But I was opposed to that too. You were? Chelsea Manning being prosecuted, yes. I actually attended her trial.

All right. How about? Bassange. Ellsberg. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, when he was charged under the Espionage Act. So I like to think I'm pretty consistent about this stuff. Okay, so nobody should be ever put in jail for it. I mean, why?

for a leak. Why do we want the government to even have this power? It's like a bogus power to begin with. For leaking classified material. I mean, what? So now we're all supposed to revere the classification regimen. It's like a total joke. It's arbitrary. And it's so nebulous that it allows like these kind of circumstantial politically expedient prosecutions because the standards are never evenly applied. Well, I mean, look. Like, so you, so you, you, you, you, you, you, it brings you enjoyed the idea of throwing people in jail for receiving or leaking classified information? Well, especially if you're doing so to imply that somebody's guilty of a crime. So then go after him politically.

It's a political dispute. Well, it's not judiciable, non-judicial is the word you're looking for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is justiciable, Michael. And the reason you go after a crime like this is because there's more underneath it with, with Russiagate. You know, this is a, it's a first layer of like about 19 different illegalities that went on in that case, you know,

from illegal surveillance of people to illegal use of FISA against members of the campaign to leaking that material, by the way. Okay, so to get to the truth of the Russia, Gay. We have to say, oh, yes, Mr. Federal Prosecutor, use my taxpayer dollars to spuriously cook up indictments of people that Trump doesn't like and throw them in jail. Come on. There's other ways to extract that material, Matt, without having to resort to the supreme authority of our prosecutorial overlords to tell us what the truth is. I mean, wasn't Tulsi supposed to be given us all this crap?

What happened with that? Yeah, but Michael, this is how you do political investigations. You find somebody who's guilty of something. and you prosecute him for it, and then you roll them into the next thing. I thought that was the Stalinist. Oh, come on. This is every,

every girl. Show me the man and it'll show you the crime. That's what they're doing with Comey. What's just the coincidence? That was they screwed up the first one. They decided to prosecute him over Instagram. It's show me the man. I'll show you the crime.

Was not the Soviet? Michael, there's no crime in Russiagate? I don't know that. I mean, I think there's stuff that's like politically criminal in terms of being objectionable. I don't know that what James Comey did was criminally actionable. No. So you don't think

I think it's a political problem That's what that was my focus Not saying you know Let's like get into the Let's get in that case What are against Against each other for all perpetuity This is what I was going after the Democrats

For with Jack Smith And that woman in Georgia And all this other nonsense Alvin Bragg That was that that was Trump Being the target of Democrats saying Show us the man will show you the crime And they found bogus crimes to whip up

And now that's a two reasons Trump said I'm your retribution elect me president again and I will do what was done to me on your behalf because I'm the avatar of the nation like JFK was our slain father figure Trump is now you know the martyr semi-martre martyr murder for his constituency and so now they did it to me now we'll do it to Comey. That's what they're doing and no I'm just I don't I don't support it and I don't think it can be justified by appealing to some higher principle around Russiagate disclosure what do we get for what Russia gate disclosure have we got but it's not Russiagate disclosure it has to be prosecuted you like if

If Watergate was prosecuted, we got to prosecute Russiagate. It's the same thing. It's illegal surveillance and election manipulation. To me, it's a political problem. Not a criminal justice problem. I don't know why that's so controversial now. Penalize the perpetrators of Russia gay politically. That's what I was calling for.

So you wouldn't penalize the prison. Like there's a high bar for putting someone in a cage for years. That's my belief. So you wouldn't have put any of the. Watergate conspirators in prison. I don't think, I mean, I would, I would have to go look in greater detail, but no, I think, I don't think so. I mean, the one, there was like a tiki tack thing pretty much in terms of the, really, but bugging, bugging the, they didn't even bug it. They didn't end up bugging it. It was just,

they did not actually end up wiretapping. They didn't, they never wiretapped the DNC office and like received wiretapped, you know, communications. It was bungled. They broke into the office and put a bug in there. I know what I'm saying. The bug was never set up, so they never received wiretap communications. Just because they got caught, uh, it doesn't, okay, yeah, I mean, to the guys who actually broke in, fine. I mean, go, yeah, that, yeah, if it's like actual, like a breaking and entering,

okay, that's, that's more clear cut. But this, like, is almost like a political prosecution with, with Comey. Michael, listen to me just for a moment. I don't think, I don't know that Nixon ought have been prosecuted for that, necessarily. Maybe not Nixon, but certainly all the way up to John Mitchell, approve this operation. And if you're approving an operation to do to, you know, to perform a whole campaign of dirty tricks that includes illegal surveillance, sending prostitutes at people.

You're just not gung-ho, man, about sending people to prison. I don't know. Maybe it's a character flaw. Okay. I mean, personally, I think the, you know, the intelligence community shouldn't be involved. in deciding who gets to be president. I agree, but they've been doing that for ages. They supported Kennedy over Nixon.

And so, like, let's get a political solution of some kind, rather than thinking we're going to solve the problem by putting some, you know, a patsy in jail, you know, and then... But he's not a patsy. They did it. James Comey is a patsy of Donald Trump. The only reason that there's... Now these sequential prosecutions of James Comey

is because Trump hates him. You're telling me it's just like it's some objective evaluation that was made of James Comey. Matt, why was he just prosecuted this week for the Instagram post? Because they just coincidentally. Well, the Instagram post is stupid.

But why was it brought? Because he's on a vengeance tour. Like there's no problem. Yeah, but Michael, there are real crimes and then there are crimes that are not real. The 8647 thing is not a real crime.

The stuff that went on a Russia gate, you know, where they cook up phony investigations and they send informants into places and they pay them out of a, you know, the Office of National Assessment. So let's further empower the national security state to address that. Because that's what you're doing when you're saying these guys need to be prosecuted. That's meaning we're using more punitive powers to the national security division of the DOJ to address this political problem. That's what you're doing functionally. You know what that resulted in? When Trump was out of office, that resulted in the National Security Division of the DOJ, thinking that they were going to be the ones to enforce the Presidential Records Act.

Give me a break. And this is out of control. So, no, I'm not going to participate in validating any aspect of it unless you can show me concrete, solid proof that a particular statute was violated by Comey, which I don't think was at all. But he 100% violated the leaking statute. 100%. What's the leaking? What's the leaking statute? You can't leak classified information?

You mean the espionage act? No, leaking classified information. What statute? False statements, obstruction of a congressional proceeding. I remember him being indicted for false statements. Yeah, that's what he was indicted for. It was obstruction of the congressional proceeding from five years ago that they snuck in right under the five-year statute of limitations. Yeah, but the false statement was that the false statement was that he had not.

authorized somebody to leak to the media. But Matt, that was like going, that was like indicting George Papadopoulos for getting a date wrong. That's what they're doing. That's the vengeance tour. No, it's not. It's totally different. Here's the counts. He was not in, he wasn't even charged in the first indictment for leaking.

He was charged for count one false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States government and count two, obstruction of a congressional proceeding. There's no leaking statute because again, they were throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks with the guy. Hence now, them resorting to an Instagram process. Michael, there's a 79 page, oh, IG report about this that is that that concludes that, you know, that there were sweeping offenses up and down by, by Comey and his office. And there's a two-page indictment from September 25th, 2025, which is bare bones, brought by one of these, Blackies who had no, it was like, you know, a 35-year-old that Trump put in because I guess she's attractive as like an interim prosecutor. And it was a farce and got thrown out instantly.

And it didn't even get to any potential like legitimate wrongdoing around leaking and so forth. It was just a patina to prosecute Comey. So no, I don't support that. I actually will, you know, stick by the ethos that it was a Stalinist vow to say, show me the man, I'll show you the crime. And because that's what they're doing with Comey, just like, yeah, Democrats did in a more diffuse way, did with Trump when he was out of office. So I don't support either of it. I mean, under those standards, Michael, you can't prosecute any scandal. I mean, I can. I mean, you can't, Matt, you can't say, look, we don't like Comey, therefore, let's find a crime we can snag him on.

That you can't do. You can see a scandal erupt and you could see potential criminality that's investigating. and you can find evidence that may be implicated. I'm going to read from the end of the IG report. Comey's unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar criticism. In a country built on the rule of law, it is about most importance that all FBI employees adhere to the department

and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances and compelling personal convictions, Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a special counsel. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information obtained during the course of FBI employment in order to achieve a personally desired outcome. The OIG has provided this report to the FBI and to the DOJ for action they deem appropriate. This did not come from a Trump-appointed IG. This came from IGs who've been. And IJ who's been working there for...

Yeah, fine. They're saying, yeah, merits similar criticism, they say. So they're saying, Comey's conduct merits criticism. They're not saying it merits being thrown to prison for several decades. They're saying he violated or that he acted in a way that was, quote, inconsistent with department policy, not inconsistent with the espionage act or any other statute. This isn't the espionage act. I know it's not.

This is a total departmental review. And the leaking is just. the top of the, you know, that's just the surface of the, of the bad behavior. I mean, underneath this, there's a whole galaxy of improper behaviors that was conducted by Comey's FBI during that period. Everything from, you know, okay, so I guess we'll have to see if Cash Patel does anything that can be deemed inconsistent with departmental policy. And then we'll see if there's a galaxy of underlying conduct for which he can be criminally

prosecuted because that's going to be the tip for tat. Is that the world, the society we want to live in? I don't think so. I mean, we can call Cash Patel and James Comey a piece of shit and politically, you know, repudiate their tenures as FBI director without thinking that the way to resolve these squabbles is to get into this endless, vendetta where we're marshalling the long arm of punitive criminal law. It's just it's a it's a road paved to hell.

I'm sorry, Russiagate has to be prosecuted. I totally disagree. I think that was, you know, in the pantheon of American political scandals, especially ones that involve the intelligence community, meddling in domestic politics. Michigan has to be prosecuted is too vague. You got to show me the precise crime, the precise evidence, and what statute you violated.

Well, I mean, there's a long list of stuff. I mean, they had 26 different people under surveillance before the election. They improperly obtained a FISA on a Trump aide, which was used then to obtain information about everybody that that person talked to. I remember that IG report. So it's exactly the same thing as Watergate, except he's on a much larger scale.

And that doesn't even include the stuff that came after. I mean, it's, So who precisely do you think, do you believe ought to be prosecuted in 2026 for Russiagate related offenses other than Comey. Brennan, for sure. For what specific conduct? Falsifying an intelligence report?

Falsifying an intelligence report. And what statute would that violate in the criminal code? Just like a general fraud thing. Again, like I don't understand why we can't politically repudiate Brennan for falsifying a government, like an internal, like an intelligence community document, really. That's now grounds for a criminal prosecution. No, I think it's round to show that he was the leader of this little cabal where they were thinking that they were the heroes of democracy

and had to thwart this Russian agent or something. And that's discrediting enough. I mean, I think the people who falsified the WMD intelligence assessment, although that was a different kind of document, I think there should be penalties for those. Yeah. I do.

And because we're expanding the domain of what we consider a penalty that has to be doled out in terms of the application of criminal law. I think there's stuff that has to remain in the domain of political disputation. Otherwise, it's an endless cycle. I don't know, man. So Democrats already breach with Trump and with those bogus four prosecutions. I was the guy who was coming out and saying, look, wait, Trump. I mean, you could make an argument that Trump dead technically violate the. Espionage Act or the Presidential Records Act. And then you could, you know, repeat the cliche,

no one's above the law because like, you know, some lawyer could come up with an argument that he did technically violate the precise wording of the statute. But no, I was against all that. And that was called, you know, pro-fascist or wanted to re-enpower Trump, you know, ironically enough. And, you know, I think I was correct in opposing that on the, on principle, because that was all stuff that was nowhere near egregious enough in terms of the actual criminal violation that could be alleged that it couldn't be dealt with in the realm of political disputation, meaning don't vote for Trump, oppose them, campaign against him, criticize him, mock him, pillory him, whatever you want to do. But the idea that we have to resurrect an ancient civil rights statute from the Civil War and

the Espionage Act, which they used against Assange and Ellsberg and Manning to go after Trump, that's preposterous. I mean, I'm sorry, I have a similar mindset with these other, you know, fanciful prosecutions that people want to bring against Trump's people. You know, Michael, you think a little bit much of yourself sometimes. I probably do. You know, you maybe want to respect other people's opinions. I get that this is your opinion, but my opinion and I work. I've got to respect your opinion.

I worked on this for years. And RussiaGate is absolutely a prosecutable political scandal. I mean, if RussiaGate is not prosecutable, then nothing is prosecutable. it's it's as bad as it gets i just i disagree it's not i'm not saying i disrespect they falsified intelligence they illegal they used illegal surveillance they they inserted campaign research into uh into official intelligence reports um they used it as the as a as a as a pretext to start a special prosecutor investigation that could have overturned the presidency i mean I mean, there's, there's so many different things going on there.

If you can't prosecute that, like, look, we send people to jail for significant periods of time for, for things that, you know, to ordinary people might seem insignificant. If we're going to do that, then these people got to go to jail for committing major breaches of ethics and violations of the law. Like if you're going to send somebody to jail for for eight months for, you know, punching out a screen door, his girlfriend's screen door, you got to send these guys to jail for for illegally putting somebody under FISA surveillance. Or maybe we shouldn't send the guy to prison who punched out the spring, the porch door or whatever. Eight months, really? That seems excessive. I don't know. That's just my instinct. It's not that I disrespect your opinion of that. It's just I disagree. I mean, and like I was making a variation. Look, I mean, I mean, I'm probably full of myself. I agree.

I was making a variation of this argument when the Mueller investigation was launched. I was saying, look, you are criminalizing political disputation with this open-ended special counsel investigation where somehow your purview, via Rosenstein or whomever,

was to criminally investigate anybody who had a tie or a connection or, you know, the collusion thing was. That was my problem with that. So if it boomerangs now, I'm not just going to abandon and everything I was saying when the whole thing started. But the whole point, Michael, is that they falsely generated the predicate to start that special counsel

investigation. And you got to punish something in it. Okay. So, Matt, should we prosecute Donald Trump when he's out of office next time for clearly falsely predicating the Iran war on a bunch of bogus claims around imminent threat and so forth? I know a lot of people would like to. I know people would get a lot of psychic gratification from that. You could make a pretty good case that there's some fraud statute that could apply to his statements

and those of administration for falsifying a lot of stuff in terms of justifying their foreign policy action. But no, I think my instinct would be the same. No, I don't think that should be prosecuted. I think that should be dealt with in the realm of political disputation. I mean, I've talked to very good lawyers who've told me that there are things that Trump did in his second term that they would think might fall under. the purview of criminal law. The Venezuela boat actions might. If we want presidents to follow the law, somebody's got to go to court.

I mean, it's just the way it is. And similarly, we can't have people making executive decisions when they're not the president of the United States, which is something that went on the last presidency. I just don't think we can turn a blind eye to very serious violations of law

by people who aren't supposed to make any, who are surrounded by lawyers that we pay for. I'm not saying turn a blind eye. I'm just saying that you're kidding yourself if you think that the way to direct your focus properly is to go through the route of empowering prosecutors to come up with a cockamamie case and thinking that's going to somehow

solve all our political problems because it's again, it's a nightmare waiting to happen it's already underway. The nightmare is upon us. This is like kind of banana republic stuff. I mean, the United States is a declining empire, let's say. The 8647 case is banana republic stuff. The other one is not. Okay, but then how about the 8647?

I mean, so what do you make of that in general? What does that tell you about what the Trump administration is doing? How alarm what should we be by it? How much a problem it is? Is it for free speech? Because, you know, I don't know, it seems pretty consistent with the show me the man. I'll show you the crime ethos that I'm sort of suggesting is what's guiding all of this, even if you can dress it up and some kind of higher principle.

I'm saying this is a totally bullshit case when they didn't have to because they have real cases against Comey that they should have worked harder to make stick. They fucked up the last case. They were too stupid to take their time and devoid. develop that prosecution and do it correctly, you know, it would have stuck if they, if they hadn't, if they hadn't bent the rules and, uh, with, you know, the insertion of a, of a new, what was an acting AG or something like that. Um, that's a real case. That's a real criminal case. Uh, and, and, and by the way, it's, it's, it's also a systematic problem. Like, I can't tell you how many. I've talked to a bunch of intelligence whistleblowers, including people who've actually gone to jail for years at a time.

And it's a constant problem that people who leak at the lower levels get punished sometimes rather severely. But people who leak at the higher levels, there's a wink, wink, nudge, arrangement by which they're all allowed to do it. And I think that's got to stop. So one of the allegations in the Trump indictment, and it was in 2023 around the Mar-a-Lago documents case, so he supposedly possessed all these national security, national defense documents that it was alleged he was not authorized to possess even as a former president who had, you know, taken materials with him out of the White House. One of the claims was that he had shown some, you know, highly, highly classified war plans of some sort to, you know,

you know, people who he was just hanging out with on a plane, I think it was or in Bedminster or something, which you could say is a leak. Now, I was against that prosecution. I was saying Trump ought not to have been prosecuted for supposedly leaking this, you know, sacrosanct national security information because it's not an offense that's worth, that's in the public interest to prosecute for a million different reasons, even if, you know, some aggressive prosecutor could make a technical argument about the statutory violation. First and foremost, because the classification power flows intellectually from the executive, which Trump was.

And he says he's to classify it when he left. And I think, you know, that's fine unless we want to authorize these, you know, bureaucratic factions to say what it is and what isn't classified over and above democratic checks. But, you know, there are different arguments there. But, like, I don't know, you can make the same, you can make the same sort of contention that, you know, Trump ought to have been prosecuted because he might have been technically guilty of something,

depending on how the trial went. And we can't have this situation where lower level schmucks and slubs get prosecuted for leaking or mishandling classified information where big time elites like Trump get away with it. I would have rejected that argument, but like that argument could have been made, right? Michael. Am I crazy? A little bit, yeah. Look, the SB on Ajaq, there's a reason why civil liberal

libertarians hate it. You're basically guilty of it. When they file it, they can designate anything. National Defense information. It's particularly ridiculous to file it with regard to a president because the president has the ability to declassify anything at any time. And in this case, he had. But even more to the point, there is such a thing as,

a damaging, dangerous illegal leak, and we do have to punish them. Would you want a CIA agent who had important information for national security? Would you want that person linking that to Russia, for instance, like the location of our defense, you know, nuclear codes or that sort of thing. Like, you have to, the whole point of this is that when there are violations that really do cross the line, you do have to prosecute it. And I'm sorry, the FBI director systematically leaking information from his own investigations so that he can influence the politics of the day.

that falls under the rubric of something that, you know, the public can't stand for. We don't pay them to do that. Like, we pay the FBI director to be surrounded by really good lawyers so that they don't do that shit. And, you know, we can't put up with that. I'm sorry. I agree politically, though.

I mean, that's where I have to, that's where I don't join the clamor. in terms of leaping into the enlist tit for tat of criminal law as a way to resolve these problems. I just think it's a fool's errand. But again, I agree that I'm also probably crazy. Look, I have a minoritarian takes on lots of stuff. I know, I think the CIA should probably be abolished, don't you? I mean, so I don't know if I want to prosecute anybody to like avenge their honor in terms of the proper retention, information retention protocols of, you know, the crap they put out.

You don't even have this whole bureaucracy. Get rid of it. It's a post-World War II thing. You know, so I don't know. I mean, I'm just trying to get all emotional and worked up about, you know, the inviolability of our classified documents. I just don't think most of it's bullshit. But it's not just about the inviability of classified documents. This is part of a larger, this was part of a larger scheme where all sorts of crimes were committed.

And this is the way. There's like a larger conspiracy. Yeah. With a literal conspiracy, a violation of a conspiracy statute. Like so Comey would be ideally in your view. He would be like one of the orchestrators of the conspiracy and the conspiracy would like have a bunch of other like sub-components. And it would be almost like a RICO thing.

Yeah, but this is the way you do it. You do it brick by brick. If there's a real case there and this is one of the reasons why I balked at the cases, the prosecutions of people like, Popatopoulos because, yeah, you can prosecute him for false statements, but he's got nothing to roll to. Like, there was nothing else he could tell prosecutors. There was no bigger thing.

Same with Flynn. Same with Flynn. But in this case, even Roger Stone. I mean, Roger Stone, they went after him on a false statement because they couldn't nail him on what they were thinking they could nail him on. Yes, but the reason that was a bad prosecution is because even if Roger Stone wanted to get out from under that prosecution. he there was nothing there was nobody he could give up he didn't know anything in so far as it would

relate to some larger collusion you know scheme with russia to subvert the election right yeah but he could have given some other stuff maybe i mean if you want to find something you can find it that's they they fished out the manifold tax stuff from like 2005 yeah no they they did um I don't I mean should we should we not I don't know I mean I wasn't particularly you know I mean I pay taxes so it pisses me off

and people don't pay taxes okay I mean me too I guess I mean I'll pretend to be outraged about that as well I don't know because like I objected to the whole premise of why that Mueller investigation even existed so if they got some collateral damage

with the with Manafort and Gates on like ancient tax stuff that nobody would have given a second thought to if it hadn't been supposedly, you know, tied thematically to some collusion plot that have been ripping CNN for the past two year and a half. I don't know. I don't know, Michael, you might want to spend a little more time around like prosecutors. You've done things like mob cases. Like this is the way it works.

I don't like prosecutors that much. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I don't. Really? No, I think you've got to be kind of craven. And there's got to be something psychically kind of sick with you. to want to dedicate your life to throwing people in prison for years. That's what I think.

That's my, if you want to, like, what's the emotional core of like whatever is motivating here? That's it. There's got to be something twisted about you. And actually, Greenwald and I have talked about this because he was always,

you know, he was a defense lawyer. He was trying to keep people out of prison. And he always had the same sort of intuition about like, they're just being something like kind of fundamentally, psychically sick with people who think that, you know, the most sterling career path they can pursue is to ensure that they can put

the most people in prison for the longest number of years. I just don't I mean, some people have to be in prison. They just have to. Not many. Earth few. Really? People are actually dangerous to society? Yeah. But like not some political grudge. All right. So the person

If people have to put in state custody because they would be violent if they were let to move about freely. Meaning that they would they would sucker punch a grandma on the bus or something. then yeah, okay. There are lots of those people. That's a tiny, tiny minority of the total prison population.

I wouldn't say that. As someone who's taught in prison, I would say that there are certainly people who don't belong there or don't who shouldn't belong. I've taught them to, Matt. Who don't belong there that long. But most of the people who were in there did something. know, the drug crimes are different.

I have a totally different feeling about that. But people who do, who did shit, like get behind the wheel of a car drunk and, you know, cause injury or death to somebody else. Like, they got to be in jail. They just, like, society demands it. I mean, there's no other way around it. My whole philosophy on incarceration is harm mitigation first. if somebody continuing to exist freely in society is deemed to be likely to cause injury or death and the only way to prevent that is to put them into a tiny cell managed by the state,

then that's something I could accept as a necessary trade-off in terms of taking that guy's civil liberties away. But, you know, that's a much, my personal standard, I fully acknowledge, is not someone that most people would ever agree with. So I talked to Elliot Spitzer-Ruburn. My first of- Elliot Spitzer told me there were three reasons you put people in jail. One, justice for victims, two, the thing that you just mentioned, harm mitigation.

While that person's in jail, they're not going to reoffend. Three, deterrence to others who might commit similar offenses. And all those things are legitimate, especially- I guess you read the two of the three. really yeah i i do justice for victims said no i mean i don't think justice for victims unto itself is a reason to put somebody in jail why because it's achieving some kind of psychic gratification for putting somebody in jail meaning you're somehow affording somebody quote justice which is not something tangible it's just something emotional and visceral okay put somebody in jail

if they're an active threat and the only way to mitigate that threat is to deprive them of liberty not because there's some victim's rights group who are highly politically influential who want the max sentences imposed on anybody who does something stupid and maybe causes somebody to break a leg or whatever which is bad okay

but no I don't think justice for victims unto itself is at all a sufficient reason to put anybody in jail what does that even mean everybody has a different definition of what justice constitutes is it death penalty is it forfeiture of assets it's not like just I like that's some straight

forward thing. And a deterrence, I don't think it is a if somebody kills if somebody kills your child, what does it say to those people if that person is not punished? It tells them that they're not respected as citizens.

Like the system. That person probably should be punished because he's a mortal threat to children. I'm not saying don't punish the guy. I'm not saying remove the threat to society. All right. The grounds on which you would justify that would not be, you know, some appeal to satisfying victims.

Again, I just, because that, that's such an emotionally manipulative thing that caught, you know, got and gets invoked over and over again to enhance the punitive power of the state and to do these longer and longer sentences and three strikes you're in your outlaws and all this crap that bloated the United States into the prison state. A bigger prison state than the gulags. So. All right. This has been today's news. Thanks very much. All right.

Take care, everybody.